Memory of Stones
Saint-Alain de Lavaur Cathedral
The Saint-Alain de Lavaur cathedral is a southern Gothic style church located in Lavaur in Occitania, and which was built between 1255 and 1300. The building houses a Cavaillé-Coll organ, a polychrome 16th century case and a table Roman altar. A Jacquemart strikes the hours there from the top of the tower.
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The Saint-Alain cathedral is a masterpiece of southern Gothic architecture, whose painted decorations have been restored from 2013. These frescoes made in the 19th century by the Céroni brothers, in trompe-l'oeil, walls in grisailles and vaults with fine Gothic decorations in color, shine with a new brilliance, inviting visitors of all ages to reread them.
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The Chapel of Christ and the Fathers of the Church
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The chapel of the Redemption
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The triumphal arch: decor in grisaille representing Saint Alain surrounded by angels carrying the episcopal attributes (miter and cross), and censers.
Vault on a blue background, with busts of saints in medallions.
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The large Cavaillé-Coll organ was installed in 1876 in a magnificent organ case in polychrome carved wood (1523), a masterpiece of Renaissance art from the South.
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The Céroni masterpiece
To achieve their great project, the fabricators of the Saint-Alain church approach a workshop of Italian artists, itinerant painters who crisscross the South-West, the Céroni. An artist named Céroni (possibly Gaétan), originally from Milan, settled in Toulouse before 1827.
Helped by a cousin and probably other painters, he worked in Aquitaine and Midi-Pyrénées - between 1825 and 1870 - restoring and creating painted decorations for a large number of churches and some individuals. They generally paint with tempera, on a prepared dry plaster.
The decor produced in Lavaur between 1843 and 1847 is undoubtedly the most ambitious and the most successful of this workshop. Despite the absence of the documents relating to the order, the program appears clearly divided into two main registers:
On the walls of the nave, a complex decor of grisailles trompe l'oeil , where large biblical figures emerge, on either side of the bays. In addition to the large canopies of the figures, trompe l'oeil redraw the arches and windows, and create a false level of openwork galleries, particularly spectacular at the height of the triumphal arch of the choir. This new decor superimposes on the refined architecture of the nave a more flamboyant and indented party, which more evokes the late Gothic.
The color is reserved only for the vaults and repercussions of the pilasters . In the vaults of the nave and the choir, the spirit is in the flamboyant Gothic, become baroque by its complexity! On a blue background, multiple trompe l'oeil cutouts enclose polylobed medallions where holy figures stand out against brown backgrounds. The ribs and formets are highlighted with fine geometric decorations in warm tones. For the double arches, the decoration of which continues on the pilasters, the artists have reserved a decoration of the Renaissance spirit, made of arabesques and friezes, embellished with a few figures and cartouches.
Heterogeneous, sometimes anachronistic, this monumental painted decoration is a unique masterpiece from the first half of the 19th century in the Midi-Pyrénées.
The Céroni limited their intervention to the walls and vaults of the nave, the choir and the apse. Perhaps they intervened in some chapels, but most seem to be the work of later decorators. Their site was spread over several years, requiring the intervention of several trades, for the realization of the new coating and scaffolding.
The decoration clearly shows several "hands", the treatment of the figures being generally left to a "specialist" in the workshop.
In their "Study on the Church of Lavaur and its Bishops", Héliodore d'Heilhes and Father Cazes report that the two Italian cousins were helped by a young Toulouse named Ricard, who was to become the famous Father Bach of the Company. of Jesus.
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