Two remarkable model books, one anonymous, the other by the polymath Ademar de Chabannes together with several loose sheets of drawings survive from the first third of the eleventh century. These, together with a repetitive of a stock of images by different sculptural workshops throughout Francia occidentalis suggest that sketches were widely diffused and relied upon for the transmission of imagery and motifs in the early Romanesque period. The correspondences between sketches and architectural sculpture are particularly significant because their date overlaps the period of the re-emergence of figural sculpture following its six-hundred-year hiatus since Antiquity. The representational tricks and authoritative visual language of graphic models were important, in this period when access to religious imagery outside the confines of monasteries was limited.
The two "co-cathedral" churches in the small episcopal city of Saint-Lizier-en-Couserans each display great heterogeneity in the plan and construction of their different parts, which have long awaited a global and comparative stratigraphic study. This study underscores the conservation of pre-Romanesque constructions throughout the elevation of each church. The choir of Notre-Dame de la Sede, attached to the fifth-century rampart, thus appears to be the east end of a much smaller church with a single nave, which was then rebuilt with a Romanesque nave and the previous openings were then vaulted. The choir of the church of Saint Lizier, situated outside the walls, is considered to be contemporary and was enlarged with a transept having oriented chapels and a burial vault, probably well before the first vaulting of the choir and the enlargement of the nave in the Romanesque period. The comparison with the neighboring Comminges, better known archeologically, proposes the hypothesis of two paleo-christian churches built shortly after the foundation of the fortified city during the fifth century, which are partially preserved today.
Often mentioned as an important ancient stronghold in local historiography, the logis of Serveau remains relatively unknown. The rediscovery of its archives, preserved in the charter collection of Dorides, and a study of the construction of the logis has renewed our knowledge of the medieval manor, which was largely transformed and fortified during the Wars of Religion by a man who had attracted the favors of the king. The logis is now in a very heterogeneous state, reflecting several medieval and post-medieval construction campaigns. The defensive additions to the site at the end of the 16th century reflect a larger phenomenon in the Bas-Poitou, but with a more ambitious program for this type of seigneurial residence.
A miniature in Avranches, ms. 50, painted around the year 1000, has heretofore been considered the oldest witness to activity in the scriptorium of Mont-Saint-Michel. The recent attribution of the miniature to the Loire Valley constitutes a major epistemological advance for the history of art, as well as for history. The attribution is the fruit of a re-examination of the codicology, palaeography, iconography, and physico-chemical make-up of the manuscript, undertaken by the EMMA (Etude Materielle des Anciens manuscrits du Mont-Saint-Michel) at the University of Caen, with help of the CRC (Centre de Recherche sur la Conservation) for the chemical imagery. The use of an X-ray fluorescence scanner allowed the identification of the donor who offers a book to St Michel on the full-page frontispiece. He is Gelduin II the Younger, lord of Saumur, who at the end of his life took the monastic habit at Saint-Laumer de Blois. While not authorizing formal conclusions, the material study of the parchment and pigments determined the place of production of the manuscript, namely Saint-Laumer de Blois, or more probably Saint-Mesmin de Micy. This localization led the authors of the study to link the representation of St Michel crushing a heretic with doctrinal deviancies which in 1022 resulted in the execution of a group of canons from the Cathedral of Orleans, who were close to the royal court. On a broader scale, it is worth considering the effect that these polemics had on the creation of demonstrative historiated capitals on the tower-porch of Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire and in the nave of Saint-Germain-des-Pres.
The description of the library of the sculptor Pierre Souquet, preserved in the post-mortem inventory of his belongings in 1505, offers a rare opportunity to observe the culture and writing practices of a major artist in Provence in the last decades of the fifteenth century. Born in Saint-Quentin in Picardy, this stone-cutter arrived in Aix-en-Provence only in the early 1480s in order to take charge of completing the ornaments of the facade of the Cathedral of Saint-Sauveur. Solicited by the social elite in Aix, he stayed in this city until his death in 1505. The inventory of his belongings, drawn up after his death, itemizes the contents of twenty volumes in his library, kept in his studium. Mixed in among religious works, which bear witness to a lay spirituality that is rarely graspable, are an important number of chivalric romances attesting to the large diffusion of a textual and iconographic imaginary world, representing a fifteenth-century chivalry coming from a mythical past, and serving as a cultural reference not only for the nobility, but also for the urban elite, including the artisanal classes.
In a tiny room on the ground floor of the private chateau of Mezens (Tarn) there is a painted decoration dating from the mid fifteenth century. The emblematic elements on the vault allow an attribution of the decoration to Galaubie de Panassac, seneschal of Toulouse and husband of Marie de Rabastens, lady of Mezens. The figurative scenes discovered on two of the four walls remain enigmatic, despite the presence of inscriptions which are difficult to decipher. This is a rare example of civil wall painting in the fifteenth century in Occitanie where, during that period, painted ceilings are better known.
Notre-Dame de Lecaude (Calvados) is a rural Romanesque parish church in the Pays d'Auge. Over the vault of the choir is an atypical wooden framework with a dendrochronological dating of 1116d. Its structure displays a gantry system made of two longitudinal timbers placed on ties and intended to bear the rafter, a system rarely observed in northern France. A wooden shingle from the original roof was found intact in the masonry of the attic. The other particularity of the framework is that it is made with much reused wood from the preceding framework, which dated between 1050d and 1060d, and which could thus be reconstructed. It presents a structure characteristic of Romanesque frameworks with rafters-forming-trusses, provided with an exposed ceiling. An original panel of this eleventh-century ceiling was also found intact, reused in the masonry.
The town of La Chatre has preserved one of the most remarkable timber frame constructions in southern Berry, better known at the "maison rouge". Situated near the canonical enclosure, in an urban extension reflecting the economic boom of the town in the fifteenth century, this dwelling was probably built by the Godard family, merchants from Castres enriched through trade. A recent archeological study of the timber frame attic - along with an analysis of the building and documentary research undertaken in 2014 - brought to light a high quality timber frame construction that adopted carpentry techniques current in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but poorly documented in Berry and the Bourbonnais. Dated by dendrochronology to 1478, the dwelling also gives pride of place to a sculpted decoration in the flamboyant Gothic style, subtly clothing the facades in order to enhance the house in its urban surroundings. The examination of the building also revealed a very rare example of a painted ceiling with joint covers in the region of Central France and the Loire Valley.
The church of Gigny is less well known than that of Baume-les-Messieurs and less well preserved than that of Romainmotier, yet it remains an exceptional milestone for grasping the birth of Romanesque art in the county and duchy of Burgundy. At the end of the Carolingian period, the monastery on the site was sufficiently important that, in 910, it was able to furnish the first monks entrusted with the founding of the abbey of Cluny, under the direction of their abbot, Bernon. The contemporary claustral buildings having disappeared, the monastery is reduced today to its abbey church which owes its originality to its large nave with varied supports and its unusually wide chevet that encompasses the wings of the transept. Deprived of their plaster coating, the internal walls offer traces of several stages of construction which allow a renewed archeological reading of its history. Between 1988 and 2018, geophysical prospections and several archeological soundings of the interior and exterior of the church enabled a study that henceforth situates this homogeneous construction around the year 1000. At this date, Gigny offers precocious advances in vaulting construction in stone. Likewise, several aspects of the ground plan between the sanctuary and the narthex (discovered with prospection radar and soundings) indicate strong new liturgical preoccupations and relations with the great church of Cluny at the end of the tenth century, known only from excavations. During this period, the monastery of Gigny became one of the priories of the Burgundian abbey.
Between 2018 and 2020, a triennially programmed archeological excavation, undertaken in partnership by the Centre des monuments nationaux, the Departement de l'Aisne and the Association de Mise en Valeur du Chateau de Coucy, uncovered impressive vestiges of a ducal kitchen from the early fifteenth century. Begun in 1403, the kitchen was probably barely finished when its patron, the Duke of Orleans, was assassinated in 1407. This discovery allows for a better understanding of the functioning of the kitchens of the elite at the dawn of the Renaissance.
