SECANDA paper models for downloading

About...

St-Étienne Chapel of Guer is one of the oldest chapels in Brittany and, despite its simplicity and rusticity, is architecturally also one of the most interesting.

This chapel was part of a very modest priory that left few traces in History and very few old documents talk about it. Abandoned after the French Revolution, the chapel was used as a barn until the archaeologists noticed this humble building that, seen from afar, nothing distinguishes from a former farm building.

The chevet of the chapel is an exceptional work using bricks to create rows of triangular recesses in the wall. The bricks are very present in the masonry of the chapel, either as regular layers or scattered here and there. All these ancient bricks are reused antique bricks from a nearby Gallo-Roman site.

This chapel is difficult to date because its oldest parts combine archaic characters evoking the Carolingian art to more recent characters evoking the beginnings of the Romanesque art. The opinions of various authors are quite disparate, some seeing it as a Carolingian, even Merovingian, building and some other as a primitive Romanesque building of around the year 1000 or just before. Note that the west was extended at an unclear date and the large bays are late additions of the 17th century.

St- Étienne Chapel is listed in the Monuments Historiques (Historical French Heritage) since 1971.

License: common law (copyright) | Author: Secanda

Free use for private purposes. Any commercial use is prohibited.

Categories: Churches, Chapels and Abbeys | Middle Ages s.l. | Early Middle Ages | High Middle Ages | France | France /Brittany |