View Of Dijon—saint-bénigne Cathedral And The Castle Ruins—hst By Marie Godefroy

View of Dijon—Saint-Bénigne Cathedral & the castle ruins—HST by Marie Godefroy


Oil on canvas depicting a view of Dijon taken from the old moats, at the foot of the castle ruins. In the foreground stands a vast ruined tower, its stonework gouged out and overgrown with ivy and brush, towering over the wastelands and gardens below; a path guides the eye toward the city. In the middle ground lies a suburb of stone houses topped with tiles, dotted with still-bare trees where a few spring blossoms are beginning to appear. In the background lies the silhouette of Dijon, dominated by the tall, openwork spire of Saint-Bénigne Cathedral, flanked by the two towers of its façade with hipped roofs; on the left, a second spire is visible.

The wide-open sky occupies nearly half the composition: light clouds and the soft light of late winter lend the scene a peaceful and delicately atmospheric feel, in the tradition of the Romantic cityscape.

The motif is characteristic of Dijon’s iconography from the mid- to late 19th century: the ruins of Dijon Castle, foremost among them the Guillaume Tower, inspired painters of the local school, such as Pierre-Alexandre Jeanniot (1826–1892), director of the École des Beaux-Arts in Dijon, several of whose views of the castle are preserved at the city’s Musée des Beaux-Arts.

The presence of the former spire of Saint-Bénigne Cathedral provides a valuable dating reference: built in 1742, it was demolished in 1885 before being replaced by the current Neo-Gothic spire designed by Charles Suisse, which was inaugurated in 1896. Our painting, which still depicts the old spire, must therefore predate 1885.

The work bears a signature in the lower left corner that reads Marie Godefroy. It cannot be linked to the portrait painter Marie-Éléonore Godefroid (1778–1849), whose documented work is exclusively devoted to portraiture; it is most likely a namesake, an artist active in the third quarter of the 19th century, presumably of Burgundian regional origin.

43x65cm without modern frame