Les peintures murales de l’église de Gimel. Éléments d’analyse

Abstract

An analysis of the wall paintings in the church at Gimel, by Claudine Delcroix-Landry Several paintings in the chevet of the church of Saint-Pardoux at Gimel-les-Cascades (Corrèze) had been hidden since the eighteenth century by a retable and have recently been made visible. The church, the seat of an important deanery, was part of the diocese of Limoges before being attached to that of Tulle in 1822. The stratigraphy of this painted decoration is highly complex. The restoration undertaken in 2006-2007 benefitted the best preserved paintings, a Saint Anthony and a Trinity on the left of the bay, an Annunciation and a military saint on the right. The Saint Anthony, recognizable by the traditional attributes, is a devotional image comparable to so many others from the end of the Middle Ages ; the Trinity is a Trône de Grâce which may date from the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century. As for the Annunciation, it follows a model that circulated widely in Parisian books of hours at the end of the fifteenth century.