Restaurer les peintures murales de l’église Notre-Dame de Charly (Cher) au xixe siècle

Abstract

The medieval wall paintings located in the apse of the church of Notre-Dame de Charly, in the Cher department, were much restored between 1854 and 1862 at the initiative of the Abbé Lenoir, the church priest. In order the better to restore these paintings of Romanesque origin, which he took to be a linear transcription of the Book of Revelation, he took inspiration from other medieval wall paintings such as those at Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe (Vienne). This is why he adds two sequences relating to chapter 12 of the Book of Revelation, which could be simple copies of the paintings located in the vestibule of Saint-Savin abbeychurch. But these copies in fact turn out to be very different from the original and directly inspired by the copies executed by Gérard Seguin at the invitation of Prosper Mérimee, to illustrate his Notice sur les Peintures de Saint-Savin, published in 1845. The restorer of the wall paintings at Charly trusted the reproductions carried out by Seguin and reproduced his mistakes in terms of interpretation and understanding. And, to add to these errors, there is also an exegetic reading of chapter 12 of the Book of Revelation. This reading inspired by the cult of the Virgin Mary, reflects the evolution of religious spirituality at the time and the particular relations of ecclesiastical authorities to medieval art during the nineteenth century.

Keywords

• monumental painting
• copies of murals
• notice on the wall painting of the church of Saint-Savin
• Mérimée
• nineteenth-century restoration of wall painting
• Charly