It will run through the beginning of the Capetian dynasty to nowadays and will focus on everything related to France and its history.
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The edict of Fontainebleau, revocation of the edict of Nantes, 1685.
By the Edict of Fontainebleau, Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes and ordered the destruction of Huguenot churches, as well as the closing of Protestant schools. This policy made official the persecution already enforced since the dragonnades created in 1681 by the king in order to intimidate Huguenots into converting to Catholicism. As a result of the officially sanctioned persecution by the dragoons who were billeted upon prominent Huguenots, a large number of Protestants — estimates range from 210,000 to 900,000 — left France over the next two decades. They sought asylum in England, the United Provinces, Sweden, Switzerland, Brandenburg-Prussia, Denmark, the Habsburg’s Holy Roman Empire, South Africa and North America. They left without money, but took with them many skills. In the host nations they established small businesses and their new ideas revitalised indigenous industries.
Abbaye de Fleury
After the ravages of the Normans, who penetrated via the Loire and burned the monastery buildings, which suffered a catastrophic fire in 1026, this became the great late eleventh-century Romanesque basilica, which occasioned the erection of a great tower, that was intended as the west front of the abbey church, which was completed in 1218. It was here that the Fleury Playbook was compiled, perhaps in dedication to the new church. The tower of Abbot Gauzlin,resting on fifty columns, forms a unique porch. The Carolingian style church is about three hundred feet long, its transept one hundred and forty feet. The choir of the church contains the tomb of a French monarch, Philip I of France, buried there in 1108. Of the mediaeval abbey’s buildings, only this basilica survives in the modern monastery.
COLOMBE Michel, Saint Georges combattant le dragon, vers 1509, Paris, musée du Louvre, © RMN Thierry Ollivier - utilisation soumise à autorisation
Miniature de la Bible Historiale - 1350
The Bible Historiale was the predominant medieval translation of the Bible into French. It translates from the Latin Vulgate significant portions from the Bible accompanied by selections from the Historia Scholastica by Peter Comestor (d. c. 1178), a literal-historical commentary that summarizes and interprets episodes from the historical books of the Bible and situates them chronologically with respect to events from pagan history and mythology.
Miséricorde de stalle : Porc jouant de l’orgue
Beauvais ou Est de la France ( ?), XVe siècle Bois Cl. 22583
A misericord is a small wooden shelf on the underside of stalls used by monks during the office. Sculptors generally described scenes with little religious inspiration and more inspired by the everyday life (here, a porc playing the organ)
Quatrefoil Plaque with Angels, second quarter of 13th century
French (Limoges)
Champlevé enamel, copper
The medieval metalworker’s craft was often closely allied to the draftsman’s art, a relationship that was particularly strong in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In this work, calligraphic metal surfaces float against colorful enameled backgrounds, much as drawing and painting interact in manuscripts. A sketch of a head on the reverse of this piece suggests that artists worked out compositions in a graphic mode before attempting completed designs.
Basilique Notre Dame du Port
The Basilica of Notre-Dame du Port is a Romanesque basilica, formerly a collegiate church, in the Port quarter of Clermont-Ferrand, between Place Delille and the cathedral. From the 10th century to the French Revolution it was served by a community of canons, regular until the 13th century, and thereafter secular.
The basilica is one of the five Romanesque churches in Auvergne known as the “greater” churches (majeures), the others being the church of Saint-Austremoine in Issoire, the Basilica of Notre-Dame of Orcival, the church of Saint-Nectaire, and the church of Saint-Saturnin.
Built of arkose, a sort of sandstone, the building has an almost perfect harmony supposedly resulting from the application of the ratio of the Golden Number.
The church is built on a Latin cross ground plan with a nave of six bays between two low side aisles with simple vaults. There is a transept with a semi-circular chapel on each arm, and a quire surrounded by an ambulatory from which open four radiating chapel, none of them on the main axis, thus forming a chevet, which with its fine mosaics is a notable example of the Romanesque art of Auvergne. The capitals, which are among the finest in Auvergne, principally depict scenes from the Bible, but also some from the Psychomachia of Prudentius.
Basilique Sainte-Thérèse de Lisieux, Calvados, Normandie, France.
The Basilica of St. Thérèse of Lisieux (French: Basilique Sainte-Thérèse de Lisieux) is a Roman Catholic church and minor basilica dedicated to Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. Located in Lisieux, France, the large basilica can accommodate 4,000 people, and, with more than two million visitors a year, is the second largest pilgrimage site in France, after Lourdes.
Eucharistic Dove, ca. 1215–1235
French; Made in Limoges
Gilded copper with champlevé enamel7 1/2 x 8 1/16 in. (19 x 20.5 cm)
Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917 (17.190.344)
Rich with gilding, its overall surface engraved and enameled in a pattern that suggests layers of feathers, this dove would have hung over an altar as an evocation of the Holy Spirit. A tear-shaped door on its back conceals a small cavity once used to hold the bread of the Eucharist. Though many textual sources mention gold and silver doves, suggesting these materials were part of the standard liturgical furnishings for churches and communities that could afford them, few examples survive. On the other hand, doves of Limoges work fashioned from copper and enameled in brilliant colors exist in large numbers.
