François Lemoyne’s Lady Chapel Restored in Saint-Sulpice
The restoration of the Lady Chapel in Saint-Sulpice (Paris) means that visitors can rediscover interior decoration dating from the 18th century. Its dome is the work of an artist at the peak of his powers, and was his final masterpiece.
In 1730, François Lemoyne (1688-1737) was commissioned to decorate the vault of the Lady Chapel in Saint-Sulpice, an imposing church in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés district of Paris. The choice of this painter was no accident: Lemoyne, famous for his technical skill and fine sense of composition, was seeking to establish his reputation in Parisian artistic circles. Completed in 1732, the Lady Chapel decoration features an Apotheosis of the Virgin in a huge illusionist composition creating the impression that the ceiling opens onto the sky. The fresco covers the entire surface of the dome (373 sq. m./4,014 sq.ft), offering viewers a celestial vision, where the Virgin is received into divine glory by a hundred figures: saints, angels and characters both allegorical and real, including Abbot Jean-Jacques Olier, a major figure at Saint-Sulpice in the 17th century. “The project assigned to Lemoyne aimed to dazzle visitors with a triumphant apotheosis combining monumentality, chromatic brilliance and technical virtuosity,” says Véronique Milande, Chief Heritage Curator in charge of religious and civil artwork conservation for the City of Paris. The work was part of an ambitious decorative program commissioned by Jean-Baptiste Languet de Gergy, the parish priest from 1714 to 1748, who had already brought in the Slodtz brothers to create the sculpted garlands of cherubs with flowers and fruit around the dome. The chapel was further enriched with four paintings by Carle Van Loo on the side walls in 1748.
A Resounding Success
In creating the Apotheosis of the Virgin, Lemoyne adopted a resolutely Baroque approach inherited from the Italian masters. “It was an ambitious attempt to transpose to France the visual language of the illusionist apotheoses that became widespread in 17th century Italy,” says Véronique Milande. The composition is structured by an upward movement, which immediately draws the eye to the radiant center and the Virgin. The dynamic energy of the whole scene is enhanced by the spiral arrangement of the figures, which seem to float in airy space. To achieve this spectacular effect, Lemoyne employed a virtuoso foreshortening technique and skillful play on light and shadow. He used a vibrant palette dominated by deep blues and sparkling golds to brighten the rather dark chapel. The Apotheosis of the Virgin was soon established as one of the painter’s greatest successes, and was admired for both its technical virtuosity and its original iconography. At Saint-Sulpice, Lemoyne sought to rival the greatest European masters. Four years later, in 1736, he was appointed first painter to the king by Louis XV: an honor that marked the peak of his career.
But this triumph was short-lived. Paralyzed by the pressure of his position and exhausted by the scale of the projects assigned to him, the artist took his own life the following year. “In retrospect, the Saint-Sulpice decoration seems like a testamentary work: a final attempt to achieve glory through the sheer immensity of the undertaking,” says Véronique Milande. After that, the chapel fell prey to a series of misfortunes. It was damaged by a fire on the night of March 16-17, 1762, and only restored in 1774. “The architect Charles de Wailly created a second open dome in wood, through which Lemoyne’s painted decoration could be seen,” says the curator. Above the high altar, a niche lit by hidden windows was built to house Jean-Baptiste Pigalle’s Virgin and Child. But another fire broke out a few years later, and the chapel was damaged by water several times after that. A heater exploded in 1858 and a bomb shell fell on the chapel roof in 1870. Over the years, some heavy-handed restoration work was carried out. Some of it even applied “dirt on top of dirt,” as Véronique Milande puts it, which gradually made the fresco unrecognizable. After centuries of vicissitudes, with the last repair work carried out nearly 80 years ago, proper restoration work was desperately needed.
Extraordinary Colors
The situation was grim, with natural deterioration, accumulated soot and dust, oxidized varnish and repainting that had distorted or masked the virtuosity of the decor. Even more worrying, the chapel’s very structure was showing signs of weakness. Cracks had been found in the vault, and some of the stucco sculptures were in danger of coming off. The project launched by the City of Paris in 2022, with support from the Fondation Avenir du Patrimoine à Paris, raised €2.35 M, including €1.5 M from the Pinault family. “This budget made it possible to use cutting-edge technology to make sense of the pictorial layers and reveal hidden details,” said a City of Paris official. Cleaning the fresco was a crucial step. Using a meticulous dust removal protocol and then applying special gels, the 40-odd restorers carefully removed the successive repainted layers and gradually revealed the brilliance of the pigments. Beneath the layers of grime, Lemoyne’s work emerged “with unexpected nuances that restored all the depth of its azure sky and sculptural figures, revealing the intensity of the blues and golds he used,” says one of the restorers, visibly moved. Another challenge involved consolidating the reliefs and gilding. The garlands sculpted by the Slodtz brothers were also renovated, restoring the original visual harmony of the whole. This project not only saved a masterpiece, but also brought little-known aspects of Lemoyne’s technique to light. Digital imaging revealed several reworkings, evidence of the artist’s second thoughts. A few barely sketched figures appear to have been abandoned half-way through the process. Specialists can also appreciate the subtle effects of transparency the painter incorporated into his fresco, particularly in the veils and drapery, reminiscent of Paolo Veronese’s chromatic experiments.
This project not only saved a masterpiece, but also brought little-known aspects of Lemoyne’s technique to light.
Another revelation was the presence of rare pigments, in particular an ultramarine derived from lapis lazuli, confirming the extraordinary resources used for this work. The operation carried out between September 2022 and June 2024 has restored this masterpiece to its former glory, and is now considered a textbook example of religious heritage conservation. Its success highlights the importance of regular work on fragile decorative art, as witness the recent campaigns at the Church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the Royal Chapel of Versailles and Notre-Dame de Paris. And apart from its scientific interest, this project enables viewers to rediscover one of the finest 18th century pictorial ensembles in Paris—and the only known fresco by Lemoyne in France. Véronique Milande concludes: “What we see today is undoubtedly what Lemoyne’s contemporaries discovered in 1732: a lively and vibrant fresco bathed in light.”
Worth seeing
Saint-Sulpice Church, 75006 Paris.
paroissesaintsulpice.paris
