ROUEN, FRANCE.- Musee le Secq des Tournelles presents The Faithful Opening or the art of the locksmith, on view through October 28, 2007. One of the great treasures of the musée Le Secq des Tournelles, whose 14 000 pieces document the art of wrought iron work, is its collection of locks: locks of all ages and times, since the XVth century, from all origins - France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Flanders - and of all sorts, from the gate lock to the purse lock. The exhibition «The faithful opening or the art of the locksmith» confronts all the locks from the museum to exceptional pieces from various French and foreign collections. It gives life to a discipline that Dante referred to in his Divine Comedy as one of the liberal arts.

The visit is organized chronologically, from the XVth to the XIXth century, and enhanced by a beautiful series of master's locks. In France, the corporation sponsored by saint Eloi defined very strict conditions to access the profession. It was mandatory, since the XIIIth and XIVth centuries to create a masterpiece. A lock from 1524, in the shape of a portico of the Renaissance, is possibly the first to be explicitly dated. The complexity of the mechanisms the master locksmith had to put into place as well as the fact he dominated the art of fire gave the artisan a particular aura. His know-how was prestigious: wrought iron work was considered as the fourth liberal art, next to painting, sculpture and music. In his free time, Louis XVI submitted himself to learn it. When the corporations disappeared at the end of the Ancien Régime, the master's piece prevailed until the XIXth century, maintained by the spirit of the guilds, even though the sk ill seemed less mastered than in the Middle Ages or at the time of the Renaissance.