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A Loir for Draguignan
5/12/24 Acquisition - Draguignan, Musée des Beaux-Arts - A dead child lies in the foreground, another is held upside down by a soldier ready to cut it in two. The many witnesses to the scene express, on their faces and through their gestures, a whole range of feelings: horror, amazement, disbelief or indifference, but also maternal love through the self-sacrifice of the woman who prefers to give up her child rather than see him die, or behind the vigilance of the two secondary figures on the right: one keeps her son away from this dreadful sight, the other hides his face to prevent him from seeing. All this turmoil highlights the impassivity of King Solomon, whose job it is to decide between these two mothers who are fighting over the same child, the living one. The one who is lying is…