Geneviève‏ Souchal (1926–1988)

Geneviève Souchal was born in Vichy, France, and orphaned at age 12. She was sent to a boarded school run by the Légion d'Honneur at Les Loges. Her classmates remembered her as the youngest member of the class and the brightest. She continued her studies in Poitiers during the first year of World War II, then returned to the Légion d'Honneur. The school did not teach Greek, so she decided to learn it on her own with a few friends who wanted to pursue degrees in classical literature. She earned two baccalauréats in the same year, one with honors. She then enrolled in the École Nationale des Chartres, which specializes in the historical sciences, and in 1950 qualified as an archivist-paleographer. She then pursued a higher degree at the École du Louvre. There she met her future husband, who was a classmate. From 1951 to 1954, she worked in the departmental archives of Corrèze, which her husband directed. She was in charge of the classification of the judicial archives before taking responsibility for the Musée de Cloître in Tulle. Returning to Paris in 1954, she joined the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), where she worked until 1958. She was then appointed appointed curator at the Musée de Cluny, devoted exclusively to medieval art. After 19 years at the museum, she went into academia, and was successively lecturer at the Université Paris X, then Paris IV, before being appointed to direct the Institute of Art History at the Université de Poitiers, where she she rose to the rank of professor in 1980. She had wide-ranging interests in historical art objects, from antique furniture to weather instruments, although her training had specialized in the Middle Ages. She took a special interest in tapestries of the 15th-16th centuries and the enamel work of the Limousin.