A publication on works in Touraine churches

11/11/24 - Publication and heritage - The Images du Patrimoine collection frequently publishes remarkable books on French regional heritage, in particular on works preserved in churches, a subject of particular interest to us since we have been devoting a database to it for many years.
A new book has just been published entitled "L’art dans les églises. Le mobilier religieux en Pays Loire Touraine". Covering a total of 55 communes, and making an inevitably arbitrary choice from the 6,500 or so objects listed in some sixty buildings, it has the advantage of showing, with good photographs, objects that have hitherto been little or not at all published. While it makes you want to explore these villages and their churches (hoping to find them open, which, alas, is not always the case), it nevertheless remains by necessity very incomplete. The choice of works, which seeks to cover all techniques from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century, is all the more limited, and it is undoubtedly regrettable that some objects relating more to folk art than to Fine Art are reproduced when so many other surely more important works remain ignored. Unfortunately, consulting the Inventory’s databases, which are so complex to use that they are almost unusable, does not make up for this drawback. It is also regrettable that the techniques used are not specified: we do not know, for example, whether certain paintings are on canvas or panel.

Among the noteworthy works reproduced here, particularly the sculptures and goldsmith’s and silversmith’s work, we would highlight two paintings of undeniable quality that certainly deserve to be better known. Both are anonymous for the moment, but perhaps a reproduction here will, by making them more widely known, encourage our readers to make suggestions as to their attribution. It does not appear that the first was submitted to specialists before the book was published, or else they did not respond. As for the second, although it is published…