Contribution de Gabriel Millet à l'étude de l'art Serbe

Abstract

En 1906, Gabriel Millet arrive pour la première fois en Serbie. Pendant ce voyage il a été accompagné par Vladimir R. Petković, jeune historien de l’art serbe et conservateur du Musée National de Belgrade et par Petar Popović, l’architecte au près du Ministère de la Construction. Suite aux résultats de ses recherches, une étude très précieuse est écrite « L’ancien art serbe » (Paris de Brocard 1919), où Millet a exposé la périodisation stylistique de l'architecture médiévale serbe, qui est toujours d'actualité. Entre 1924 et 1935, Gabriel Millet visite encore à cinq reprises les monuments de Serbie, de Macédoine (Vielle Serbie) et du Monténégro. Les photographies prises in situ - 40 sites différents - viennent compléter la riche collection de clichés qu’il avait constituée à l’Ecole des Hautes études. Une partie des clichés pris lors de ses visites est publiée dans quatre albums [La Peinture du Moyen Âge en Yougoslavie (Serbie, Ma¬cédoine et Monténégro), I-IV, Paris 1954-1969]. Pendant les voyages en Serbie, Millet était accompagné par des chercheurs serbes avec qui il a continué la collaboration après son retour à Paris, comme en témoigne la correspondance conservée. Par 'exemple, l’architecte Djurdje Boskovic a été invité par Millet à donner une série de cours en Ecole pratique des hautes Etudes en 1936. Également, au cours de l’année scolaire 1914/1915 et 1916/1917 Millet a donné des conférences consacrées à l'architecture et l'art serbe médiéval. D'après le rapport annuel, Millet, qui est familier avec la langue serbe, a analysé avec ces étudiants la littérature qui avait été publié en Serbie. La conférence de Millet était un lieu de rassemblement pour les historiens de l'art, les historiens et les architectes de Serbie. Après le retour dans son patrie ils ont contribué à l’expansion de la connaissance du patrimoine serbe médiéval, ainsi que à la diffusion de méthodologies scientifiques de Millet.

Contribution of Gabriel Millet to the Study of Serbian Art

During his rich and fruitful career of a field scientist and an academic Gabriel Millet turned to be one of the pioneer researchers of Serbian medieval art. During his first visit to Serbia in 1906 in one month time Millet researched numerous churches and monasteries. This filed trip produced two significant outcomes - he was the one who called the attention of the wider scientific community to the richness of the medieval monuments of Serbia and Macedonia while creating strong ties with Serbian culture and his Serbian contemporary fellow researchers. The results of that field trip contributed to Millet's PhD thesis Recherches sur l’Iconographie de l’Evangile (1916). Millet’s first observations related to Serbian medieval art were published in 1917 in a special wartime edition of the Parisian periodical L’art et les artistes, and entitled La Serbie Glorieuse. In his text L’ancien art serbe Millet gave an overview of Serbian medieval art. Two years later Millet published his most significant work related to Serbia. It was a synthesis of Serbian medieval architecture: L’ancien art serbe (1919) He classified monuments constructed from the last quarter of the 12th to the first half of 15th c. into three periods i.e. three schools naming them: “the Raška School”, “the School of Byzantinized Serbia” and “The Morava School”, individualizing the origins and characteristics of each school and period and establishing the stylistic classification of Serbian medieval architecture still valid today. Between 1924 and 1935 Millet had visited and studied monuments in Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro in five more occasions, always accompanied by his wife Sophie Millet, who was in charge of making aquarelles and drawings of frescos. Those study visits enriched the knowledge and results collected in previously published research, resulting in two significant studies Études sur les églises de Rascie (1930) and Cozia et les églises serbes de la Morava (1933). Photographs taken on more than 40 sites during these study trips have significantly contributed to Christian and Byzantine Collection, founded by Millet in 1903 in the École pratique des hautes études. One part of these photographs was posthumously published in four albums La Peinture du Moyen Âge en Yougoslavie: Serbie, Ma¬cédoine et Monténégro (1954-1969). Dominique Couson edited Catalogue des documents photographiques originaux du fonds Gabriel Millet (1986) which is devoted to the missions in Yougoslavia. Serbian medieval art and architecture have often been the topic of the courses Millet gave at his Chair for Christian Archaeology and Byzantine Christianity at the Department of Religious Studies at École pratique des hautes études. Serbian architecture was the topic of his lectures in 1914/1915 and 1916/1917, while he was intensively working on his related researches. It is known that Millet could read some Serbian which enabled him to follow literature published in that language and analyze it with his students. In 1920 Gabriel Millet was elected for an honorary member of Serbian Royal Academy, while in 1935 he was granted a title of doctor honoris causa by the University of Belgrade. During his study trips around Serbia Millet was accompanied by Serbian researchers, art historians and architects, with whom he continued to cooperate after his return to Paris. Their correspondence, as well as numerous drawings and church floor plans drawn by various Serbian architects are the proof of that cooperation. The especially productive cooperation was the one between maître and Djurdje Bošković, architect, who, in Spring 1936, gave a cycle of lectures on Serbian medieval architecture at the École pratique des hautes études. Millet’s cabinet in Paris became a meeting point of Serbian historians of art, historians, architects and painters who, upon their return to Serbia, made a significant contribution to dissemination of knowledge about Serbian medieval heritage, as well as of Gabriel Millet’s scientific methodology.