This work discusses the relationship between cathedrals and modernity, which at first seems to be ideas at odds with one another. The authors seek to answer such questions as how the imaginations of the cathedral transformed the late nineteenth century and how it is valued in the aspirations of modernity in art. Why artists and writers as diverse as Huysmans and Proust, Apollinaire and Delaunay, Monet and Rodin, Matisse and Mondrian, and Bazaine Manessier Pollock and Barnett Newman were fascinated by the cathedral and how it inspired their works. Why Notre-Dame de Paris and the Eiffel Tower were so often compared. These are the questions raised in this book with possible answers in various fields of thought from history of art, ideas and sensibilities, philosophy, and aesthetics.