L’église De Vernon, Temps Gris 1894

In this canvas by Claude Monet, the church of Vernon emerges from a Temps Gris—a grey atmosphere—with its reflection shimmering in the Seine. The church, a symbol of spiritual stability, is softened here, its solid form rendered ethereal. Consider the archetypal image of the cathedral, the spiritual center of the community, reaching towards the divine. Yet, here, it is shrouded, almost fading, not unlike the cathedrals Eugène Viollet-le-Duc sought to restore to a mythic past. This obscuring of such an emblem reveals a psychological tension, a blurring of the sacred and the mundane. The subdued palette evokes a mood of introspection, a quiet questioning. The church then, captured in the transient light, becomes a symbol of evolving faith, or perhaps, the fading of certainty into the mists of modern doubt.