Colorful cathedral wall paintings—hidden for over 500 years in Angers, France—have been digitally restored and made visible for the first time, thanks to a decade-long effort by researchers at the Hamilton Kerr Institute.
Years-Long Research Project Reveals “Sensational” Medieval Wall Paintings
A team of researchers and conservators from the Hamilton Kerr Institute worked for a decade to digitize the medieval wall paintings at France’s Angers Cathedral, which have been hidden behind wood paneling for centuries. They recently revealed the first-ever full-color image of the cathedral’s medieval wall paintings. It took the U.K.-based research team several years to take over 8,000 individual photographs of the cathedral’s painted walls, which are obscured by irremovable paneling that forms the choir stalls. The photographs were then painstakingly stitched together into a final image—a process that itself also took years.
Medieval historian and Oxford tutor Emily Guerry described the medieval wall paintings as “absolutely sensational, but trying to photograph them, spending days inching along a narrow space through dust and dead pigeons, trying to get the light and the camera angle identical for every shot, was a nightmare.”
Medieval Wall Paintings Created by Two Groups
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Sign up to our Free Weekly NewsletterDating back to the late 13th century, the medieval wall paintings in Angers Cathedral depict the life and miracles of Saint Maurille, the fifth-century bishop of Angers for whom the cathedral is named. According to legend, Saint Maurille tried and failed to raise a child from the dead. As a result, he fled to England and worked for the king as a gardener. Saint Maurille later discovered the child was miraculously alive, so he returned to the site of Angers Cathedral to bless the child, who became Saint René.
The research team concluded that two groups of 13th-century oil painters created the medieval wall paintings in Angers Cathedral. They also noted fascinating similarities between the young king in the banquet painting and the portrait sculpture of Henry III in London‘s Westminster Abbey—indicating cross-channel communication between painters in Angers and those in the court of the English king. In fact, the Angers Cathedral wall paintings may have been commissioned by Isabella la Blanche, half-sister of Henry III, or her son Maurice.
The History of Angers Cathedral’s Art
Angers Cathedral, the seat of the Bishops of Angers, was built between the 11th and 16th centuries. The cathedral combines Romanesque, Gothic, and Baroque elements. The medieval wall paintings were commissioned and completed in the late 13th century. Following a fire at Angers Cathedral in the 15th century, the paintings were whitewashed over, which shielded them from damage in the wake of Protestant Reformation iconoclasm. By the 16th century, the paintings were covered by the wood paneling of the choir stalls, which protected them during the French Revolution.
The medieval wall paintings were rediscovered in 1980 when a priest at Angers Cathedral went looking for storage space. French experts researched and restored the paintings, documenting them with a limited series of black-and-white photos. This year, the new full-color images created by the Hamilton Kerr Institute showcase the paintings in their entirety for the first time in 500 years.
