the museum in english

Zurburàn, together with Velazquez and Murillo, was the greatest Spanish painter of the Golden Age. This picture, along with the three others, comes from the large altarpiece in the Charterhouse at Jerez de la Frontera, which was taken apart in 1837. The four canvases, which were acquired by General de Beylié in 1904, were immediately offered to the museum.
This triumphal Annunciation associates the requirement that the work be readable with the instructions of the exegetes of the Counter-Reformation. The distribution to left and right of the Virgin and the Angel is relayed by the vertical lines of the columns linking heaven and earth. This arrangement lends the composition a powerfully frontal aspect. The alternating dark and light areas, and the improbable inclusion of the landscape in the background give the décor a marked theatrical look.
Zurburàn rejected the Mannerist decorative excess. He was careful to isolate the objects, which thus take on an unusual monumental presence. The symbolic nature of the still lifes—lilies, white linen, and book—goes hand in hand with a meditative aura emphasized by the solemn, contemplative attitude of the figures. These latter, who are idealized without mawkishness, face the onlooker and bear witness to the fulfillment of the divine will. The colour, modulated by the light, lends a forceful relief to the elements in the lower register. The treatment of the sky and the angels is in a mellowed, more diffuse style. This work, probably the last to be made for the altarpiece, shows Zurburàn’s receptiveness to Italian-inspired influences.

This major work from the Flemish collection is dazzling evidence of Rubens’s first period, prior to his return from Italy in late 1608. Commissioned in 1606 by the Oratorian fathers for the Chiesa Nuova di Sante-Maria-in-Valicella in Rome, St. Gregory was refused by these latter and finally ended up, until the 18^th century, in the artist’s funerary chapel in Antwerp. St. Gregory, pope from 590 to 604, is at the centre of the composition, accompanied by the dove of the Holy Ghost. On the right, St. Domitilla appears in luxurious clothes, before St. Achilleus and St. Nereus. On the left, St. Maurus presented as a Roman soldier stands beside St. Papianus leaning on a stick. An image of the Virgin with Child giving its blessing, surrounded by cherubs and supported by a monumental arch, rounds off the scene, which perfectly illustrates the spirit of the triumphant Counter-Reformation.
The composition is hallmarked by a succession of diagonals leading to the portrait of the Virgin, a picture within a picture. The amazing refinement of St. Gregory’s apparel calls to mind the painter’s Flemish origins, Italian, and in particular Venetian, influences are nevertheless predominant. Baroque components harbinger the Rubens to come, however: the way the characters are presented, the swirling movement of the robes, and the interplay of gazes.
Research that has been undertaken over the past few years about the complex genesis of this painting will result in a generously illustrated book, to be accompanied by an audiovisual extra recounting the complete history of this masterpiece.

Renowned in his day and then totally forgotten about, thanks to research and exhibitions, Georges de La Tour now has a prominent place in French 17^th century painting. His genre scenes and religious pictures are imbued with an entirely re-appropriated Caravaggio-like inspiration.
This St. Jerome, which comes from the abbey church of Saint-Antoine en Viennois, is a noteworthy masterpiece in the collection. The monumental figure of the injured saint, lost in meditation, seems to bow to the format of the canvas, contained as it is in a space that is also too cramped. On a bare and sombre background, the silhouette of the old man stands out, offering us his worn flesh and the frailty of his human condition. The construction of the body using large diagonals heightens the architectural and monumental character of the figure, which is underscored by the lateral lighting. The monochrome aspect of the décor highlights the beige-ochre hue of the skin and the restrained red of the drapery. The fine, thin paint of the whole piece becomes thicker with very virtuoso brush strokes in the hair of the beard and the saint’s hair. The open Bible, which Jerome was one of the first to translate, the blood-flecked cord of penitence, the skull in the still lifes and the firmly clutched crucifix are all elements which bolster the high spirituality of the scene. As with most of his works which were readily repeated in several versions, another less austere St. Jerome is held in the National Museum in Stockholm.

For a very long time, Marc Chagall would remain attached to his country of origin, Russia, and even if he spent the bulk of his life in France, first in Paris and then in Vence, in the south, he would return ‘home’ and carry out official functions between 1914 and 1922. Among the bodies of work of the Ecole de Paris artists, Chagall’s art remains imbued with a very personal philosophy and poetic force. The observation of day-to-day reality through the prism of Fauve and Cubist influences combined is conveyed by a “total lyrical explosion”, to borrow Andre Breton’s expression.
Chagall evolves from his inner reality towards a world encompassing figures which sidestep any verisimilitude, as for example in Midsummer Night’s Dream. Painted during the artist’s Parisian period, the theme of this picture is William Shakespeare’s comedy, which the painter situated in a dream-like forest inhabited by sylphs and lovers. The bewitched queen of the fairies, Titania, falls for a donkey-headed weaver, Bottom. The woman clad in a white wedding gown and a veil recurs in almost identical form in several pictures from that period, sometimes with the same blue fan. Winged beings and violinists are also often depicted.
Resorting to the fabulous reconciles the image of reality with fable. The naivety of the perspective-less composition combines with the contrast of juxtaposed touches of colour to create a “magical” pictorial space.

For a very long time, Marc Chagall would remain attached to his country of origin, Russia, and even if he spent the bulk of his life in France, first in Paris and then in Vence, in the south, he would return ‘home’ and carry out official functions between 1914 and 1922. Among the bodies of work of the Ecole de Paris artists, Chagall’s art remains imbued with a very personal philosophy and poetic force. The observation of day-to-day reality through the prism of Fauve and Cubist influences combined is conveyed by a “total lyrical explosion”, to borrow Andre Breton’s expression.
Chagall evolves from his inner reality towards a world encompassing figures which sidestep any verisimilitude, as for example in Midsummer Night’s Dream. Painted during the artist’s Parisian period, the theme of this picture is William Shakespeare’s comedy, which the painter situated in a dream-like forest inhabited by sylphs and lovers. The bewitched queen of the fairies, Titania, falls for a donkey-headed weaver, Bottom. The woman clad in a white wedding gown and a veil recurs in almost identical form in several pictures from that period, sometimes with the same blue fan. Winged beings and violinists are also often depicted.
Resorting to the fabulous reconciles the image of reality with fable. The naivety of the perspective-less composition combines with the contrast of juxtaposed touches of colour to create a “magical” pictorial space.

In 1917, Picasso stayed in Rome to produce the sets for Diaghilev’s ballet Parade. While there he met Olga Kokhlova, a dancer with the Ballets Russes, and rediscovered antique statuary, Etruscan art and early Renaissance painting. As a result the work produced in those years saw the appearance of monumental, gigantic, old-fashioned human forms.
Woman Reading, where the model was Olga, whom Picasso married in 1918, presents a hieratic figure in which classicism and Cubism are juxtaposed with virtuosity. The swollen, pink flesh of the face and hands, plus the position of the finger placed on the temple remind us of Picasso’s interest in the characteristic drawing and deformation of the art of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, in particular the Portrait of Madame Moitessier painted by this latter in 1856. The nose and the arch of the eyebrows evoke the regularity of faces in antique statues. The bust and the clothing with its flattened folds, and the monochrome palette of greys and browns, for their part, make reference to the period of analytical deconstruction in Cubism (1910-1912). The style of the hair, with long, wavy locks, lends a note of freedom and refers to the technique of carving. The impressive, grey-clad figure barely stands out against the more neutral grey ground, in matching tones which strengthen the flesh tints. The atmosphere of serenity released by this scene is due as much to the restricted choice of colours as to the sculptural effect of the deeply concentrating figure.