Les peintures de la cathédrale Saint-Pierre de Nantes

Devastated during the French Revolution, the old Romanesque cathedral of Nantes was rebuilt during the period of the Restoration from 1815 to 1830. Its furnishings, like its decoration, was entirely renewed. Very few paintings dating from earlier than the nineteenth century survive, although, amongst these rare early survivors, the highly mannerist Remise des clefs à saint Pierre (Giving the keys to Saint Peter) by Charles Errard the elder, formerly at the main altar, shows what painting was like at Nantes at the beginning of the seventeenth century (1619). The painting of Saint John the Baptist by François Lemoyne offers a more conventional example of religious art at the beginning of the Rocaille period (1715). As for the collection of nineteenth-century paintings, it is characterized by the names of the leading Parisian painters of the Romantic period, such as Jean-Baptiste Mauzaisse, Hippolyte Flandrin, Jean-Baptiste-François Désoria, Auguste Van den Berghe and Étienne-Barthélémy Garnier. Eugène Delacroix, however, is remarkable for his absence! But the bishops and wardens of the cathedral were also anxious to commission works from local Nantes and Breton painters such as Vincent Vidal, Édouard Jolin, Joachim Sotta or Jules-Élie Delaunay. The Saint-Pierre de Nantes cathedral, like other places of worship in Paris or in other major cities, has become a fundamental place for studying, understanding and appreciating the religious painting of the nineteenth century