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- 1. Antonio Vivarini (1420-1480)
The Archangel Gabriel
Tempera and gold on panel - 63 x 41.5 cm
Currently being acquired by the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours
Photo: Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours - See the image in its page
22/6/23 - Acquisition - Tours, Musée des Beaux-Arts - Since the beginning of May, a very beautiful archangel (ill. 1) has appeared among the Tours museum’s collection of Italian paintings, disrupting the hanging to the point of replacing the two famous panels by Andrea Mantegna on their wall. It has to be said that the painting is captivating from the first glance: we appreciate both the finesse of the line and the freshness of the colours in this late work by Antonio Vivarini, which has remained unpublished until now. The position of the archangel, sketching out a blessing, makes it easy to imagine that we are admiring the left-hand side of an Annunciation, with the thin stem of lilies corroborating this Marian symbolism. Kept in a private collection until 2014, the panel was then attributed to Bartolomeo Vivarini, a pupil and younger brother of Antonio Vivarini, to whom The Archangel Gabriel was then attributed by Mauro Lucco, a professor at the University of Bologna, quickly followed by Emanuele Zappasodi and Gianmarco Russo.
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- 2. View of four panels probably from the same polyptych
- See the image in its page
Belonging to Matthiesen Gallery, L’Archange Gabriel has been linked to a (Virgin of the Annunciation sold at Sotheby’s in Monaco in 1996 and not located since, but above all to the two panels representing Saint Louis of Toulouse and Saint Anthony of Padua in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Tours (ill. 2). Naturally eyeing up this painting fund, the institution immediately imagined bringing the three works together, but the operation, slowed down by the difficulties caused by the recent pandemic, took more than three years to come to fruition. It was thanks to the providential bequest of a Tours resident - Colette Grosbois, née Rousseau, to whom we must pay tribute today - that a financing plan was drawn up. The initial price of €394,000 was reduced to €345,000 following negotiations with the vendor, and the Ministry of Culture was asked to provide €124,000 from the Fond du Patrimoine (Heritage Fund), in addition to the €97,000 from the Grosbois bequest. The museum’s entire annual acquisitions budget - €64,000 - was redirected to the operation, for which it was still €60,000 short.
So on 5 May, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours launched a fundraising campaign, appealing to the generosity of businesses and private individuals alike: willingly supported by elected representatives and widely reported in the local press, the campaign was a great success, with €53,000 already raised by 15 June. Aptly entitled "Adopt your angel", the campaign will remain active until the end of the month, but its success is no longer in doubt. We can only rejoice at such an event, the operation being a first for the museum, which had never before devised such a system of cross-financing between private patronage and public subsidies. It is also a fine tribute to the taste of another major patron of the arts in Tours, the famous Octave Linet. Born in Bléré, on the banks of the Cher, Linet was a well-informed collector, a friend of artists and art lovers whose paintings he restored. A close friend of the curators of the Musée de Tours, Octave Linet took care to reserve for them 38 Italian primitives and 12 medieval sculptures, which were therefore withdrawn from his sale after his death, organised in aid of the Red Cross in 1963.
This exceptional collection - rich in works by Venetian, Tuscan and Bolognese masters - forms the basis of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours’ celebrated collection of Italian primitives, which was supplemented by two Musician Angels by Lorenzo Veneziano in 1998 and Funeral of Saint John the Baptist by the same artist in 2005. This small, previously unpublished panel had been identified as belonging to Giovanni Sarti by Andrea de Marchi and then acquired - with the help of a grant from the FRAM (Fonds Régional d’Acquisition des Musées) - by the museum, which was preparing to open an exhibition on the subject (see article). A year later, Tours launched a new sponsorship campaign to acquire two superb panels by Jean Bourdichon making up a diptych - classified as a National Treasure - which was acquired for €700,000 thanks to the company PGA Holding (see the news item of 25/2/07).
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- 3. Antonio Vivarini (1420-1480)
Saint Louis of Toulouse
Tempera and gold on panel - 63 x 42 cm
Tours, Musée des Beaux-Arts
Photo: François Lauginie - See the image in its page
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- 4. Antonio Vivarini (1420-1480)
Saint Anthony of Padua
Tempera and gold on panel - 60 x 42 cm
Tours, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours
Photo: François Lauginie - See the image in its page
Delicately restored and framed, unlike the two Touraine panels (ill. 3 and 4), L’Archange Gabriel has been on display alongside them as part of a small exhibition-dossier since the beginning of May. Although it is permissible to prefer the third painting, the masterpiece of the group, their relationship is striking and their union perfectly logical. As well as being very similar in size, Saint Anthony of Padua and The Archangel Gabriel share the same lily stem. It is to be hoped that the acquisition of the latter will be followed by further technical analyses, which may also enable us to refine their origin: as things stand at present, we can only assume that the four panels come from the upper register of a polyptych destined for a Franciscan church in the Venice region...