1/. - The start... and the discovery. In 1979, after spending our holidays for over twenty years in a caravan, we decided to look for a small holiday cottage in our preferred region, the Auvergne. Luck brought us to Vinzelles. The house with its small yard bordered by a stream and ideally located full south was so attractive that we decided to buy it despite its appalling condition. An example? The "sanitary installation" was represented by one single faucet and one sink while the electrical power came from a 5 ampere meter feeding three 25 watt bulbs and one single wall plug. With the exception of some too specialised jobs, we have done all restoration works ourselves - just to keep busy during the holidays! It was during the cleaning of the attic in the highest part of the building that we first saw some "traces of paint" on the walls. In fact the walls were covered by an old plaster which was already pealing off in places, thus revealing some of the paint which had probably been hidden for centuries. As we were planning to use this attic as a room for our children, we decided to remove the remainder of the old plaster. Continuing the removal of the plaster, more and more traces of paint continued to appear. Fig.02 What really woke up our interest was finding what is shown in Fig.02 . Does not '1' look like the head of horse? Does '2' not look like a shield with a coat of arms? And '3', is that a helmet with some red coloured plumes on top? '4' is a little flower - they were all over the place.

2/. - What do we do now ??? Having no specific knowledge of old wall paintings, but feeling that we might have found something "interesting", we went to see the owners of some local castles, the Château de Parentignat owned by the De Lastic family and the Château de la Priat owned by the d'Estrée-d'Arcy family Madame d'Estrée had the fortunate idea to put us in contact with the Abbé Jean Merminod. Monsieur l'Abbé soon visited our attic and asked to come back with a close friend of his, the Docteur Michel Toulemont, well known heraldry specialist and member of the Académie des Sciences, Belles Lettres et Arts of Clermont-Ferrand.

3/. - First conclusions & actions The first conclusions: - wall paintings of a non-religious nature dating back to approximately 1300 - 1325. (These dates are based on the shape of the helmet of which a copy exists in the City Museum of the city of Zurich (Switzerland). (see below) - unique paintings since of this period numerous wall paintings of a religious nature are known while non-religious paintings of an heraldic nature are rather few. - mysterious origins since nothing seems to justify finding these paintings in a small house in an unknown village without any known historical past. The first actions: - Doctor Toulemont made a formal presentation before the Académie de Clermont-Ferrand (1981) - see translated copy below. - Contact was made with the officials of the Historical Monument organisation of the Auvergne region who rapidly asked the owner to authorise the official registration. Classification as Monument Historique occurred in 1991. Less than three years (1982) after their discovery (1979) restoration and protection of the paintings were completed.

TENATATIVE TRANSLATION of the PRESENTATION by MICHEL TOULEMONT for the ACADEMIE DES SCIENCES, BELLES LETTRES et ARTS de CLERMONT-FERRAND MARCH 1981 Black text in the English translation still needs to be translated into proper English terminology. Who can help me ??? DISCOVERY OF AN HERALDIC PAINTING IN THE AUVERGNE Knowing our interest in heraldry, one of our good friends, Monsieur l'Abbe Jean Merminod, corresponding member of our academy, told us last fall that he had heard a rumour: in a small village near Sauxillanges the new owners of a house were said to have found in their attic old wall paintings: faux appareil surmonté de blasons. This type of discoveries makes one often doubt their age - in particular the faux appareil.. However, the fact that it was in an attic made us decide to ask the owner to show them to us. Very kindly he led us to his findings and, to our great astonishment, we were confronted with a large heraldic composition dated approximately mid-XIVth century. This wall painting, in quite poor condition, covers the four walls of a rectangular room of four by five meters (+/-13 by 16 feet). The north eastern corner is covered by a recent plaster. The study of this find and the related research will be long and difficult . At present we can only give a superficial description. We noted three different sections: the main east wall (mur pignon) with the main scene, the north and south walls with similar representations, and the west wall. The East wall (le mur pignon): On the southern half we find a horse rider, in full harness, galloping towards the left of the observer, la lance en arrêt, horizontally. Some missing parts in the plaster of the northern half show that the other half of the scene is still present, at least partially. Representation of a tournament where to horse riders are facing each other on their galloping horses. This scene is important as it is from here that the rest of the decoration is organised. In addition a detail allows to give an approximate dating: middle of the XIV century. The rider wears a closed helmet (1) of ovoïd shape with a round calotte on top; shape we can find in the Wappenrolle von Zurich (2) and dates with relative precision to 1335-1345. In the Swiss city museum of Zurich we can see a helmet of this type (2nd third of the XIV century) (NB: later the museum corrected this into 1300-1325 i.e. first quarter of the XIV century) of which the interest is to still have on top of the calotte the round and hollow metal piece in which could be mounted the cimier of which we here only see the remaining half . The field of the coat of arms being red, the same is true for the cimier ( bouquet of feathers?) and for the cover of the horse which also shows the coat of arms: de gueules à la croix d'argent. (1) there were only narrow slits for the eyes and some little holes for ventilation. No mobile visière which only appeared at the end of the XIV century bringing forth a major change to the shape of the helmets. (2) Swiss National Library - at the National Museum of Zurich. The south and North walls. They had a similar presentation: a red pigment draws boxes, faux appareil, with five-leave-flowers in their middle and placed between two large horizontal borders. The lower border, yellow, with a thin red line on top and a small black line underneath from which hang red and black knots. The upper one is in two parts, yellow on top and red underneath with an undulating separation. Above the upper bande d'encadrement is a series of écus armoriés, of classical triangular shape, higher than wide, the sides being straight on the upper part and curved near the bottom to form the point; shape defined by the end of the XIII th century. Despite their present state, some of the écus can still be identified (with some doubts for some of them). South wall: (starting from the south-east angle): 1st: de gueules à deux fasces d'argent; 2 nd: de gueules au lion d'argent; 3 rd: difficult to describe in its present state follows a long alteration of the wall with a modern baie and the right hand side of an old baie. A 4th: (almost in the south-west corner): d'argent billeté de gueules. The north wall: of which only the western half is visible, the other being covered by the same crépi which covers the scene with the horse rider. Starting from the north-western corner, four coats of arms are visible: the 1st: de pourpre (3) au sautoir d'argent, qui a peut être été cantonné de meubles actuellement indéfinissables; the 2nd: de gueules à la fasce d'argent; il ne subsiste que la fasce et la moitié inférieure de l'écu dans laquelle il n'est pas exclu qu'il y ait eu un meuble, l'état actuel ne permet pas de le dire; the 3rd: peu lisible actuellement, on ne distingue que les vestiges de couleur rouge; the 4th: dont seul subsiste le tiers inférieur d'un champ uni de gueules. (3) we cannot tell with certainty before cleaning. The colour of the champ of this écu is clearly different of the gueules - a bright red - of the other coats of arms. A close examination of those on the south wall reveals that some spots have a tendency to change into brun violacé. Despite its extreme rarity, this colour has already been mentioned in the middle of the XIII th century: le royaume de Léon, des familles anglaises (Lacy) et de nombreux chevaliers de la Table ronde au (XIV et XV ème siècle( Perceval, Agravain etc.) Le mur pignon Ouest: opposed to the horse riders it had a different decoration. The same faux appareil as on the northern and southern walls, but its upper part terminated by two horizontal joined strips, the lower one red with underneath a series of d'écus armoriés , smaller than those on the northern and southern walls; they are clearly visible but indéchiffrable in their current state. Above the upper horizontal strip, yellow, was a large heraldic lion of which only a very clear rear leg remains. All the rest has been damaged when the top of the roof was lowered. The lion was yellow with large black griffes: d'or armé de sable . Toward the lower right side of the lion, and it seems posterior to the initial decoration, a less trained hand has added a coat of arms, larger than the original ones, and unidentifiable in its present condition. Before the use of an expected computerised system, the most common research tool is the l'armorial général de Rietstap et de sa table le dictionnaire des figures héraldiques de Renesse , which, although the most complete today, covers at best only half of the coats of arms ever worn ; in addition, its worse lacking are in the medieval period in which we are presently interested. Some examples will give an idea of the difficulties encountered. - de gueules à la croix d'argent (coat of arms of the rider), the first reaction is to think of the comtes de Savoie, but the armorial de Rietstap quotes twenty six families, of which half are not french; - de gueules à deux fasces d'argent: twenty four families identified, of which twenty non-French; this is why it is most important to make the second horse rider visible. ; - d'argent semé de billettes de gueules, one single known family de l'Ostoire (Maine). Pour l'autre l'état actuel ne permet pas d'avancer des identifications possibles ou probables, sur la paroi nord, le sautoir du premier écu était il ou non cantonné de meubles? il en est de même des autres. Seul un nettoyage de l'ensemble permettra d'être beaucoup plus précis et surtout une synthèse. L'extrême rareté des peintures murales civiles du moyen âge, son intérêt pour l'Auvergne nous amène à publier sans retard cette découverte afin de lui donner les suites qu'elle nécessite, car toutes les recherches restent encore à faire et dans plusieurs disciplines. A la manière de Quintilien nous dirons: qui à peint cette vaste composition de vingt mètres de long? A quoi était destiné ce décor? Comment a-t-il été peint? Pourquoi et pour qui? et ce au sommet d'une petite maison de vingt mètres carrés dans un village dont on ne sait à peu près rien; maison qui ne présente pas de caractères particuliers apparents. En conclusion nous nous trouvons devant une peinture murale du milieu du XIV ème siècle - altérée bien sur mais qui n'a subi aucune retouche - et dont la présence rarissime sur les quatre parois d'une pièce permet, pour une fois, de reconstituer l'ordonnancement complet d'un décor héraldique médiéval. La première démarche nous parait être de demander une protection suivie d'une restauration.