Droué

NOTRE-DAME DE BOISSELEAU

The chapel of the former priory of Boisseleau, dedicated to Our Lady, depended on the Benedictine priory of St. Avit at Châteaudun. Later, it became the parish church. The nave dates from the 12th century, the semicircular apse and the side aisle were added in the 16th century

In the 12th century, a priory was a simple structure consisting of a house, a barn and a garden, where a certain number of monks resided under the authority of a prior. A priory depended on an abbey and the number of monks varied in accordance with the distance separating it from the abbey and the tasks it had to assume. The regular prior (from the Latin prior: the first of them) was appointed and transferred the profits to the abbey, either in kind or as an annuity or both

Our Lady of Boisseleau dates from the 12th century but the north aisle was added in the 16th century. The chapel consists of a nave prolonged by a semicircular apse. The exterior of the aisle appears as three gables decorated with crockets and is pierced with pointed-arched windows with "Flamboyant" tracery. The round-arch west door is surmounted by an oculus

WALLL PAINTING

In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries the cult of St Anne gained wide popularity. Many pictures were painted of the saint and her family. This type of portrait is known as a Holy Kinship or Holy Company

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