The Beaux-Arts Museum of Lyon is located in a former 17th century Benedictine abbey on the presque ‘ile. On the plaza facing the museum is a formidable sculpture by Botholdi, he of the Statue of Liberty. Four horses pulling a chariot rise up out of a fountain in an allegory to the Garonne & it’s tributaries. The core of the museum is a sculpture garden surrounded by a cloister.
The chapel of the museum holds the majority of the sculpture collection. It was this exhibition that had the most lasting impression on me with beautifully executed and powerfully emotive pieces by Rodin, Etex, Pradier & Maillol. There was also an excellen holding of Egyptian mummies and canopic jars, which seemed untouched by time. Of all the paintings, I most enjoyed Gericault’s The Monomaniac of Envy. Wayne liked Picasso’s Woman Seated on the Beach and Zubaran’s St. Francis. We spent about 4 hours there, had lunch & then took the funicular back up to Fourviere to see the Gallo-Roman ruins. The Romans settled Lyon in 43 AD and were present for about 350 years. Lugdunum was the Roman name of the city. Evidence of the Romans is everywhere and discoveries are still made. The amphitheater is not as beautiful as Taormina’s but certainly as impressive. The accompanying museum held complete floor mosaics as large as 25′ x 50’ which one could walk on. Many of these were discovered in Lyon homes as late as the 1900’s.
We intended to go to the Museum of contemporaey art after dinner. But there was an event (the type of which eluded us) in the lobby with a speaker.
Les Beaux-Arts
Just went to look up that painting; wow, what a revelation! What a great idea for paintings, these monomanias.
I think I envy the idea of a singular obsession. Focus. Focus.