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8/4/2004

Dante and Virgil in the Inferno

Musee du Louvre, Paris

by Eugene Delacroix

The Musée du Louvre presents sixty works (drawings, watercolours, pastels, and sketchbooks), selected from its own collection, by one of France's greatest painters, Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863). At the centre of the exhibition, on view for the very first time, is an exceptional private album, a ''national treasure'' recently acquired by the Louvre thanks to the support of Lusis, a French software developer and IT consulting firm, under the new tax regime benefiting businesses contributing to the preservation of French national heritage, established as a result of the French Law of 4 January 2002 and its provisions concerning national museums.
''Eugène Delacroix, the Louvre drawings'' follows upon earlier exhibitions of drawings by Michelangelo, Lorenzo di Credi, Fragonard, and Ingres. It is also scheduled to coincide with the exhibition Dante and Virgil in the Inferno by Eugène Delacroix.

'' Delacroix's drawings are to those of Mr. Ingres as fire is to ice.''
Théophile Silvestre, Documents nouveaux (Paris: M. Lévy, 1864)

Exhibition curator :
Arlette Sérullaz, chief curator in the Department of Graphic Arts, Musée du Louvre, Director of the Eugène Delacroix Museum.

Sully Wing, 2nd floor, rooms 20-23

''No work reveals the future of a great painter better than that of Mr Delacroix representing Dante and Virgil in the Inferno,'' wrote Adolphe Thiers on seeing the first canvas Eugène Delacroix presented at the Salon, in 1822. The exhibition, like the catalogue, will put Dante and Virgil in the Inferno, also known as Dante's Boat, in its historical, artistic and iconographical context, as well as situating it in Eugène Delacroix's œuvre. Through an unprecedented subject inspired by a little-known episode in The Divine Comedy, through a sombre, very dramatic use of the canvas, and through his rapid, dense execution, borrowed from Michelangelo or Rubens, the 24 year old Delacroix astounded, disconcerted or excited the public. The terms of the debate on the question of Romanticism in painting, which would break out in 1824, with the Massacre of Chios, had just been masterfully laid down.

Sully Wing, salle de la Chapelle, first floor

The Divine Comedy
Drawings by Miquel Barcelo'

From April to July 2004, and scheduled to coincide with the exhibition of Delacroix's Dante and Virgil in the Inferno organized by the Department of Painting, a selection of drawings and watercolours illustrating Dante's Divine Comedy are shown in the Salle d'Actualité of the Department of Graphic Arts.
A total of sixty works are exhibited on a revolving basis: in April, works related to the Inferno, in May, Purgatory and in June, Paradise. These drawings completed by Miquel Barceló between 2000 and 2002 were created to accompany the three volumes of The Divine Comedy commissioned by a Spanish publisher and currently being released by France Loisirs.
This exhibition of drawings is in keeping with the Louvre's policy of openness to contemporary art and reconnects with a long tradition of fruitful interchange between living artists and the illustrious works of their predecessors.

Exhibition curators :
Marie-Laure Bernadac, chief curator, special advisor on contemporary art at the Louvre;
Françoise Viatte, chief curator in the Deparment of Graphic Arts.

Salle d'Actualité, Department of Graphic Arts (room 33). Denon Wing, 1st floor.

Image: Miquel Barcelo'

Musee du Louvre
75058 Paris
Open daily except Tuesdays from 9 a.m. to 5.30 p.m., and until 9.30 p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays.

Free access with the Museum ticket.

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