The chapel
A French heritage monument
Pablo Picasso, aware of the profound symbolism of the site and seduced by the rigorous proportions of the austere building, chose to install La Guerre et la Paix in the chapel of the Château de Vallauris, in 1959.
The artist's choice was part of a movement of rediscovery of sacred art, which experienced a veritable craze in the 1950s: Matisse completed the decoration of the Chapelle du Rosaire in Vence; Chagall, along with Bonnard, Léger and Germaine Richier took part in the decoration of the Plateau d'Assy church, Notre-Dame-de-Toute-Grâce. At the same time, Marc Chagall begins work on his monumental Message Biblique, which he first destines for another chapel in Vence before donating it to the State, the future collection of the national museum in Nice.
The ancient edifice helps to give La Guerre et la Paix, with its obvious references to ancient art, even rock art, a sacred and universal anchorage. "It's not very bright in this chapel," Pablo Picasso tells Claude Roy, "and I'd like it not to be lit, for visitors to have candles in their hands, to walk along the walls like in prehistoric caves, discovering the figures, for the light to move over what I've painted, a little candlelight."
The Vallauris chapel had been sold, along with the abbey house, as national property in 1791 to J. Maurel and acquired by the town in 1972. It was never returned to worship, and was used for a time as an oil mill.The chapel, along with the former Vallauris chateau priory, has been classified as a Historic Monument since 1951.
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A historical testimony
Luc Thévenon, former curator of the Musée Masséna in Nice, presents the building that now houses Picasso's La Guerre et la Paix:
"Aldebert, bishop of Antibes and co-lord of this place with his older brother Guillaume Ganceran, ceded his fiefdom of Vallauris to the monastery of Lérins by deed dated December 9, 1038. This estate was augmented by possessions ceded in 1046 by Pierre Signier and his son Guillaume when they took the habit at Lérins.
The donations were initially contested by Aldebert's successors, notably Foulques de Grasse, who occupied them to such an extent that Pope Honorius II had to threaten him with excommunication in 1124 to obtain a retrocession in 1131. The Counts of Provence confirmed the rights of Lérins Abbey several times in the 12th century. In 1227, the father abbot authorized Dame Aiceline to found a small community of women using certain buildings, the location of which remains highly controversial. During the 12th century, the abbey built a castel and chapel for the residence of the prior, lord delegate of the fiefdom, assisted by at least two monks, imposed by the statutes of 1353. While the chapel has been preserved, the present château is a reconstruction dating from 1568, with a listed Renaissance staircase.
The chapel is a single-nave building, its elevations giving it an unusual monumentality. Two bays covered with a broken barrel vault articulate to a cul-de-four apse via a wide pointed arch. The walls are of medium thickness, stereometrically accurate, but with visible traces of mortar. On the outside, the stonework includes elements of various geological types: grey, pink and ochre rubble, which adds a great deal of charm to the building. A simple square entablature runs along the wall-arch boundary, with no return on pilasters. The bays, two opposite each other in each bay, are either framed by tightly-fitting keystones (on the south side), or topped by a monolithic lintel with an arched recess, using a much more crude technique. The very high apse features a large, more regular unit of perfect stereotomy. Most of it is visible from inside the château (basement room and second floor with axial window), and is supported by a high plinth resting on a bed of rough blocks.
No date is given for the consecration There's no precise date for the chapel's consecration: it may have been built after the mid-12th century, then remodeled or restored in the early 13th century, to which date the beautiful apse and south bays are linked. The south portal, with its four neat but purely geometric brackets, should be attributed to this restoration.
The church of Sainte-Anne de Vallauris is part of an important group of buildings in eastern Provence. It is very close to Sainte-Anne du Suquet and the chapter house of Saint-Honorat, two other Lérinian buildings. More broadly, it should be seen as part of a wide-ranging renovation movement, the last impetus of Romanesque art in this region, to which the church of Saint-Cézaire and, in the mountain environment, the churches of Girs, Gréolières-Hautes and Coursegoules, in particular, bear witness, albeit a decade or two earlier or later."