The Château
de Cheverny built outside Blois is a rare, unified gem of French architecture
built between 1604 to 1654 for Hurault de Cheverny.
The
château’s twelve niches for busts on the second of its three stories give the
façade rhythm and a unifying element despite the semicircular, triangular, and
trapezoidal roofs over the main body and wings of the château.
The
symmetrical arrangement pleases the eye and appealed to the Belgian comic book
creator Hergé (1907 – 1983), who used Cheverny as the inspiration for the
Moulinsart Château in his Tintin comic series. Hergé just used the central part of the
château for his comic book strip.
Hergé may
have chosen to use only the central part of the château, because the two wide
wings on the ends of the central part of the château would have made the comic
book frames very wide. The architecture
would have taken away from the action of the figures. Hergé also refrained from drawing the twelve
niches for busts for the busts. Too much
detail in comic books can take away from the action of the characters, whom you
want to focus upon as a reader.
There was a
French-language exhibit being held when we visited called Les Secrets de
Moulinsart. One of the secrets of
Moulinsart is that Hergé placed the château in Belgium in his comic strip and
named it Moulinsart by reversing the name of a Belgian town Saar-Moulin to
obtain Moulinsart. (Hergé did this with
his own name of Georges Rémi, which became Hergé to show the reversal of his
initials.)
Moulinsart
Château was important to the heroes of Tintin
– Captain Haddock, Professor Tournesol, Milou the dog and Tintin – because
they finally had a stable home to come back to from their adventures according
to Benoît Peeters in L’oeuvre intégrale
de Hergé.
The Tintin
exhibit had rooms set up to look like Tintin’s bedroom complete with clothes
hanging in a closet that were identifiable from his different adventures,
Moulinsart château with broken windows from a storm, the deck of the Unicorn
ship, and Professor Tournesol’s laboratory among others. The exhibit also showed photographs of people
that Hergé had caricatured.
As my
husband Laurent and I walked up to the steps of the château all I could think
of was how wonderful it would look in wedding photos.
By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
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| Laurent Paget Photography |
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| Laurent Paget Photography |
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| Laurent Paget Photography |
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| Ruth Paget Selfie |
