Église Saint-Martin de Vic
Romanesque frescoes saved by George Sand
Twelfth-century wall paintings in a small country church, a few hundred metres from Nohant. Free entry. They owe their survival to George Sand.
The frescoes were painted after the church was attached to the abbey of Déols, between 1092 and 1099. Scenes from the Old and New Testaments, the childhood of Christ above all, in a composition that looks disordered and is not.
Four pigments, not one more: charcoal black, lime white, red ochre, yellow ochre. That was all it took.
They had vanished under plaster. In 1849, the new parish priest had the layers stripped away. George Sand, the lady of the neighbouring château, understood what she was looking at. She had her son Maurice, a pupil of Delacroix, make drawn surveys, and took them herself to the architect Lassus, a specialist in the medieval period. Mérimée, the inspector of historic monuments, took up the cause and secured an initial grant of six thousand francs.
Without her, they would probably have disappeared under whitewash again.
Transferred onto canvas in 1929, restored from 1987 to 1991. Since 2025, digital displays explain the scenes. Open all year round, free entry.