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Hidden 13th c. murals of Angers Cathedral documented for the 1st time
A series 13th century wall paintings covering seven bays in the apse of Angers Cathedral that have been hidden behind Baroque wooden choir stalls since the 18th century have been documented and photographed for the first time. A team of researchers and conservators from the University of Cambridge’s Hamilton Kerr Institute dedicated years to taking more than 8,000 pictures of the murals and then more years painstakingly stitching them together digitally to create the first complete full-color images of the Gothic masterpieces.
The murals were rediscovered by conservators during work on the bays of the cathedral’s apse in 1980. They had been whitewashes after a fire in 1451, which ironically preserved them from being damaged by the burst of Huguenot iconoclasm which destroyed many other French Gothic painting cycles in 1562. Additional whitewash layers were added in the 18th century and new high choir stalls, known as a boiserie, were added with their dark woodwork extending ten feet up the wall.
In 1984, conservators began removing the whitewash, a challenging process that took a decade to complete because of the restricted space they had to work in — a gap a few feet wide between the back of the wood paneling and the 13th century wall. The conservation uncovered Gothic oil paintings in rich pigments of vermilion, copper green, azurite and lead white. The vibrancy of the colors and the exceptional design quality classify them among the very best, if not THE best murals of their kind from the second half of the 13th century in France.
The murals depict scenes from the life of St. Maurille, the 5th century bishop of Angers whose relics were kept in a shrine dedicated to him in Angers Cathedral’s high altar. According to a 9th century hagiography, after Maurille tried and failed to raise a boy from the dead, he was so ashamed he ran away to Britain, throwing the keys to the cathedral into the ocean. There he sought redemption by doing penance as the king’s humble gardener. For seven years he manually labored while the Angevins looked for him to bring him back home. They finally tracked him down and he returned to France. A fish that had conveniently swallowed the keys was caught on the voyage so Maurille got the cathedral keys back too.
He then tried again to raise the boy from the dead and the second time was the charm. The boy lived again and grew up to become St. René. René’s shrine was under the apse of the cathedral where the murals were painted, and the murals on bays 3-7 are all scenes from this story. Bays 1 and 2 focus on his early life, starting with Maurille’s ordination by St. Martin of Tours in bay 1 and then his first miracle, calling down a fire from heaven to destroy a pagan temple, in bay 2.
None of this has been visible to the public since the 15th century, and the whole picture wasn’t visible the naked eye period because of the incredibly awkward positioning. Photography is even more complicated than eyeballing, because it requires lighting and lenses and angling to be captured.
The location of the paintings renders most of the ideal conditions impossible. As previously mentioned, the paintings are accessed via a narrow gangway with irregular flooring. Due to their size, adequate access to all areas of all paintings is impossible, therefore keeping the camera level and square to the surface was difficult. A regular even pattern of capture is also a problem in changing positions, as is maintaining a constant working distance at all times. This results in varying magnification between shots. For a photograph to cover all areas means that the camera has to be tilted to include some of the areas, thus creating a degree of parallax within some of the images to be stitched. This also means that the distance from the surface, and hence the degree of magnification of the images, varies.
The limited access also compromised the choice of lens. While a long focal length would have been ideal, there was not adequate space available to get far enough back to use one. It was therefore necessary to take a larger number of smaller images while trying to keep magnification consistent. The painted walls curve with a narrow gangway, so it was important to keep the lights reasonably close to the area being photographed. To move the lights too far away risked creating a ‘raking light’ effect which could hamper the stitching. We deliberately used lighting that was battery powered to remove the risk of trailing cables from a potentially already hazardous situation.
Stitching the images could not be achieved automatically, as in some areas the distortions created by the difficulty of the photography were too great for the software (Adobe Photoshop) to cope. Instead, the images were manually stitched, meaning that these images should be regarded as photographic reconstructions rather than accurate, measured photographic records of the paintings. Nonetheless, they allow study of the style, technique and iconography of the originals in a way that has never before been possible.
Read all about these extraordinary paintings and the extraordinary research that revealed them to the world in the Hamilton Kerr Institute Bulletin 10.
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