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Thinking of our next destination: Italy and Portugal come to mind, or maybe the time has finally come for a US road trip…

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Rennes: Musée des Beaux-Arts

(vero;2023-June-30)

The Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rennes is well worth a visit. Permanent collections can be seen free of charge, click here for times and access information.

It also houses a weird collection, a cabinet of curiosities, assembled by the Marquis de Robien (1698-1756) which was confiscated at the Revolution and started the art collection of the Museum of Rennes. This page of the museum's website is dedicated to it and is written in French and English (each paragraph is first in French, and then translated into English).

Leandro Bassano (1557-1622): Pénélope défaisant son ouvrage (Penelope undoing her work). Penelope, wife of Ulysses, waited twenty years for his return from the Trojan war, during which time she devised various strategies to delay marrying the many suitors who woed her. One of those was to pretend to be weaving a burial shroud for Ulysses's father and claiming that she would choose a suitor once finished. But every night for three years, she kept undoing part of the shroud…

Anonymous (around 1580): bal à la cour des Valois (ball at the court of the Valois). The couple in the middle is dancing the volta, a dance which was very fashionable at the end of the 16th century.

Anonymous (around 1580-1590): la femme entre les deux âges (the woman between two ages). This painting is the finest example of a composition of which there are many painted versions. The figures wear clothes that can be dated to the late 16th century. The young man wears courtly garb of the late Valois, while the young woman is adorned only with a transparent veil, lending this version a definite eroticism. The characters echo those of Italian comedy. The old man on the right, whose outfit is marked by a disproportionate fly (see the full painting here), is none other than the lecherous old merchant Pantalone. He is rejected by the young girl, the beautiful and seductive Lucia, who prefers the elegant young man, the amorous Horacio, whose little finger she pinches to signify her love (description pasted from the Musée des Beaux-Arts website).

Anonymous, 16th century (Flanders): Virgin with Child.

Philippe de Champaigne (1602-1674): les enfants Habert de Montmor, 1649. These children have been painted as their family had been sheltering in their manor near Paris during the troubled times of the Fronde. The painter has written their names and ages on the stone at the top left of the painting. They were from left to right: Henry Louis (aged 10), Jean Balthazar (7 years and 6 months), François (23 months), Anne Louise (3 years 9 months), Jean-Louis (8 months) and finally the twins Louis and Jean-Paul (4 years and 9 months). Our photo is showing only one twin, click on this link to see the full picture. The little girl is holding a lily and a lemon, both symbols of purity and wealth.

Agathe d'Amsinck, épouse Doutreleau (1822-1880): envahissement des sables d'Escoublac en 1785 (destruction of Escoublac by shifting sand dunes in 1785). This painting has been exhibited at the Salon in Paris in 1848 and earned her creator a bronze medal. Escoublac (near La Baule) was a small village which has been swallowed twice by shifting sand dunes: first in the 14th century and again in 1785 (although it had been rebuilt further away).

Léon Cogniet (1794-1880): scène du Massacre des Innocents (scene of the Massacre of the Innocents). This painting was exhibited at the Salon in Paris in 1824 and was very well received by the public, bringing fame to its creator.

Georges Lacombe (1868-1916): marine bleue, effets de vagues (blue sea painting, impression of waves). Lacombe was one of the main members of the Nabi movement, a group of young French artists active in Paris at the end of the 19th century, who played a large role in the transition from impressionism and academic art to abstract art, symbolism and other early movements of modernism.

André Mériel-Bussy (1902-1984): enterrement d'enfant à Séné (funeral of a child in Séné). This painting was exhibited at the Salon in Paris in 1925. Mériel-Bussy was a regional artist; he has created many murals for churches located in Brittany and most of his paintings depict scenes from this region.

Go back to Paris: Musée d'art médiéval de Cluny or go on to Abbey of La Chaise-Dieu or go up to Museums