Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen
 Museum entrance |
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| Data | |
|---|---|
| place |
Caen 
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| Art |
art
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| architect | Jean Merlet |
| opening | 1809 |
| Number of visitors (annually) | 67,468 (2015) |
| Website | |
The Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen is the main art museum in the French city of Caen , founded in the early 19th century and rebuilt in the Castle of Caen in 1971.
history
In 1801, the French Interior Minister Jean-Antoine Chaptal selected fifteen cities to open as many art museums as possible to display the large number of works of art collected during the Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic period. The city of Caen was chosen as the cultural capital of Normandy and for its academic reputation.
The first part of the collections were the works of art confiscated during the secularization of the monasteries of the region, which until then were kept in the church of Sainte-Catherine-des-Arts. On October 27, 1801, the decision was made for the museum to use the left wing of the former Eudist seminary, which had been used by the mayor's office since 1792. The work was very slow and could not be completed until 1809. The first curators selected a collection of 46 major works of art, including works by Paolo Veronese , Nicolas Poussin and others. This made the Caen Museum the most important collection after Lyon and Paris . Over time, the collections expanded while it was never possible to acquire the Bayeux Tapestry. The stocks increased, but also decreased again after the various wars that affected the region and the neighboring areas.
From 1841 to 1880 the management of the museum was transferred to the painter Alfred Guillard , who published the first catalog in 1850. The largest acquisition in the history of the museum took place in 1872 through the donation of more than 50,000 works by the bookseller of Caen Bernard Mancel. In 1845 he had acquired most of the Roman collection from Cardinal Fesch , uncle of Napoleon Bonaparte . Works included paintings, drawings, and prints by Dürer , Rembrandt , Callot , Perugino , Veronese, and Rogier van der Weyden .
In the years that followed, the museum lost its prestige due to the lack of inspiration from the curators. A fire in 1905 damaged the premises and some works, mostly of Flemish and Dutch schools, as well as the Battle of Hastings by François Debon .
The renovation of the building was not completed until 1936. After the start of the war, 360 paintings, the Mancel collection, Bernard van Riesen Burgh's chest and other objects were transferred to the Saint-Gabriel monastery and the castle of Baillou in 1939 . The collections remained largely intact during the National Socialist occupation until the building was largely destroyed by the Allies on June 7, 1944. On July 7th, the building was completely destroyed after another air raid. While the most important works were saved, 540 paintings (collections of the 19th century), the 400 sheets of the drawing cabinet, archives, inventories and frames were lost forever.
Reconstruction of the museum could only be considered in 1963. In 1971 the new museum built by Jean Merlet in the Castle of Caen was inaugurated. Access to the collections is free on the first weekend of each month.
Most important works
- Pietro Perugino , The Marriage of the Virgin , 1501–1504
- Cima da Conegliano , Triptych of the Madonna and Child between Saints George and James
- Pieter Paul Rubens , Meeting of Abraham and Melchizedek
