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Hector Sohier

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Hector Sohier was a 16th-century Normand architect. He is the author of many buildings in Caen. He died around 1560.

Sohier was not only a skilled builder, an original and resourceful mind, he still possessed to the highest degree the art of ensuring the admiration of his works over the centuries by inoculating them with the secret of beauty. Every detail in Saint-Pierre shows the most delicate taste and perhaps never has wealth possessed so much seductive charm. See instead these delicately carved friezes, where common objects almost vulgar are transformed by the whims of imagination, these historized capitals, which, approaching antiquity, have nothing of the classic coldness, these niches so brilliantly decorated, that they seem made to receive we do not know which admirable statues, these hanging keys where are sometimes spread out in miniatures of true monuments.... And all this is so to speak only the ordinary baggage, the more careful implementation of the decoration system generally practiced. But where the originality of Hector Sohier shines, it is in the composition of the buttresses and the balustrades, in these marvellous pinnacles with flared bases and multiplied bulges, which rise at each corner of the terraces, and give to the apse of Saint-Pierre this seal of nobility and elegance which makes its right reputation

. - Léon Palustre [fr] (1838-1894), director of the Société française d'archéologie [fr].[1]

Works

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Works formerly attributed to Hector Sohier

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References

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  1. ^ Eugène Robillard de Beaurepaire, Promenades de la Société française d'archéologie dans la ville de Caen. in les comptes-rendus du Congrès tenus à Caen, par la Société Française d'Archéologie, en 1883, Tours, P. Bousrez, 1884, (p. 29)
  2. ^ As a matter of fact, a work by Blaise Le Prestre. Bernard Beck, "L'Hôtel Le Valois d'Escoville à Caen", in Mémoires de l'Académie des sciences, arts et belles-lettres de Caen, Caen, volume XXIII, 1995
  3. ^ Étienne Faisant, Vincent Juhel and François Saint-James, Saint-Sauveur-du-Marché à Caen, Caen, Société des antiquaires de Normandie [fr], 2011 ISBN 978-2-919026-08-1
  4. ^ Étienne Faisant, Le château de Lasson, Bulletin of the Société des Antiquaires de Normandie ISSN 1271-5549, Caen, volume LXVIII, 2009, (p. 9-75
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