The foundations of a future capital city for images

“Once, Hippocrates was from Kos. Now you’d say he is from Montpellier.”

This is the motto of the Faculty of Medicine in southern France’s Hérault department, highly regarded since the Middle Ages and the oldest medical school in the Western world still in activity today. Many people know that the city of Montpellier’s history is closely linked to that of medicine, but very few know that there is also considerable local expertise in the field of images, dating back to the same period and taking root in the same location.

In fact, two- and three-dimensional images have been around in Montpellier for as long as the scalpel!

 Yes, that’s correct. When the Faculty of Medicine was founded in 1220, “medical imaging” as we know it today did not exist. Therefore, doctors relied on talented artists, illustrators, and sculptors to understand human anatomy and know how to map it. Anatomical drawing occupied a prominent position in teaching at the Faculty of Medicine and the School of Fine Arts. Moreover, the excellence of these schools was so well known throughout Christendom that Pope Nicholas IV granted them the official status as a University in 1289, a privilege that was still very rare anywhere in Europe!
 
Today, many people working in Montpellier are following in the footsteps of this prestigious past, without even being aware of it: even though teaching has evolved significantly and technologies have revolutionized creation, anatomical drawing is still part of the learning fundamentals for animated image professionals. Understanding the body, its proportions, balance, and movement is a prerequisite for bringing any character or creature to life realistically.

Medical students during the Middle Ages would probably have made excellent animators! 

Lord Guilhem VIII of Montpellier (1157-1202), who changed the city’s destiny by favoring the establishment of doctors by passing a wise law, would not have snubbed the Metropolitan area’s current abundance of image, audio, and digital technologies. After all, he was the one who, by accelerating Montpellier’s openness to the world and its intellectual growth, made it a favorable place for creation, research, and innovation. He was also a great admirer of the arts and literature who played the harp himself and whose court was already full of artists, actors, and troubadours from the Pays d’Oc area.

The relationship between Montpellier and Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs) has been like a courtly love story from the start!

This state of mind oriented towards the arts, culture, and innovation has undoubtedly played an important role in the emergence of CCIs in and around Montpellier. As early as 1896, spectators began attending screenings of the Lumière Cinematograph presented at the General and National Exhibition held in the Hérault prefecture. And the gods of the seventh art were already watching over the city: when a fire ravaged most of the exhibition’s other pavilions, the cinematograph, located off to the side, was spared and saw its appeal increase tenfold!

All it took was a tiny spark to bring Montpellier into the era of cinema once and for all!

As for the area’s transition into one of the leading centers of contemporary digital creation, all it took was the stroke of a pen, a century after the invention of cinema: that of Michel Ancel, the creator of Rayman, convinced that Montpellier was the “Crossroads of Dreams”, a world where all the wildest desires can come to life.