SAGOT, Émile

(b. 1805 Dijon, d. 1888 Dijon)

French illustrator, etcher, and architect. He contributed to a number of collections celebrating France’s landscape and monuments. These publications shared abundant praise of the French Middle Ages.

The artist’s earliest training was in Dijon, where he became proficient in drawing, printmaking and architecture. Two areas, illustration and architecture, made for his superior understanding of buildings and their depiction. His graphic works for publication shows a mastery of the new medium of lithography.

His architectural activities included overseeing the restoration of ancient monuments.

Merveille from the south

The Merveille (the marvelous) was built between 1210 and 1228 on Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy. After the conquest of Normandy by the French king Philippe-Auguste, Mont-Saint-Michel was no longer merely an abbey situated in the middle of the Anglo-Norman kingdom. It was now a French outpost on the border with England formed by the Channel. It was rebuilt at the time in an extravagant way.

Storerooms, accommodation for the various guests to the abbey, and a cloister had to be integrated into one building, for which there was really no more space on the steep cliff alongside the church. Therefore strong superstructures were built, which lend a fortress-like appearance to the building. Behind this external view, a series of rooms are hidden away, increasing in elegance from the lower level to the top level.

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The third church at Cluny

The lithograph depicts the east end of the monastery church Saint-Pierre-et-Paul at Cluny (Cluny III) as it might have appeared in the sixteenth century.

This image shows the church in its pre-Revolutionary state before its nearly complete reduction to ruins, necessitating an imaginative reconstruction by the artist.

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The third church at Cluny

This lithograph by �mile Sagot depicting the west fa�ade of the abbey church of Cluny (Cluny III), seen through a double-arched gateway in the precinct wall, appeared in Alexandre du Sommerard’s “Les Arts du Moyen Age” in 1838.

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