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Peindre à Genève au XVIe siècle

directed by Frédéric Elsig and Nicolas Schätti

In 1901, the room of the Conseil d’Etat (State Council) in the town hall of Geneva was restored. The wood work and the tapestries were taken down and specialists discovered in awe paintings that had been hidden for two centuries. Judges with their hands cut off, surrounded by David and Salomon, and a series of major personalities, mixing heroes from Ancient times such as Aristotle and Virgil and more modern paladins such as Alain de Lille, the theologian of the XIIth century, or Gautier de Châtillon, the poet from the same period. A new restoration campaign, carrie dout in 2011, allowed specialists to study the technique, the iconography and the symbolic of these two different cycles in depth. This book retraces the whole itinerary giving the details for example of the six coats Hugues Boulard used in 1501 (plaster, yellow background, pigment, polish, white, glaze). Were these frescoes or dry paint? Was César Giglio the author of the second campaign, towards 1601, and who would have paid him ten ducats? What part did Léon Gaud, the restorer in 1901 really play? These essays bring up as many questions as they solve, which is always excellent to stimulate research…


Peindre à Genève au XVIe siècle directed by Frédéric Elsig and Nicolas Schätti, Georg editor, 2012, 172 p., €25

Peindre à Genève au XVIe siècle - directed by Frédéric Elsig and Nicolas Schätti


Review published in the newsletter #277 - from 1 November 2012 to 7 November 2012

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