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 was painted with the requirement that the work be readable with the instructions of the exegetes of the Counter-Reformation. The distribution from left to right, from the Virgin to the Angel, is segmented by the vertical lines of the columns linking heaven and earth. This arrangement grants the composition a powerfully frontal aspect. The alternating dark and light areas, and the improbable inclusion of the landscape in the background give the decor a intense 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 meaning of the still life elements — the lilies, the white linen, and the book—goes hand in hand with a meditative aura emphasized by the solemn, contemplative attitude of the figures. The latter, 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 diffused 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 a dazzling evidence of Rubens' first period, prior to his return from Italy in late 1608. Commissioned in 1606 by the Oratorian Fathers for the Chiesa Nuova di Santa-Maria-in-Valicella in Rome, St. Gregory was refused by the latter, and was displayed in the artist's funerary chapel in Antwerp until the 18th century.

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 just before St.Achilleus and St. Nereus. On the left, St. Maurus, presented as a Roman soldier stands beside St. Papianus leaning on a stick. At the very top of the arch is an image of the Virgin with Child giving its blessing, surrounded by cherubs. The monumental arch rounds off the scene, perfectly illustrating the spirit of the triumphant Counter-Reformation.

The composition is partitioned by a succession of diagonals leading to the portrait of the Virgin, a picture within a picture. The remarkable refinement of St.Gregory's apparel reminisces the painter's origins. Nevertheless, the Italian, and more specifically Venetian influences are rather predominant. The Baroque components - the characters' overall presentation, the swirling movement of the robes, and the interplay of gazes, predict the Rubens to come.

The research undertaken over the past few years regarding the complex genesis of this painting will result in an illustrated book, along with an audiovisual guide recounting the complete history of this masterpiece.

Renowned in his days but totally forgotten after his death, the recent research and exhibitions dedicated to Georges de La Tour have given the artist a new prominent place within French 17th 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 of the collection. The monumental figure of the injured saint lost in meditation seems to bow to the canvas' format, contained within a cramped space. On a bare and somber 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 aspects of the figure, also emphasized by the lateral lighting. The monochrome palette of the decor highlights both the beige hue of the skin and the drapery's restrained red. The fine, thin paint of the whole piece becomes thicker with virtuous brushstrokes in the saint's hair and beard.

The open Bible which Jerome was one of the first to translate, the blood-fleckered cord of penitence, the skull, and the firmly clutched crucifix are all elements which bolster the high spirituality of the scene. As with the most of de La Tour's works which were repeated in several versions, another less austere St. Jerome is held in the National Museum of Stockholm.

Even though Marc Chagall spent the majority of his life in France, first in Paris and the in Vence, he remained committed to his birth country, Russia, for a very long time; returning 'home' to carry out official functions between 1914 and 1922. Among the bodies of work by artists from the Ecole de Paris, Chagall's art remains imbued with a very personal philosophical and poetic force. The observation of day-to-day reality through the prism of Fauve and Cubist influences is conveyed by a "total lyrical explosion", to borrow André Breton's expression.

Chagall evolves from his inner reality towards a world encompassing figures which elude any verisimilitude as in Midsummer Night's Dream. Painted during the artist's Parisian period, the theme of this picture revolves around William Shakespeare's comedy, which the painter situated in a dream-like forest inhabited by slyphs 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 an 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, Chagall reconciles the image of reality with a fable. The naivety of the perspective-less composition combined wiht the contrast of juxtaposed touches of colour create a "magical" pictorial space.

As the pioneer of abstraction, Robert Delaunay deeply contributed to the European movement developed right before WWI that would completely revolutionize representation. Tutored by a theatre set designer, Delaunay turns his attention to the material and spatial aspects of colour, a fescination prevailing over his interest for cubism inspired by Monet and the 1907 Cézanne retrospective. In comparison to Malévitch and Mondrian's essentialist abstraction, Delaunay introduces an optical adventure, focusing on the visual and autonomous nature of paint.

The set of Fenêtres, painted between 1912 and 1913, is an embodiment of pure paint. The pictorial plane, entirely composed of coloured facets, and the window frame overlaying the painting's edge create a remarkable kaleidoscope. Stimulated by the idea that painting solely relies on colour contrast, Delaunay plays with the contiguity and complemetarity of various shades, creating subtle vibrant movements on the pictorial plane. The rough outline of the Eiffel Tower in the centre of the composition appears as the last material detail, an icon of modernity. Following their creation, Fenêtres is first exhibited at the Kunsthaus in Zurich, then in Paris, and becomes a symbol of abstraction highlighting a new reality, a vision of modernity.

In 1917, Picasso stayed in Rome to produce the sets for Diaghilev’s ballet Parade.There, he met Olga Kokhlova, dancer with the Ballets Russes, and rediscovered antique statuary, Etruscan art, and early Renaissance painting. As a result, the works produced during these years were impacted by the appearance of monumental, gigantic, old-fashioned human forms.
Woman Reading, presenting a hieratic figure drawn after Olga whom Picasso married in 1918, conveys the virtuous juxtaposition of Classicism and Cubism. The swollen pink flesh of the face and hands, along with the position of the finger placed on the temple remind us of Picasso’s interest in the characteristic drawing and deformation of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres' art, and more particularly the Portrait of Madame Moitessier painted in 1856. The nose and the arch of the eyebrows both evoke the regularity of faces in antique statues. The bust and the clothing with its flattened folds, as well as the monochrome palette of greys and browns make a reference to the period of analytical deconstruction in Cubism (1910-1912). The hair, styled with long, wavy locks, suggests a note of freedom and refers to carving techniques. The impressive grey-clad figure barely stands out against the more neutral grey background, matching tones which emphasize the flesh tints. The atmosphere of serenity released by this scene is both due to the restricted choice of colours and to the sculptural aspect of the deeply focused figure.