WRITTEN IN FRENCH
"A Resurrected House of the Italian Renaissance" is the title that the Italian art historian Lionello Venturi gave to the article he published in 1914 on the occasion of the inauguration of the Jacquemart-André Museum.
Édouard André (1833-1894) came from a family of wealthy Protestant bankers. His wealth and his connections allowed him to quickly become an amateur whose taste, known to all the protagonists of the art world of the time, became increasingly refined. Nélie Jacquemart (1841-1912), of modest origins, achieved success thanks to her talent as a portraitist. Nothing seemed to unite these two very different personalities. However, after their marriage in 1881, their passion for the Italian Renaissance led them to create a unique private museum in their hôtel particulier at 158 Boulevard Haussmann in Paris - as they would later do at the Royal Abbey of Chaalis - where paintings, sculptures and objets d'art helped recreate the atmosphere of a 15th-century Florentine palace. For nearly thirty years, thanks to numerous trips to Italy, the André family forged business and friendship ties with the most famous Italian antique dealers, including Stefano Bardini and Michelangelo Guggenheim, and cultivated close relationships with the leading experts of the time, such as Wilhelm von Bode and Georges Lafenestre, who helped them acquire more than 2,500 works from the main Italian art centers. This collection, a symbol of refined elegance - still unique today - was bequeathed to the Institut de France in 1912, with the aim of making it a museum open to the public. Through the analysis of the couple's modus operandi , supported by the study of numerous documents (letters, photographs, purchase invoices, contracts) preserved in the archives of the Parisian museum and those of their Italian correspondents, this book seeks to shed new light on this magnificent collection.
French
492 pages / 118 illustrations
Officina Libraria
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