Problèmes de présentation esthétique des peintures murales du XVIe siècle de l'oratoire du château La Roque à Meyrals (Dordogne)

The walls and vaults are covered in paintings over a surface of approximately 90 m². The decor is laid upon a chalk polish applied onto a chalk and sand coating on the masonry. A virtually complete black preliminary drawing lies between the coating and the pictorial layer. One of the specific forms of deterioration in these paintings is the progressive destruction of the pictorial layer directly above the lines of the preliminary drawing which ultimately disappear, leaving only a white imprint showing the juxtaposition of the polychrome layer and the preliminary drawing. In some places these two almost superimposed images appeared in harmony with one another, but elsewhere abrasions led to extensive confusion in the work of art's legibility. Juxtaposed surfaces of different stata are thus visible in a relatively small and restricted space, producing new chromatic realationships and antagonisms between the pallet of colours and the graphic strokes. Pictorial restoration should allow an aesthetic, iconographic and stratigraphic reading of the decor without betraying the originality of its ageing process, but this choice should not conceal the fact that the present concomitant vision of the preliminary drawing and the pictorial layer belongs to two distinct moments in the creation of this work of art.