Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours

The Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours is the municipal art museum of Tours, France, occupying the former episcopal palace near the cathedral of Saint Gatien in the historic heart of the city. Founded in 1795, it is widely regarded as holding one of the most important collections of painting in France outside Paris, distinguished by both the quality and diversity of its holdings. The museum is owned by the municipality of Tours and has been classified as a monument historique since 1983.

The museum's origins lie in the French Revolution. By departmental decree of 6 October 1792, the former archbishop's palace became a depot for works seized from émigrés, churches, and convents, notably the great abbeys of Marmoutier, Bourgueil, and La Riche, as well as from the châteaux of Chanteloup and Richelieu. Under the impetus of Charles-Antoine Rougeot, founder of the city's drawing school, and his son-in-law Jean-Jacques Raverot, the first museum opened to the public on 4 March 1795. During the Empire and throughout the nineteenth century, the buildings reverted to archiepiscopal use, forcing the collections into provisional quarters: first in the former Visitation convent, then in the old Intendance, and finally from 1828 in a purpose-built museum on the place des Arts along the Loire. Only in 1910, when the city acquired the former palace, did the collections return to their present site. The museum's growth was shaped by significant bequests. Gaëtan Cathelineau, pupil and friend of Jacques-Louis David, bequeathed some fifty paintings around 1859. In 1874, Charles-Calixte Schmidt gave furniture, ceramics, enamels, and paintings in exchange for a life pension. The poet and novelist André Foulon de Vaulx bequeathed much of his father's collection of furniture and paintings in 1951. In 1963, under director Boris Lossky, the museum received the collection of painter and collector Octave Linet, establishing it as a major repository of Italian Renaissance primitives after the Louvre and the Musée du Petit Palais in Avignon. The priest Raymond Marcel's collection of Renaissance sculptures and paintings arrived in 1972.

The museum holds over 12,000 works, of which approximately 1,000 are on public display. Its collections span from antiquity to contemporary art. The painting collection is particularly celebrated, encompassing Italian primitives and Renaissance painting, French painting through the nineteenth century, Flemish and Dutch schools, and modern art. The museum also maintains significant holdings of sculpture. A dedicated room on the ground floor is reserved for art of Tours from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The collection's greatest distinction lies in its Italian Renaissance paintings, notably two panels by Andrea Mantegna, Christ in the Garden of Olives and The Resurrection, from the predella of the San Zeno Altarpiece; the third panel, The Crucifixion, is in the Louvre. These entered the collection following Napoleonic spoliations from the Republic of Venice. Other Italian primitives include works by Antonio Vivarini, Giovanni di Paolo, Lippo d'Andrea, and Lorenzo Veneziano, while later Italian painting is represented by Giovanni Battista Moroni, Mattia Preti, Sebastiano Conca, and others. French painting features Claude Vignon, Philippe de Champaigne, Jacques Blanchard, Noël Coypel, Eustache Le Sueur, Jean Jouvenet, Charles de La Fosse, Hyacinthe Rigaud, Nicolas de Largillière, Jean-Marc Nattier, François Boucher, Carle Van Loo, Nicolas Lancret, Jean-Baptiste Perronneau, Joseph Vernet, Hubert Robert, Ingres, Théodore Chassériau, Eugène Delacroix, Edgar Degas, and Claude Monet. The Flemish and Dutch collection includes Rubens, Rembrandt, Frans II Francken, Gerard ter Borch, Bartholomeus van der Helst, and David Teniers the Younger. Modern painting is represented by Maurice Denis and Maria Elena Vieira da Silva. Sculptures by Jean-A.

The museum occupies the former bishops' palace of Tours, a site of exceptional historical depth. The palace was constructed on the rampart of fourth-century Caesarodunum; the corner tower of the palace remains a vestige of these Roman fortifications. A chapel adjoining the palace, also dating from the fourth century, was reconstructed in 591 on the orders of Gregory of Tours, transformed in the twelfth century, and partially destroyed in the seventeenth century during the construction of Archbishop Bertrand d'Eschaux's new palace. The twelfth-century Synod Wing, where the Estates General assembled in 1468 and 1484, constitutes one of the most evocative historical spaces in Touraine. Monseigneur Rosset de Fleury completed the ensemble with a pedimented facade, attic storey, and terraces whose curves follow the plan of the Roman amphitheatre. In 1775, Monseigneur de Conzié erected the imposing portal and semicircular cour d'honneur on the site of former stables, converting the old Synod Hall into an archiepiscopal chapel with an antique-style colonnade. The site was classified as a monument historique on 27 June 1983. The courtyard contains a celebrated cedar of Lebanon and the stuffed Asian elephant Fritz, killed during a Barnum & Bailey circus parade in Tours on 10 June 190.

The Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours is located in the historic centre of Tours, near the cathedral of Saint Gatien, and is owned by the municipality of Tours. Access to the park and courtyard is free of charge. The museum presents approximately 1,000 works from its holdings of over 12,000 objects in its galleries within the former episcopal palace, where it has been housed since 1910.