A work missing for over a century is back in the Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Orléans
After an absence of over one hundred years, the anonymous painting Christ entre saint Paul et Apollos d'Alexandrie (1546) returns to the Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Orléans, sealing the happy outcome of a long quest!
When the painting appeared on the art market in 1994 at Hôtel Drouot, it was acquired by the Musée de l'Oise (Beauvais). Eric Moinet, director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Orléans, was quick to identify the painting, which had been noted missing in 1923 and had probably disappeared earlier: in addition to the rare subject and the inscribed date, which coincide, he found exactly the same phylactery inscriptions that Eudoxe Marcille had transcribed in the catalog raisonné of the collections published in 1876. Yet, despite this evidence, the work remained in Beauvais. It took three decades of discussions and expert appraisals to reach a restitution agreement, which was finalized in 2023 with the publication of the Catalogue des peintures françaises et italiennes: XVe-XVIIe siècles des musées d'Orléans, officially reinstating the work in the Orléans collections. The painting was physically returned to its original museum on Thursday June 26, and will shortly be displayed in the permanent exhibition, with a special focus on the search for missing or stolen paintings.
This was a crucial issue for the museum, given the history of Orléans. While the issue of restitution relates to the spoliations associated with the Second World War, it also concerns the many works of art in public collections that have disappeared over time, but which are ineliminable and imprescriptible. In particular, Orléans suffered major losses when the Annexe du Musée de Peinture - Paul Fourché was looted in June 1940, as recently evoked in the exhibition "Paul Fourché (1840-1922), l'amasseur d'art", on view from November 12, 2023 to March 24, 2024. In addition to the 350 paintings and as many drawings that have never reappeared, the museums of Orléans have, over the decades, seen certain works disappear from their inventories. The return of this painting joins that of Louis Neillot's Sous-bois, claimed in a June 2024 sale.
