| It is so beautiful that it is scarcely credible; he found in our beautiful country of France a municipality which had the intelligence, the taste, and especially the courage - for it required real courage - having decorated a new monument, to leave aside the drawing teacher of the college and the architect of the town hall, to ignore honors and ranks, and to address young artists, who are real artists.
The municipality of Marseille has commissioned from Pierre Girieud, Lombard and Laffitte, the decoration of the Faculty of Sciences that it has just built. These decorations, which are worthy of note, will be frescoed on the wall. It is the triumph of this art on the marouflage. We can not be too happy about it. (...) Pierre Girieud, he has put more calm and sobriety in his fresco with the theme Physics and Mathematics.
It is a vast composition of great reliability and a great power of design. Physics and mathematics are represented by allegorical figures occupying the central part of the work between groups, Orpheus and Eurydice, and on the other side Adam and Eve who know nothing. In the right part are the mathematical sciences, mechanics, algebra, cosmography. Man has acquired knowledge. The Tower of Babel rises in the sky, finished. On the other side are the physical sciences represented by characters very happily grouped: electricity, acoustics, optics, hydrostatics are synthesized by familiar scenes that give a great impression of calm and happiness. It is this impression of calm that is the dominant note of this fresco of real grandeur. (....) - Reproduction of the central part of the fresco |