Chapelle de Barbizon

Until the end of the nineteenth century Barbizon had no church of its own. The hamlet belonged to the parish of Chailly-en-Bière, and on Sundays its inhabitants took the "chemin de la Messe" (the street still carries the name) to reach the old church standing above the plain of Bière. That is the steeple ringing on the horizon of The Angelus.

The barn where Théodore Rousseau had set up his studio, and where on Saturdays he gathered Millet, Díaz, Barye, Ziem and a few others, was fitted out as a chapel in 1889, twenty-two years after his death. It was blessed on 24 January 1889 by abbé Jean-Baptiste Eugène Séroin, curé-doyen of Notre-Dame de Melun; abbé Amédée Fageon was its first curé. The bell tower is the work of the architect Charles-Louis Millet, second son of Jean-François Millet: the son of one Barbizon painter designing the steeple that rises over another's studio.

The chapel, dedicated to Notre-Dame de la Persévérance and sometimes called the chapelle Saint-Paul, was enlarged in 1920 and again in 1965. Barbizon had separated administratively from Chailly on 20 November 1903. The building that began as a barn, became a studio, then a place of prayer, is one of the quieter stories of the village.