By David A. Patten From Newsmax

Yin Xin, the Chinese master artist whose work was featured last year in Newsmax Magazine, tells Newsmax that he is shocked and heartbroken beyond words at the tragedy that has befallen the City of Lights.

In an exclusive interview Yin told Newsmax he does not know the fate of the inspirational, religious-themed paintings that have attracted throngs of appreciative onlookers from around the world to Paris to view his art and the magnificent Cathedral de Notre Dame where they were displayed.

Throughout the day Monday, Yin said, he avoided going outside and tried to keep the TV off to avoid viewing images of the burning cathedral. “It’s too much for me,” the 61-year-old artist confessed.

Yin tells Newsmax he hunkered down in his studio Monday, and worked all day on his next exhibition project in the Vatican. The debut is scheduled for January 2020.

“I’m in deep sadness and crying for Notre Dame,” the artist confessed.

He said many friends have contacted him to make sure he’s fine and to ask whether his paintings, most notably the Chinese Madonna, miraculously survived the fire. Yin said he simply does not yet know if his paintings were damaged or destroyed.

“I can’t ask my friends in the cathedral now,” he explained.

Ironically, Yin took a fateful video of the 850-year-old architectural masterpiece the day before the fire decimated it. His video, provided exclusively to Newsmax, depicts a leafy drive on a sunny day past the cathedral’s iconic flying buttresses. He worries it may be the last recorded video image before the devastating fire struck.

Only about 24 hours after the video was taken, the cathedral would virtually be in ruins.

He ended his message to Newsmax: “We pray for Notre Dame de Paris.”

His painting commonly referred to as “The Chinese Madonna” is formally titled, “The Holy Mother and Her Son (Sainte Mere et Son Fils).

When Newsmax contributor Paige Donner spoke with Yin Xin in August, he stated: “This is like a gift from God. I never expected that one of my paintings would be hanging in the Cathedrale Notre Dame de Paris.”

The Chinese Madonna and another Yin painting, “Saint Paul Chen,” were displayed in their own chapel, Chappelle de la Sainte-Enfance.

Last May, the paintings and the chapel they decorate received a benediction from Monsignor Michel Aupetit in a ceremony at the cathedral.

Donner described the two paintings as “classical compositions on a chiaroscuro background” that are accompanied by two calligraphic panels.

Now Yin tells Newsmax, “We pray for Notre Dame de Paris.”

© 2019 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

For more on this story go to; https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/notre-dame-yin-xin-chinese-madonna-fire/2019/04/16/id/911865/?ns_mail_uid=6952f1f9-507d-4a20-8cc0-0a1db158d76e&ns_mail_job=DM23758_04162019&s=acs&dkt_nbr=010502nauixa