Musée des Augustins

The Musée des Augustins de Toulouse is a fine arts museum in Toulouse, France which conserves a collection of sculpture and paintings from the Middle Ages to the early 20th century. The paintings are from throughout France, the sculptures representing Occitan culture of the region with a particularly rich assemblage of Romanesque sculpture. History A 19th-century illustration of the Musée des Augustins de Toulouse The building in which the museum is sited was built in 1309, in the Gothic style and prior to the French Revolution housed Toulouse's Augustinian convent. In its current location, within the walls of the city, the convent of the Augustins of Toulouse was built from 1310 after the authorization of Pope Clement V given by a rescript dated January 28, 1310. The convent was secularized in 1793, and first opened to the public as a museum. Collections Paul Claudel aged sixteen by Camille Claudel, modeled in 1884 and cast in 1893 The progressive concern of the museum's founder Jean-Antoine Chaptal, an early example of cultural devolution, was intended to ensure that "each collection presents an interesting series of paintings representing all the masters, all the genres and all the schools". In a series of shipments culminating in 1811, Toulouse was enriched with works by Guercino, Pietro Perugino, Rubens and Philippe de Champaigne. The collections total over 4,000 works and their core derives from.