Les décors en plâtre de l’antichambre de la duchesse au château de Lunéville. Contexte historique et mise en œuvre

Germain Boffrand (1667–1754) was the architect of the Château de Lunéville for Duke Leopold I, beginning in 1709. He designed a project in the pure spirit of early eighteenth-century French architecture, characterized by plaster decorations applied sparingly. These were crafted to adorn the smooth transitions of ceilings and the overmantels of fireplaces. The château underwent its last major project during the significant renovation campaign between 1719 and 1723, which included the creation of the wings for the ducal apartments. Recent archival research studies conducted by the Regional Inventory Service and the Château de Lunéville Museum provide a fairly comprehensive understanding of the decorations in the antechamber of the toilette of Duchess Élisabeth-Charlotte d’Orléans, executed by the sculptors Jean Vallier and Barthélemy II Mesny. This decoration project offers a remarkable opportunity to study a coherent and emblematic ensemble from ducal Lorraine. The technical study, which included the implementation and observation of the painted surface layers, was carried out in the summer of 2021 by a group formed of the ECMH study office (the project leader) and three restorers (Hélène Dreyfus, Ophélie Grangier and Annabelle Sansalone). This study was part of a broader project aimed at assessing the condition of the plaster decorations in the duchess’s antechamber and securing them.