Suite of five ceiling panels in resinous wood... Lot 18

Suite of five ceiling panels in resinous wood painted in tempera, closoirs, representing for three of them human or animal heads, two by two, a greyhound with a hat and a woman's head, a gentleman wearing a hood with a canine face and a caricatured monk with a dog's head, a character with a simian face wearing a cane and looking at a moustachioed Moor, and for the other two, a winged chimeric creature with a bearded man's head and a bear. Southern France, Roussillon ?, circa 1400 Heights: 17,4 to 19,7 cm - Lengths: 32,3 to 39,5 cm (accidents and restorations) In the south of France, mainly in Languedoc and Roussillon, painted ceilings composed of historiated panels, called closoirs, were placed between the joists, along the walls or the main beams. Reserved for palaces, noble houses and sometimes churches, these closoirs are decorated with a wide variety of themes, animals, busts, coats of arms, foliage ... They can also be "funny" like the marginalia of medieval manuscripts, populated with a whole imaginary and fanciful world, often humorous and satirical. Works consulted: M. Bourin, M. Pérez-Simon and G. Puchal under the direction of, De l'Aragon au Frioul: esquisse d'une géographie des plafonds peints médiévaux, Actes des rencontres RCPPM (Lagrasse, octobre 2015), Editions de la Sorbone, Paris, 2021 (online) L. Ceccantini and D. Grenet, Margins and marginalia, from the Middle Ages to today, Des plafonds à drôleries ? Analyse des plafonds peint médiévaux à la lumière des marges des manuscrits, Ecole nationale des Chartres, Cahiers Jean-Mabillon, Paris, 2016 (online).