Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon
The Musée des beaux-arts de Lyon
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 Location within Metropole de Lyon
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| Established | 1801 |
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| Location | 20, place des Terreaux 69001 Lyon, France |
| Coordinates | 45°46′01″N 4°50′01″E / 45.766846°N 4.83363°E |
| Type | Art museum |
| Website | Official site |
The Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon ((French) Musée des beaux-arts de Lyon) is a municipal museum of fine arts in the French city of Lyon. It is housed near place des Terreaux in a former Benedictine convent of the 17th and 18th centuries. It was restored between 1988 and 1998, and despite these important restoration works it remained open to visitors. Its collections range from ancient Egypt antiquities to the Modern art period and make the museum one of the most important in Europe. It hosts important exhibitions of art : recently there have been exhibitions of works by Georges Braque and Henri Laurens (second half of 2005), then one on the work of Théodore Géricault (April to July 2006). It is one of the largest art museums in France.
Until 1792, the buildings belonged to the royal abbaye des Dames de Saint-Pierre, built in the 17th century. The abbess always came from the high French nobility and here received the personalities of the kingdom. The institution had a particularly aristocratic slant, as is shown by its renovation by Louis XIV of France in the 17th and 18th centuries. The present state of the palais Saint-Pierre is largely down to these renovations, which included the construction of the baroque refectory and monumental honour-staircase, said to be by Thomas Blanchet. The refectory has been renovated since then and now serves as the reception for group visits, as well as housing two monumental paintings on the subject of dining, The Multiplication of the Loaves and The Last Supper, both by Pierre-Louis Cretey. The rest of its current scheme was designed by Nicolas Bidaut and Simon Guillaume and is made up of sculptures.
The expulsion of the nuns and the destruction of the église Saint-Saturnin date to the French Revolution, though the abbey's other church (the église Saint-Pierre) still exists and now houses 19th and 20th century sculptures. After the Revolution the remaining buildings housed the Palais du Commerce et des Arts, at first made up of works confiscated from the clergy and nobility but later becoming more multi-disciplinary. For example, it gained archaeology and natural history collections and those of the Académie des Sciences et des Lettres. The imperial drawing school was created in 1805 in the Palais du Commerce et des Arts to provide Lyon's silk factories with designers. It gave birth to the famous Lyon School. In 1860, the Chambre de Commerce left the Palais Saint-Pierre and the establishment became the Palais des Arts. From 1875, the museum's collections underwent a major expansion and had to be expanded - the staircase by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes dates to this era.
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Wikipedia