CHAPELLE DE ROSEAIRE DE VENCE
- Henri Matisse
466 avenue Henri Matisse, 06140 Vence, France
The Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence, also known as the Matisse Chapel, was built and decorated between 1947 and 1951 by Henri Matisse for the Dominican Sisters. It was his final project and what he considered his masterpiece.
The story began in 1942 when Matisse, seriously ill after surgery for cancer, was cared for by a young nursing student named Monique Bourgeois. She became his friend and model, and when she joined the Dominican Sisters in 1944, taking the name Sister Jacques-Marie, their friendship continued. In 1946, she told Matisse about the chapel the nuns wanted to build in Vence, and he agreed to take on the project. At 77 years old, he began what would become a four year obsession.
Father Marie-Alain Couturier and Brother Louis-Bertrand Rayssiguier, both passionate about modern art's place in religious spaces, persuaded Matisse not just to decorate but to design the entire chapel. Working with architect Auguste Perret and master glazier Paul Bony, Matisse conceived every detail from the architecture to the stained glass windows, the interior murals, the furnishings, the bronze crucifix, and even the priest's colorful vestments.
Despite his limited mobility and illness, Matisse worked intensely from his studio, often from bed or a wheelchair. He used a long stick with a brush strapped to his arm to draw on construction paper placed on his walls, creating life-sized designs that were then transferred to tiles by skilled craftsmen. The three large murals painted in black lines on white ceramic tiles evoke Saint Dominic, the Virgin and Child, and the Way of the Cross.
The stained glass windows use only three colors: an yellow for the sun, a green for vegetation and cactus forms, and a blue for the Mediterranean Sea and sky. These windows flood the otherwise all white interior with colored light that constantly changes with the sun's intensity and angle, creating what Matisse called a space of calm and light. The colored reflections animate the white walls and black ceramic murals throughout the day.
The chapel was inaugurated and consecrated on June 25, 1951, though Matisse was too weakened by illness to attend. He died three years later at age 84, immensely proud of what he had achieved. The chapel was classified as a French Monument Historique in 1965 and received the label Patrimoine du XXe siècle in 2001. It remains a working chapel for the Dominican Sisters who continue to welcome visitors.
