Marcia Kupfer

The Lost Mappamundi at Chalivoy-Milon

One of the most extensive ensembles of twelfth-century mural painting still extant in France has recently been reconstituted in the Church of SaintSilvain at Chalivoy-Milon (Cher), a small village located about forty kilometers southwest of Bourges. During the late 1970s and 1980s, conservation work carried out under the auspices of Monuments Historiques recovered the entire chevet program (Figs. 1-2), a portion of which was first discovered in February 1868.1 The stunning exposure of a complex, predominantly Christological cycle at Chalivoy-Milon sparked my interest in nineteenth-century reports of painted decoration once visible in the nave. That lost painting is the focus of the present study.2