English translation: storage area for (carved) stones from in and around the monument
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GLOSSARY ENTRY (DERIVED FROM QUESTION BELOW)
French term or phrase:
dépôt lapidaire
English translation:
storage area for (carved) stones from in and around the monument
French to English translations [PRO] Architecture / Church history
French term or phrase:dépôt lapidaire
In a description of features of a church in Picardy, northern France. Context is just a list: "Tour sud (accès à la charpente et aux cloches, panorama sur la ville); Tour nord (accès au **dépôt lapidaire**); Nef caractéristique du 1er art gothique...". This seems to be feature of churches and other religious buildings in this region, but I can't find out what it is! Any help gratefully received. Thanks in advance!
Explanation: Many medieval sites --especially the larger churches, etc.-- have a special (usually publicly inaccessible) area in which are stored the stone "debris" which has accumulated over the last century of two in and around the building.
In medieval churches, sometimes this may be in the triforium or gallery, or in a room in one of the towers --in Chartres, in the '60s, I remember visiting the curious little rooms which are over the side aisles of the cathedral which contained the original (degraded) 12th c. carvings which were replaced in 19th c.
-------------------------------------------------- Note added at 37 mins (2011-09-11 20:55:13 GMT) --------------------------------------------------
The importance of this stuff has only been fully recognized in the last 40 years or so, and increasing amounts of the carvings found in these dépôts have been published --and/or moved to where they belong, into the collections of museums. At Vézelay, quite a large number of 12th c. sculpted fragments were formerly stored in the upper galleries of the narthex, and formed the subject (among other debris) of a quite important book on the Romanesque sculpture of the abbey:
Lydwine Saulnier, Niel Stratford.
La sculpture oubliée de Vézelay: catalogue du Musée Lapidaire
Geneva: Droz 1984.
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There really isn't an English term (to my knowledge at least), so it is frequently left in the French --esp. when speaking of French sites (where the tourist would find the signs indicating where it is in French). Note that Stratford uses the term "Musée lapidaire" in his sub-title. Which is an "upgrade" from a "dépôt."
Every scholar in the field of medieval French architecture/sculpture knows exactly what is meant by the French term --if your intended audience is anglophone tourists, I would suggest leaving the term in French and adding something like "stone storage area" in parenthesis.
-------------------------------------------------- Note added at 16 hrs (2011-09-12 13:17:13 GMT) --------------------------------------------------
Basically, the term just meant (originally) a main depository for the (carved, whether with figural or ornamental motifs) stones, usually associated with a church, whether discovered in the course of excavations or removed from their original placement in the course of (19th or 20th c.) restoration work.
In the latter case, esp. in the 19th c., the general thought was that the "restored" carvings were, inherently, "better" and to be preferred to the (usually quite eroded or otherwise damaged) original ones.
So, they were either not kept at all or, if they were, were relegated to someplace in or around the church which was (usually) both out of the way and (usually) not accessible to the general public.
In the late 20th c. tastes and attitudes changed and, on the one hand, a vast increase in tourism led to the opening up of these spaces to the public (frequently for a fee, a revenue enhancer for cash strapped monuments); and, on the other, advancements in art hysterical scholarship led to these collections being viewed as immensely important original artifacts (as opposed to their 19th c., frequently quite "dry" and sterile replacements). Neil Stradford's work on Vézelay is a very good example of what can be done with a careful, detailed analysis and publication of such a collection.
As the importance of their contents has been more generally appreciated, many of them have been turned into (or moved to) "Musées lapidaire" --not quite the same thing, the term "Musée" necessarily implying public access.
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A random sellection of DLs from the "Memoire" database of the Ministre de Kulture gives us an idea of the way they look/looked.
the ones in Provence are notable by the shear volume of stones they contain, usually all higgly-piggly, like this one in Arles (also in a disaffected church):
From this very unscientific --but rather typical-- sampling, you can see that the form of these DLs varied greatly, depending upon what was available in the way of surviving/salvageable fragments, places to store them, etc., to say nothing of whether or not there was some local antiquarian with interest and time enough to impose some sort of order on this chaos. Basically, mining these things for hidden Goodies became one of the favorite sports of art hysterians of the later 20th c.
This is the cathedral in question. Number 2 on the drawing is the tower that gives access to the 'dépôt lapidaire'. It seems that everything that is mentioned on this page can be visited, so 'lapidarium' was an excellent answer.
Laura Bennett United Kingdom Local time: 17:03 Specializes in field Native speaker of: English
34 mins confidence: peer agreement (net): +4
lapidarium
Explanation: not sure if this is right, so merely a sugg., as I haven't got time to look into it now
On y trouve également le Lapidarium, en fait une espèce de cercle où se trouvent les stèles funéraires romaines… un reste touchant d’un autre temps, caché parmi les arbres. Je suis revenue plusieurs fois pour admirer ces monuments qui parlent aussi bien aux connaisseurs qu’aux personnes non instruites…: des restes de caveaux familiaux, de sépultures de Patricii…
The translation workplace 
peer agreement (net): +1
