Holidays in Lot-et-Garonne: pictorial wandering in the footsteps of Giovanni Masutti

An intense, omnipresent blue that even bears his name; bold, vivid, and personal colors; starry skies, trompe-l'oeil, and characters with a touching humanity: the style of Giovanni Masutti (1903-1963) is all this, and more. If this name doesn't mean anything to you yet, you have a good excuse. His playground for twenty years, Lot-et-Garonne is only just beginning to give it back the place it deserves in its tourist, artistic, and historical circuits. A boon for lovers of cultural tourism far from the beaten track, and often in the pleasant coolness of churches. A showcase that owes much to the researcher and history peddler Jean-Louis Lambert and his reference work, "Giovanni "Fogo" Masutti."

Trained in his native Italy as a painter, Masutti arrived in the Marmande area with the wave of immigration in the 1930s. Hundreds of families fled the overpopulation in the north of the peninsula to land in a France devastated by the First World War, where farms were in ruins and land lay fallow. The beginnings were not idyllic, but these neo-Lot-et-Garonnais were determined to succeed. And their expertise in livestock breeding and their ability to integrate into local life eventually paid off, to the point of becoming one of the foundations of repopulation during the interwar period.

Giovanni Masutti, for his part, was not a manual worker but a creative person who did not intend to abandon his passion on the road to exile. Especially since the sunny hillsides and picturesque scenes of rural life constituted a new source of inspiration for this painter, who gave his interpretation of reality, tinged in particular with his admiration for three painters: the Italians Raphael (1483-1520) and Guido Reni (1575-1642), and the Spaniard Murillo (1618-1682).

The best way to grasp the extent of the Italian artist's talent is to cross the threshold of the church of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine de Duras, recently restored and inaugurated by Prince Albert II of Monaco (holder of a Duraquois nobility title) in July 2024. This ancient temple is now far from the Protestant decorative rigor, everything is an explosion of colors and patterns. From the entrance, the central apse vaulted in a cul-de-four (half-dome) catches the eye, flooded with an azure blue sky and the dove of the Holy Spirit, haloed in light. It is the culmination of a decorative program where Masutti deployed his talent as a decorator in the trompe-l'oeil of the coffered ceilings, draperies and faux marble, but also as a painter, in the panels representing the four evangelists. The popular success of this decoration, awarded in 1933, launched Masutti's career in the department for the next twenty years.

A style that is so popular that it can be found in a multitude of places in the Val de Garonne, in the Pays de Lauzun and in Gascony. Some have imposing decorations, such as at the Saint-Cybard church in Meilhan-sur-Garonne, in Saint-Léger (Couthures-sur-Garonne), in Saint-Étienne de Béffery (Miramont-de-Guyenne); others, simple starry skies (Saint-Sulpice, in Sénestis). A cross-country trail is being set up in the tourist offices of the three inter-municipalities , which work together and keep an up-to-date list of visible works and open buildings.