Zarbula: Musée de Temps, Briançon, France - Sundials on Waymarking.com

Zarbula painted about 100 sundials but we know very little about him. In this painting, we only see his back. The half finished sundial shows a typical Zarbula features.

From his name, Giovanni Francisco Zarbula is Italian and the family name Zerbula is known in the Lake Viverone area (Piemonte, between Ivrea and Biella). This area was quite poor in the nineteenth century and many emigrated to southern France for work. The border meant little to people in the mountains as shepherds moved their flocks and people traded over the high mountain passes. Zarbula was a painter and soon specialized in sundials. His first known and dated works were in the 1830's. Some of his early undated work shows how he developed his techniques. He learned a method to accurately place the hour lines and gnomon on south facing vertical declining sundials. His career took off in 1840 with the Vallouise and St. Veran sundials. He contined to work in France until the 1870's when the Franco Prussian war perhaps made things uncomfortable in France. He then painted a series of dials in Piedmont, Italy, in Val Chisone, west of Turino and east of Briançon. He left nothing but his works of art, the Zarbula sundials, part of the patrimony of these alpine regions.

The Musée de la Mesure de Temps, on the Grand Rue just around the corner from Place des Armes, includes a sundial shop with a good variety of books and booklets on the sundials in the Haute Alpes.

Sundial Type: Vertical - Wall mounted dial plate Related Web Site: Not listed

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Date Logged Log User Rating   08/05/2014 Nebola visited it