N Our Lady of Lourdes is an architectural landmark in the city of Santiago. Its impressive construction and especially its incomparable stained glass have thrilled all visitors for 60 years. The iconographic program of the stained glass includes: the life of the Virgin, the apparitions of the Virgin of Lourdes, the mysteries of the Rosary, the prophets, and other devotions of the Virgin, from the Virgin of Carmen, to the Virgin of the rays. The programme is completed by the tree of Jesse, which speaks of the genealogy of the Kings of Israel.
This is the laboratory of conservation of stained glass space clear of Chile, Les Ateliers Loire in France, and the national library to present the exhibition “Gabriel Loire, stained glass in Dalle de Verre in the Basilica Nuestra Señora de Lourdes of Santiago”.
The show presents the stained glass windows by the French artist Gabriel Loire in the Basilica our Lady of Lourdes, Santiago de Chile, work of the architects Eduardo Costabal and Andrés Garáfulic.
Virtual tours the visitor can learn about unpublished documentary material of the Assumptionist fathers commissioned to the artist, and the relationship of this with the architects. The viewer can tour virtually fifty stained-glass windows of the Basilica. They will be also exhibited some elements that allow to understand aspects of the technique with which they were built: the dalle de verre. Technique of reinforced concrete and glass tiles, stained glass windows were also built with which les Adolfo Winternitz in the votive Temple of Maipú.
Andrea Araos, in charge of the exhibition, says that “the exhibition is the first step to open this masterpiece of the architecture and stained glass to the public and to initiate a master plan for the stained glass windows of Gabriel Loire. Andrés Garafulic and Eduardo Costabal began the project of this work that lasted for thirty years in 1928, being young architects. “The catalogue accompanying the exhibition will enable visitors know the full iconographic program and to decipher some symbols that will blend in compositions”.
The exhibition will be opened by the grandson of the artist Bruno Loire, who will present a small monograph on the work: Gabriel Loire, stained glass in Dalle de Verre, our Lady of Lourdes Basilica, third title of the published four of the stained glass series Property in Chile, published by CLAV editions and will be freely distributed.
