The Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon () is a municipal museum of fine arts in the French city of Lyon. Located near the Place des Terreaux, it is housed in a former Benedictine convent which was active during the 17th and 18th centuries. It was restored between 1988, and 1998, remaining open to visitors throughout this time despite the ongoing restoration works. Its collections range from ancient Egyptian antiquities to the Modern art period, making the museum one of the most important in Europe. It also hosts important exhibitions of art, for example the exhibitions of works by Georges Braque and Henri Laurens in the second half of 2005, and another on the work of Théodore Géricault from April to July 2006. It is one of the largest art museums in France.
Buildings
Abbey
Until 1792, the buildings belonged to the Royal Abbaye des Dames de Saint-Pierre, which was 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. Since then, the refectory has been renovated 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 layout was designed by Nicolas Bidaut and Simon Guillaume and is made up of sculptures.
The Palais du commerce et des Arts
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, giving 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.
The Musée des Beaux-Arts
The collections were opened up considerably at the start of the 20th century, leading to the Palais des Arts becoming the Musée des Beaux-Arts. The building acquired its present layout in the mid-1990s, after the completion of several restoration projects.
Collections
Paintings
The paintings department has European 14th- to mid-20th-century paintings. They are arranged chronologically and by major schools in 35 rooms. The collection features :
Ancient French painting (16th to 18th century) (Nicolas Poussin, Simon Vouet, Philippe de Champaigne, Eustache Lesueur, Charles Le Brun, Hyacinthe Rigaud, François Boucher, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Adrien Manglard, Claude Joseph Vernet etc.). 19th-century French painting (Ingres, Géricault, Delacroix, Degas, Renoir, Manet, Morisot, Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh etc.) ; 14th- to 18th-century Italian painting (Perugino, Lorenzo Costa, Veronese, Tintoretto, Correggio, Guido Reni, Domenichino, Pietro da Cortona, Guercino, Salvator Rosa, Luca Giordano, Mattia Preti, Canaletto, Francesco Guardi, Giandomenico Tiepolo etc.) ; Ancient Spanish painting (mainly 17th century) (El Greco, Jusepe de Ribera, Francisco de Zurbarán etc.) ; Ancient German, Flemish and Dutch painting (mainly 16th and 17th centuries) (Lucas Cranach the Elder, Quentin Metsys, Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, Jacob Jordaens, Gerard David, Rembrandt etc.); 20th-century painting (including Édouard Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard, Georges Rouault, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Albert Gleizes, André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, Amedeo Modigliani, Fernand Léger, Joan Miró, Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, Francis Bacon and painters of the Paris School etc.);
Sculptures
Most of the collection is displayed in two sections: on the ground floor are Medieval and Renaissance sculptures and stuccos of the old baroque refectory; and in the abbey's church are sculptures from the 19th and early 20th centuries.