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- 1. The three Virgins with Child from the Bresset collection - two are from Auvergne, the third is Italian - before their sale on February 23, 2023
Photo: Coutau-Bégarie & Associés - See the image in its page
6/3/23 - Acquisition - Le Puy-en-Velay, Musée Crozatier - Strategically located in the heart of the Auvergne, the Crozatier Museum in Le Puy-en-Velay, however, remains poor in medieval sculpture, despite the region’s wealth in this area. As Marie-Blanche Potte, Dominique Faunières, Agnès Blossier and Lucretia Kargère wrote in a reference article published in 2019, "one of the most interesting features of the Auvergne region is the percentage of religious sculptures in polychrome wood, which is higher than the national average", among which "we count about twenty Crucifixes [and] more than sixty Virgins in Majesty": if some of them have long since reached large museums, others remain of course preserved in local churches or chapels. The antique dealer Louis-Pierre Bresset (1902-1988) had gathered some of them in his personal collection, housed in Saint-Paulien, in the Haute-Loire, where he had acquired the castle of La Rochelambert shortly before the Second World War. The appearance of a dozen lots - including three Virgins with Child (ill. 1) - with such a famous provenance among art lovers and historians could not but excite the interest of collectors and institutions alike, who were certainly looking forward to the sale organized on February 23 at Coutau-Bégarie & Associés at Hôtel Drouot.
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- 2. Auvergne, late 12th century
Virgin and Child called Sedes Sapientiae
Carved walnut, polychromed
and marouflaged - 87 x 77 cm
Le Puy-en-Velay, Crozatier Museum
Photo: Coutau-Bégarie & Associés - See the image in its page
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- 3. Auvergne, late 12th century
Virgin and Child called Sedes Sapientiae
Carved walnut, polychromed
and marouflaged - 87 x 77 cm
Le Puy-en-Velay, Crozatier Museum
Photo: Coutau-Bégarie & Associés - See the image in its page
Medieval art specialists and Crozatier Museum officials have not failed to notice the finest (ill. 2 and 3) of the three, a perfectly canonical copy of the Auvergne Sedes Sapientiae produced between the 11th and first half of the 13th centuries. Solidly estimated at €60/80,000, this one was sold for €120,000 by the hammer - or €154,560 including fees - and immediately preempted for Le Puy-en-Velay! Made of carved walnut but also covered with a cloth that does not hide the faces and hands, the statue suffers from several missing parts (the feet of the Virgin, the hands of the Child), which do not alter its legibility. As the museum’s notice states, the work has been little restored in the past, but may need to be treated again. Very well described in the sale catalog, this piece entrusted to the expert Benoît Bertrand certainly corresponds to the Auvergne area: sculpted in the round, the Virgin and Child is seated on a throne with arches supported by five columns and houses a niche in her back intended to collect a relic.
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- 4. Auvergne, late 12th century
Virgin and Child called Sedes Sapientiae (detail)
Carved walnut, polychromed
and marouflaged - 87 x 77 cm
Le Puy-en-Velay, Crozatier Museum
Photo: Coutau-Bégarie & Associés - See the image in its page
Dressed in a long pleated tunic, the Virgin is topped with a veil covering her hair, of which, however, some strands can be distinguished at the temples. Her chest is adorned with a long pectoral encrusted with stones, probably unpolished turquoise. The Child is firmly seated on his mother’s lap, who holds him with both hands (ill. 4). These iconographic characteristics are common to a vast group of Romanesque Virgins with Child executed in the region: in Paris, the Musée du Louvre as well as the Musée de Cluny have preserved fine examples since the end of the nineteenth century, but one could just as easily mention the two superb pieces belonging to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, respectively exhibited on Fifth Avenue and at the Cloisters but recently reunited for the time of an exhibition. Naturally eager to illustrate this emblematic production in its collections, the Crozatier Museum could not have chosen better than this piece, which is perfectly known to specialists: its purchase, assured with the help of subsidies from the State via the Fonds du patrimoine but also from the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region through the FRAM (Fonds régional d’acquisition des musées), was also supported by the department of Haute-Loire, backed by an exceptional patronage from the Société des amis du musée Crozatier and completed by the Société académique du Puy et de la Haute-Loire. This combination of good will was also validated by the Sculpture Department of the Louvre Museum, for which the eminent specialist Pierre-Yves Le Pogam - conservateur en chef du patrimoine overseeing the medieval collections - issued a very favorable opinion.
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- 5. Auvergne, late 12th century
Virgin and Child called Sedes Sapientiae (detail)
Carved walnut, polychromed
and marouflaged - 87 x 77 cm
Le Puy-en-Velay, Crozatier Museum
Photo: Coutau-Bégarie & Associés - See the image in its page
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- 6. Auvergne, late 12th century
Virgin and Child called Sedes Sapientiae (detail)
Carved walnut, polychromed
and marouflaged - 87 x 77 cm
Le Puy-en-Velay, Crozatier Museum
Photo: Coutau-Bégarie & Associés - See the image in its page
While the ancient provenance of the statue (ill. 5 and 6) certainly merits further research, there is no reason to think that the origin reported by its last owner - the church of Arlet, in the Haute-Loire - is false: Louis-Pierre Bresset was well acquainted with this type of object and certainly prospected his region, so rich in medieval wooden sculptures. Shortly after the Second World War, this Virgin and Child was exhibited in Marseille, the antique dealer’s home town, alongside another jewel in his personal collection: the splendid Christ of the Palms, which could have been one of the jewels of the 2008 edition of TEFAF [1], but which was acquired directly from the Bresset heirs by the Société des Amis du Louvre (see the news item of 13/6/10). It should also be noted that one of the most beautiful Romanesque sculptures in French museums, the splendid Crucifixion Christ in the Musée de Cluny, also came from the Bresset family and entered the national collections in 1991 through a dation in payment of inheritance tax, according to its rich online notice.
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- 7. Alsace or Eastern France, second half of the 15th century
Christ Taken down from the Cross by the Angels
Carved, polychromed and gilded wood - 52.5 cm
Private collection
Photo: Coutau-Bégarie & Associés - See the image in its page
In any case, let us salute the voluntarism of the Crozatier Museum of Puy-en-Velay, which once again manages to bring back to Auvergne an important piece of its history: one remembers the reliquary of the Saint Clou of Chamalières, which should have been auctioned off at Christie’s in London in December 2020 before being the object of a salutary purchase by mutual agreement (see the news item of 15/7/21). Although no French museum was able to buy the star piece of the Coutau-Bégarie & Associés sale, the formidable Christ descended from the Cross by angels (ill. 7), which was snapped up by a private collector for €180,320, we can only be pleased out on this preemption from Auvergne, even if the Louvre’s Objets d’art department followed suit a few lots later (article to come). Let us hope that this beautiful Virgin and Child will soon return to its region of origin, where it should soon be joined by the Child Jesus of the Virgin of Meillers, a small village in the Bourbonnais bocage that has become famous since the rediscovery - at the end of 2021 - of a sculpture entrusted to the Sculpture & Collection firm by Bernard Vassy, auctioneer in Clermont-Ferrand. Told in a report of the TV program Des Racines & des Ailes then in an article of Sarah Hugounenq in La Gazette Drouot, this story should soon have a happy ending, thanks to the cooperation of the DRAC and the indispensable support of the Fondation du patrimoine.