The panoramic wallpaper Portiques d’Athènes (Porticoes of Athens), which originally decorated a middle-class home, the former refuge of the Abbey of Echternach, on Rue du Marché-aux-Herbes in Luxembourg City, was produced between 1806 and 1822 in the Parisian workshop of Joseph Dufour. The designer Xavier Mader drew his inspiration for these open-air porticoes from the ruined monuments still found in Athens following the Ottoman occupation. The colonnaded walkways were in reality covered to provide shelter from the sun and rain, and served as a meeting place for philosophers, artists and scholars to debate and teach. Other obvious sources of inspiration are Raphael’s fresco “The School of Athens”, which is found in the Room of the Segnatura at the Vatican, and Greek mythology. To admire this panoramic wallpaper is to travel back in time to Ancient Greece and encounter mythical heroes such as Odysseus and Oedipus, figures from Virgil’s Aeneid, and Greek philosophers and scholars such as Socrates and Euclides. Visitors to the MNHA can experience this for themselves thanks to the sections of wallpaper on display at the permanent exhibition.

The “Porticoes of Athens” show the significance of luxury wallpaper production in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Towards the end of the 18th century, wallpaper workshops were booming and began to produce the first landscapes, now known as panoramics. The Dufour workshop was one of the first to create these seamlessly extending designs. From 1801 onwards, its founder studied the possibility of producing a polychrome wall covering which would surround an entire room like a never-ending painting to form a “sort of panorama.” When his first panoramic was completed around 1805, Joseph Dufour explained that “the objective of this undertaking [the creation and production of panoramics] is to please the eye and engage the imagination without exhausting it.” The recurring subjects of panoramics include far-flung locations, literary and historical myths, and leisure pursuits such as hunting — reflecting the desire to make the enjoyment of these wall decorations a form of reading and cultural education. One of Joseph Dufour’s great merits is that he was able to attract talented artists to compose his landscapes, thus turning them into a luxury product.

Katia Schrobiltgen