Saint-Martin des Champs

Not so long ago, a nail was hammered into a church wall and a small piece was chipped off, revealing traces of colour beneath several coats of distemper. We were called upon to made forty or so studies of the different strata that attested to the presence of more or less degraded superposed mural paintings from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The church’s history was resurfacing. These investigations triggered off a restoration campaign. A choice had to be made about which elements were to be restored. The most intact parts were privileged: a funerary strip, coats of arms accompanied by lions, a red ochre slab layout (bonding of imitation stones), crosses of Malta and Saint André…

In parallel, our expertise was requested to restore the church: we supplied a coating made of heavy plaster, oil-based lime and fine sand for the alter before repainting it in celestial blue from traces of colour found on the tabernacle. The church was then restored to its eighteenth century elegance.