Musée
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon
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Jovi
September 26, 2021
Housed in a former abbey from the 1600s, the Musée des Beaux-Arts is France’s largest fine art museum after the Louvre in Paris. There are 70 rooms here, with paintings from the 1300s to the 1900s, sculpture and displays of both Egyptian and Oriental art. You don’t need more than a passing knowledge to be impressed by the wealth of famous French and European artists on show: Degas, van Gogh, Renoir, Cézanne, El Greco, Canaletto, Picasso, Max Ernst and Francis Bacon, and that’s just an overview. The Antiquities department is a trove of some 600 Ancient Egyptian artefacts, including reliefs, busts, statuettes and sarcophagi, as well as monumental gates recovered from the Medamud temple.
Housed in a former abbey from the 1600s, the Musée des Beaux-Arts is France’s largest fine art museum after the Louvre in Paris. There are 70 rooms here, with paintings from the 1300s to the 1900s, sculpture and displays of both Egyptian and Oriental art. You don’t need more than a passing knowled…
Pauline
April 15, 2015
Museum of Fine Arts only 3 minutes away :)
Barbara
April 27, 2017
Eye candy everywhere. Even the building is beautiful... It is an old monastery with a quiet courtyard. Inside the building there is a lovely café with a good "café gourmand".
Former Member
March 18, 2016
Beautiful museum and garden
Agnès
June 29, 2015
The Museum of Fine Arts is one of the largest and leading French and European museums thanks to the wealth and impact of its collections and exhibitions. Located in the heart of Lyon, between the Rhône and Saône rivers, it is found in a magnificent building dating from the 17th century. It gathers Greek and Roman antiquities or Oriental, particularly Egyptian, a medallion and collections of paintings, sculptures and decorative arts, which make it, after the Louvre, the most important of the provincial museums. Origin One of the oldest monasteries in Gaul From its foundation around the 6th century to its total reconstruction in the 17th, the abbey underwent many transformations. In former times, the churches of St. Saturnin and St. Pierre were located next to the service quarters and houses of wealthy nuns inside an enclosed area. Because of its wealth and privileges, this monastery was always regarded as being the most important one in the city. The Royal Abbey of the Sisters of St. Pierre In 1659, under Louis XIV, the abbess Anne de Chaulnes obtained the necessary funds to construct the Royal Abbey. Royers de la Valfenière, an architect from Avignon, designed an imposing, Italian-inspired building composed of four wings around a cloister. Work was finished in 1685 under the direction of the abbess Antoinette de Chaulnes, Anne's sister. Until 1792, the buildings belonged to the royal abbey des Dames de Saint-Pierre, built in the 17th century. Around thirty nuns, who were mostly of high aristocratic descent, lived there under the authority of the abbess. The abbess always came from the high French nobility and here received the personalities of the kingdom. In 1730, the abbey was home to some sixty Benedictine nuns, and thirty-two were living there in 1792, when they were expelled. Decorated with beautiful pink marble columns, the private prayer chapel remains as a vestige of their living quarters. The institution had a particularly aristocratic slant, as is shown by its renovation by Louis XIV of France in the 17th and 18th centuries. The present state of the Palace of Saint-Pierre is largely down to these renovations, which included the construction of the baroque refectory and monumental honour-staircase, said to be by Thomas Blanchet. The refectory has been renovated since then and now serves as the reception for group visits, as well as housing two monumental paintings on the subject of dining, The Multiplication of the Loaves and The Last Supper, both by Pierre-Louis Cretey. The rest of its current scheme was designed by Nicolas Bidaut and Simon Guillaume and is made up of sculptures. It now houses the Greek vase collection. In the 18th century, the abbey was among the wealthiest in France, in particular because of revenue obtained from store rentals on the ground level. The Palais du commerce et des Arts The expulsion of the nuns and the destruction of the église Saint-Saturnin date to the French Revolution, though the abbey's other church (the église Saint-Pierre) still exists and now houses 19th and 20th century sculptures. After the Revolution the remaining buildings housed the Palais du Commerce et des Arts, at first made up of works confiscated from the clergy and nobility but later becoming more multi-disciplinary. For example, it gained archaeology and natural history collections and those of the Académie des Sciences et des Lettres. The imperial drawing school was created in 1805 in the Palais du Commerce et des Arts to provide Lyon's silk factories with designers. It gave birth to the famous Lyon School. In 1860, the Chambre de Commerce left the Saint-Pierre and the establishment became the Palace of Arts. From 1875, the museum's collections underwent a major expansion and had to be expanded - the staircase by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes dates to this era. The Musée des Beaux-Arts Creation of the museum Thanks to its proximity to the Lyon city hall, the abbey was not sold or destroyed during the French Revolution, while Terror was prevailing. In 1792, as the nuns left the convent, the Municipal Council designated the building as a place to conserve medals, bronzes and other artistic monuments. In the year IX (1801), the Chaptal decree to establish painting collections in fifteen French cities enabled the founding of the Lyon Museum of Fine Art. The institution also fulfilled local aspirations, such as recalling the city's prestigious Roman past and furnishing models for the silk industry, which was in crisis at that time. In 1803, Napoleon decided to turn it into a museum. Louvre Museum sent a total of 110 paintings (including The Adoration of the Magi by P.P. Rubens, The Circumcision by Le Guerchin and Discovery of the Relics of St. Gervais and St. Protais by Philippe de Champaigne). During the 19th century, the building was home to different institutions. The museums of painting, epigraphy, archeology and natural history shared the structure with the School of Fine Arts, the Municipal Library (Arts and Sciences section) and learned societies. Since then, the “Musée Saint-Pierre” (Saint-Peter’s Museum) has been generally considered the most impressive of Lyon’s museums. The magnificent Palace rooms house paintings and sculptures dating from the 15th century to modern times. Many famous French and European artists are represented: Veronese, El Greco, David, Delacroix, Renoir, Gauguin, etc. A specific section is dedicated to ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman art. The second largest medal collection in France The Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon may house over 8000 antiquities, the big boaster being Egypt with its sarcophaguses and gates of Ptolemy, it may be home to 2500 mind-blowing painters – Picasso, Pérugin, Véronèse, Rubens, Géricault, Delacroix, Monet, Gauguin, Manet, Picasso or Matisse -, 8000 works on paper, and 1300 sculptures, but the museum also has (drum-roll) the second largest collection of coins, medals and seals in the whole of France. This 50000–strong collection began back in the 19th century and was topped up by recent discoveries of the Terreaux and Celestins treasures. The start of the 20th century was marked by a considerable opening-up of the collections, leading to the Palace of Arts becoming the Museum of Fine Arts. After several restoration projects, it was in the mid-1990s that the building acquired its present scheme. The Museum in the XIXth Century The First Years, 1803-1830 From 1803 on, visitors could inspect the first paintings sent by the French state every Wednesday from ten a.m. to one p.m. New deposits (The Assumption of the Virgin by G. Reni, Bathsheba Bathing by Veronese) and purchases (St. Francis by F. Zurbaran, Fruits and Flowers in a Wicker Basket by A. Berjon) helped to build a true museum of fine art that was inaugurated by the Count of Artois on September 20, 1814. The Cabinet of Antiques contained older collections and acquisitions (Greek Kore statue). In the cloister gallery, inscriptions and sculpted fragments make up the lapidary museum. The Palace of Arts 1830-1875 In 1834, the architect R. Dardel (1796-1871) enhanced the museum. In the restructured areas, he added a sumptuous décor, which is currently present only in the Medal Room (formerly the room for modern marbles). In the middle of the century, the development of the Lyon school of painting and new deposits from the French state enriched the collections (Last Words of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius by E. Delacroix, Odalisque by J. Pradier, Dante and Virgil by H. Flandrin, who was a painter from Lyon). The Golden Age, 1875-1900 During this period, the architect A. Hirsch (1828-1913) began extensive work on the building, garden and cloister. His most spectacular undertaking was the restructuring of the south wing to present the large preparatory drawings for the décor of the Pantheon in Paris by P. Chenavard (The Philosophy of History). In 1881, decoration of the monumental staircase was assigned to P. Puvis de Chavannes from Lyon (The Sacred Woods, Dear to Art and the Muses). In the east wing, from 1876 to 1891, the J. Bernard Museum presented some three hundred paintings which had been donated by the former mayor of the La Guillotière district of Lyon to the city. An ambitious acquisition policy marks this period. Museum curators purchased at large sales and from antiques dealers in Paris, Rome, Florence and other cities. They bought primarily Greek and Roman art (Mirror with a Greek Stand), works from the Middle Ages and Renaissance (sculpted group of The Announcement to Mary), Islamic art and 19th century paintings. The Turn of the Century At the beginning of the 20th century, the museum was a precursor in acquiring Impressionist paintings (Café-Concert at Les Ambassadeurs by E. Degas, Nave Nave Mahana by P. Gaugin), which was unique for museums outside of Paris. As a reward for its daring choices, the museum obtained works of established artists such as J. Chinard (Juliette Récamier), Theodore Géricault (Portrait of a Woman Suffering from Obsessive Envy) and A. Rodin; the museum acquired five of his sculptures (including The Temptation of St. Anthony). Between the Wars The collections opened up a world of art to public viewing, ranging from the Far East to modern decorative arts. During this period, many of the institutions and collections left the St. Pierre Palace. These included the Museum of Natural History in 1914 and the School of Fine Arts in 1935. In 1921, works related to the history of Lyon were transferred to the new Gadagne Museum. The deconsecrated church exhibited sculptures from the 19th and 20th centuries. Large Exhibits After World War II, retrospectives focusing on modern artists such as Picasso or Matisse were the source of many major acquisitions (Portrait of an Athlete by M. Larionov). Museum resources were also enriched from bequests (Guimard Bedroom). At the end of the sixties, the departure of French antiquities for the new Museum of Gallo-Roman Civilization and the transfer of the Egyptian Gallery to the Guimet Museum of Lyon represented major upheavals for the collections. More recently, the Museum of Contemporary Art was removed from the New Saint-Pierre wing (built in 1860 by the architect T. Desjardins). The Latest Renovation, 1990-1998 In 1989, debate on the Museum's missions led to a vast renovation project (The City of Lyon and the French State in the Context of the Major Renovation Mission). The curator, Philippe Durey, and the architects P.C. Dubois and J.M. Wilmotte undertook a complete remodeling of the building. Work was carried out in five phases, from 1990 to 1998, in order to keep the building open to the public. There are 14,500 square meters of surface area. The Lyon Museum of Fine Arts groups the Saint-Pierre Palace, the church and the New Saint-Pierre wing. In 1997, the prestigious collection of J. Delubac (Woman Seated on the Beach by P. Picasso) considerably enriched Museum resources.
The Museum of Fine Arts is one of the largest and leading French and European museums thanks to the wealth and impact of its collections and exhibitions. Located in the heart of Lyon, between the Rhône and Saône rivers, it is found in a magnificent building dating from the 17th century. It gathers…
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Lyon, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes