Val-de-Grâce
is a
A building in France.
In
1621,
Anne of Austria, the queen of
France, housed the
Benedictines, a religious order of the
Roman Catholic Church, from the
Deep Valley (called the Valley of Grace, Val de Grâce).
In
1637, she decided to put up a
baroque-style
church. It took several architects to complete the church:
Mansart,
Le Mercier,
Le Muet, and
Le Duc. The
dome and the
cupola are pretty famous and a must-see on any trip to
Paris. After
the Revolution, the Val de Grace became a
military hospital.
During
world war I Louis Aragon and
André Breton,
surrealist artists, were enlisted as physicians-in-traing at the hospital. As a part of the
French government’s efforts to keep
morale up during the war, a
museum had built of
reconstructive surgery in the hospital. The exhibits consisted of
wax sculptures of
deformed human faces and the results of
reconstructive surgery. A look at the museum reveals that there is almost no doubt that the exhibits had an impact on the two
artists and eventually the surrealist movement, which frequently deals with themes of
dismemberment and
disfiguration.