The Musée Jeanne d’Aboville restores its collections

19/1/24 - Restauration - La Fère, Musée Jeanne d’Aboville - The restored painting returned to the collections of the Musée Jeanne d’Aboville in La Fère last December, but not for long, as it will be loaned to the Musée de Besançon next spring. Its restoration and study are part of a project launched by the INHA, under the direction of Isabelle Dubois-Brinkmann, to compile a list of Germanic paintings between 1370 and 1550 in French collections. This work will give rise to a three-part exhibition, to be held from 4 May to 23 September 2024 in Dijon, Besançon and Colmar, with a joint catalogue for the three sites, written in French and German. The Musée des Beaux Arts in Dijon will show paintings from the 14th and 15th centuries; the Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie in Besançon will present Renaissance works and their later copies; and the Musée Unterlinden in Colmar will focus on paintings from the Upper Rhine.

1. Entourage of the Blaubeuren Crucifixion Master (active around 1500)
Saint Acace and the Ten Thousand Martyrs, late 15th century
Oil on panel - 133 x 92 cm
La Fère, Jeanne d’Aboville Museum
Photo: J.P. Bellavoine

See the image in its page

Research undertaken by Aude Briau as part of this project has enabled the painting in the Musée Jeanne d’Aboville to be attributed to the entourage of the Master of the Crucifixion of Blaubeuren. This anonymous painter worked in Ulm around 1500 in the studio of Bartholomäus Zeitblom, himself a pupil and son-in-law of Hans Schüchlin. As Mariel Hennequin, director of the Musée Jeanne d’Aboville, points out, his work combines the bodies of work of two other anonymous artists: the Master of the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist and the Master of the Burial of Saint John the Baptist. This merging of two or three artists into one was proposed in the 2000s by the art historian Anna Moraht-Fromm. The Master of the Blaubeuren Crucifixion owes his name to the Crucifixion depicted on one of the wings…