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Origin and history

The Madeleine Chapel, located in Saint-Émilion, New Aquitaine, is a rectangular religious building 10 metres long by 4 metres wide, built in the late 12th or 13th century. It stands on a limestone eminence south of the medieval village, within the wine estate of Ausone Castle. Its location, on the edge of a plateau overlooking the valley, has been partially eroded by the exploitation of stone quarries, pushing the rocky escarpment back to its bedside. The present chapel, of modest dimensions, was erected on a pre-existing cemetery, its masonries overlapping some medieval burials.

The chapel replaced a first building, identified in 1859 by Léo Drouyn, whose only five bases of Romanesque columns were engaged in a wall. This former building, 21 metres long (including 13 for the nave), had a nine-sided polygonal apse and a square axial chapel, typical of the girondine churches of the 12th century. A medieval grave with a cephalic lodge, carved in the rock, was attached to the outside of the bedside. This building partially disappeared before 2006 due to rock mining and subsequent construction. It could correspond to a Sainte-Marie-Madeleine church mentioned in 1110 among the possessions of the collegiate church of Saint-Émilion.

The present chapel, attributed at the end of the 12th century, retains a 14th century painted decoration in relatively good condition: a false apparatus and vegetal or geometric friezes adorn its walls. Under its bedside, an underground rotunda, partially collapsed, houses an exceptional 14th century painted decoration representing the Last Judgment. This iconographic program, divided into two parts by a red tree, contrasts the heavenly Jerusalem (on the right) and the damnation of souls (on the left), with elect in white robes guided by angels to a fortified city, while damned ones are dragged to the mouth of Leviathan by scratched devils. The Coronation of the Virgin by Christ, rare for this time, occupies a central place there.

The rotunda, dug in a natural cavity, was originally a vaulted dome room, illuminated by a zenithal opening. In the 16th century, its access was modified by the construction of large-scale walls, linked to the opening of a quarry under the chapel. Part of the paintings, damaged by erosion and later developments, were painted at that time. The style of the frescoes reveals the intervention of two distinct artists: the one, skilled in the representation of bodies and architectures (despite approximate perspectives), inspired by the English miniatures of the thirteenth century; The other, less technical, uses more abundant colors and less harmonious proportions.

The chapel, sold as a national property in 1791, was a place of Protestant worship in the sixteenth century and could have served as a parish church in the fourteenth century. It is surrounded by a medieval cemetery whose graves remain dug in the rock near the bedside. The originality of its decoration lies in the joint representation of the triumph of the Church (symbolized by the crowned Virgin) and the heavenly Jerusalem, a complex iconography for a monument of this size. The chapel has been listed as historical monuments since July 12, 1965.

The rotunda paintings, executed on a white preparation applied to the irregular rock, use vivid pigments (red, golden yellow, black) and black features to highlight the details. Among the remarkable figures, Saint James, represented as a pilgrim near the gate of the City, embodies the guide of the deceased to the Hereafter, evoking the sacrament of the extreme anointing. The absence of St Peter, traditionally carrying the keys to Paradise, and the secondary place of St Michael (generally associated with the weighing of souls) distinguish this composition from the classical representations of the Last Judgment.

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