Dome of the Church of Saint-Roch

The dome of the Chapel of the Virgin at Saint-Roch church in Paris is the work of Jean-Baptiste Pierre, then first painter of Louis XV. This great composition, which represents the assumption of the Virgin, inaugurated in 1756, was painted with oil on strengthened canvases. At the revolution, the church was abandoned; Water seeped into the roof and stagnated between the inner and outer domes. A belt of about four metres in height was completely degraded.

The dome had already been the subject of two restorations. A first, in 1835, then a second in 1931 by Alfred Basalo, who replaced the missing parts, or about 40% of the surface. His intervention consisted of smooth new paintings  According to a winding path and to recompose the missing figures, what he did in connection with a painting already very dirty.

In 1991, the restaurateur Quentin Arguillère in charge of the restoration of the dome, asked the workshop to develop a protocol for the harmonisation of the ensemble. Cyril de Ricou has devised a specific method for chromatically harmonising the repainted twentieth century which became irreversibly dark and illegible with the lighter original painting of the eighteenth century, while respecting the drawing.

To restore the reading, a succession of three color "wefts" were created after isolating the original pictorial layer, sponged over and worked in: first a first weft based on titanium white pigments, a second in an ochre tone (still worked in), and finally a third reintegration dabbing.