Église paroissiale Saint-André (anciennement église Notre-Dame)

English translation

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History

The parish church of Saint-André at Villaines-les-Rochers, in the canton of Azay-le-Rideau (Indre-et-Loire) is a singular building in two respects. It offers the remarkable particularity of being composed of two interlocking buildings, one medieval, the other from the 19th century. In 1859, the diocesan architect Gustave Guérin was the master of works for the enlargement of the church, desired by the parish priest, the abbé Chicoisne. For reasons of economy, but also because of the age of this priory dependent on the abbey of Cormery, a nave extended by a choir, of neo-Romanesque style, were erected perpendicularly to the vessel of the Romanesque church, in the north-south direction, such that the preserved parts of it (nave, choir and apse) formed the transept of the new church. On the other hand, the design of the painted decoration, preferred to sculptured decoration, was entrusted to Louis-Marie-Charles de Bodin, comte de Galembert, an erudite archaeologist, ardent defender of the medieval heritage of Touraine and founder of the Société de Saint-Grégoire, a small confraternity whose vocation was to contribute to the renewal of faith by decorating religious buildings with mural paintings. One of the technical originalities of this society was the use of potassium silicate mixed with colour. The church of Villaines was to be for the comte de Galembert a model church; it was to be at the same time a good practical example of a complete system of inexpensive decoration and to constitute the ground for experimentation of his new process. The decoration, begun in 1859, was carried out in sections and completed in 1870. The false vault and the ornamental motifs on the walls were executed immediately, but empty frames were reserved for figures or historical scenes. The compositions whose subjects had been decided in advance so as not to compromise the unity of the work, were only realized as donations came in. Stained glass from the Lobin manufactory, at Tours, accompanied the decoration. Galembert's didactic and pedagogical programme, a true picture catechism, is part of the movement of doctrinal restoration which, under the pontificate of Pius IX, reaffirms the essential beliefs of the Catholic church. Representative of Christian optimism, a movement running counter to the current in these years of the 1860s, Galembert expresses in particular the faith in a Christ source of life. By the simplicity of the composition, the sobriety, the restraint of the gestures of the characters reduced in number, the equality of light, the attenuation of modelling, the accentuation of outlines, the range of clear and soft tints, treated as flat areas, by the application of a new process and the choice of a decoration that respects the architecture, the Nazarene paintings of the comte de Galembert participate in the renewal of monumental painting. Among about a dozen works by the comte de Galembert in the Centre region, the paintings of the church of Villaines-les-Rochers and the church of Saint-Rémy at Auneau (Eure-et-Loir), are the two most significant: on the one hand, he was able to conceive a complete programme, on the other hand, he himself considered them his most important paintings. At Rivière (Indre-et-Loire), the comte de Galembert restored the medieval paintings and completed the decoration.