Discover the Digital Reconstructions of the Column Statues of Notre-Dame-en-Vaux

eCorpus Scenes Used as Digital Labels

Positioned at strategic points along the exhibition route, touch tablets allow visitors to access twelve major works from the collection. They take the form of digital labels.

Discreet and compact, these devices let anyone explore in detail the statues before them, highlighting secrets and iconographic anecdotes that a casual audience might otherwise miss.

Complementary to the works they showcase, this format of digital labels offers full autonomy to visitors less inclined towards traditional guided tours. The annotations and articles written by the museum team highlight details and provide comparisons with contemporary sculptures.

In this way, the system improves access to understanding the works, serving both as a guide and a visual aid for educators and tour guides.

Showcasing this sculptural heritage is especially meaningful in the modern history of Châlons-en-Champagne. Severely damaged by revolutionary upheavals, the sculptures of the Notre-Dame-en-Vaux cloister are among the few surviving examples of monumental medieval religious art in the region.

Using a Database to Create Digital Reconstructions

The Pressouyres worked extensively to bring the cloister’s column statues back to life. The effort to reassemble these statues into a recognizable form is remarkable. First unearthed, the pieces were sorted, catalogued, and ultimately reassembled using metaline to restore their original shape.

However, the column statues remain heavily damaged and incomplete. Technological advances now allow, through manipulation of 3D reproductions in a digital space, the development of advanced hypotheses for virtual reconstruction. This system also enables a high rate of iteration in reconstruction hypotheses, as the artist is no longer limited by space or material quantities.

Imagining and digitally reconstructing these masterpieces of medieval art was a challenge overcome by studying the cloister’s sculpture collection in depth, analyzing their iconography, and comparing them to similar medieval works. The close collaboration between museum researchers and 3D graphic artists enabled the complete, hypothetical restoration of the cloister’s fragmentary works, which can be displayed and staged thanks to eCorpus functionalities.

This approach has demonstrated the potential of digital technology in research and heritage enhancement. Far from replacing or counterfeiting the irretrievably lost parts of the works, this process makes it possible to present and iterate reconstruction hypotheses that could ultimately advance scholarship and open new avenues for cultural mediation.

Creating a True Lapidary Puzzle Through a Fragmentation Hypothesis

For archaeologists, reconstructing the column-statues is no simple task. Confronted today with the final result, it is hard to imagine the amount of meticulous work required to reassemble a work whose scattered fragments were often found meters and years apart from each other.

The Pressouyre couple, assisted by enthusiasts of local history, spent more than 10 years systematically excavating the site of the former cloister, taking advantage partly of a public policy of reclaiming these grounds to convert them into a public space, but also by conducting digs in the houses and presbytery buildings, excavating nearly two meters deep below the current ground level to unearth all the buried fragments.

Next began the work of documentation, sorting, inventory, identification, and finally reassembly. The excavation notes from this project, preserved at the INHA, provide a unique perspective on these lengthy digs carried out under conditions that were far from always ideal. These works can be discovered as part of the project Pense: In Search of the Lost Cloister.

In line with the hypotheses of reconstitution by anastylosis, the museum expressed its desire to make this work visible again by presenting some column-statues in fragmentary form, just as they were discovered by the Pressouyre couple, without altering the reassembly carried out by them.

The modeling of the iconic column-statue representing the Wedding at Cana was used as a demonstration. Since the stone fragments are now sealed in metaline, it is currently impossible to know exactly what they look like. Using archival photos and studying the Pressouyre notes were essential in creating this proposed fragmentation. The mesh artificially created has been colored blue to indicate the uncertainty about the true shape of these pieces.

View the eCorpus scene presenting the fragmentation of the Wedding at Cana

Conclusion

The eCorpus user community is growing as innovation increasingly aligns with the needs of museums. More than an enhanced digital collection for research and archiving, it offers relevant solutions for viewing outside the museum and serves as a true in-situ mediation tool.

Providing opportunities for autonomy, these devices complement traditional guided tours and make the museum accessible to a whole new range of visitors.

While the tool has already been adopted by curators, researchers also benefit from its features to further their hypotheses. This system provides a bridge and synergy between research and heritage enhancement in an unprecedented and evolving way.