Un animal hybride bizarre avec des dents de crocodile, des ailes et une queue écailleuse partage le haut d'une fenêtre avec un monstre marin avec un visage humain, comme une fille avec de longs cheveux souffle une corne ou un tuyau:Vue sur le carré de l'art sgraffito rustique mais charmant à l'avant d'une maison familiale traditionnelle dans le canton d'Ardez, Grisons ou Grisons, dans l'est de la Suisse.La façade restaurée, datée de 1665, comporte également une inscription en langue romanche.
2629 x 2628 px | 22,3 x 22,3 cm | 8,8 x 8,8 inches | 300dpi
Date de la prise de vue:
21 juillet 2007
Lieu:
Ardez, Graubünden or Grisons canton, eastern Switzerland
Informations supplémentaires:
Cette image peut avoir des imperfections car il s’agit d’une image historique ou de reportage.
Ardez, Graubünden or Grisons canton, eastern Switzerland: square format view of bizarre animals and sea monsters sharing part of the restored 1665 sgraffito facade of Haus Aual 131 with girlish supporters blowing horns or pipes. The outlandish hybrid creature baring its teeth above the classically-inspired window surround has four legs, wings, a crocodile-like head and a scaly tail – and is perhaps the sgraffito artist’s interpretation of a dragon. Beside it coils a sea creature with a human face. Elsewhere, the charming rustic sgraffito art also features a buxom twin-tailed mermaid, flanked by urns, and an inscription in Romansh, a legacy language of the ancient Roman Empire still spoken by many local people. Ardez, in the Lower Engadine Valley, is an historic village renowned for its carefully restored 16th and 17th century houses decorated with heraldic symbols, Romansh inscriptions and wall art. While some designs are painted, others are sgraffito, the ancient artistic technique of scratching or cutting away parts of a surface layer of plaster, stucco or paint to expose a different colour or texture. Its heyday in Graubünden was in the 1600s and 1700s, but the craft was revived in the early 1900s amid fresh appreciation of regional artistic styles. In the Lower Engadine, Iachen Ulrich Könz restored many sgraffito facades in his home village, Guarda. His sons switched away from traditional designs, enriching more than 100 historic facades, including some in Ardez, with dragons, fish or mermaids. They also added decorative sgraffito to modern buildings and today, Graubünden artists and craftsmen use sgraffito both in restoration work and in new build projects. D1186.B4161.A
