Lyon – Day 2 (Museum of Fine Arts)

September 24, 2014 by lafrancoysse 1 Comment

My main purpose for being in Lyon is to go to the library at the Musée des Tissus (Cloth or Textile Museum). However, it is closed on Monday’s. The Fine Arts Museum, however, turned out to be open on Monday’s but not Tuesday’s. So the Fine Arts Museum was just the thing to plan for this day (Monday, Sept 22nd). The trip to this museum involved me learning the use of Lyon’s metro (underground). But that proved to be pretty easy. One French metro is, in many ways, like another. The trick is to have collected euro coins (not bills) so that you can use the ticket machines.

Turns out, this museum had a whole lot of 18th and 19th century art. So not too many 16thC treasures were found. One doesn’t know this until one goes there. A few interesting things, though…a lovely early-16thC gown (Flemish), and some wonderful bronze sculptures by Honoré Daumier of politicians of the time (mid 1800s):

Work attributed to that world-renowned painter, Adriaen Isenbrant

Honoré Daumier busts (1831/1832) – great faces!

Other 16thC finds included a lovely room of medals and coins, many of which have images of 16thC royalty (most notably Anne de Bretagne, France’s queen from 1488 to 1514]. I’d seen several of these in a book, so it was great to see them in person. Unfortunately, the light in the room and the fact that they were under glass meant that my photos really didn’t turn out. I wasn’t too stressed because I do have images at home for most of these from the book. And, speaking of book, I saw a wonderful book in the museum’s book store that hase even more lovely images of these medals. It cost a worthy sum, so I just took down the title and will try to borrow it through inter-library loan. The most interesting find was a set of Limoges plates by Pierre Reymond. These had images in the center depicting different months of the year. Several of these images had ladies in French Hoods! My photos came out OK, which was good, because of course that wasn’t something the gift store deemed worthy of reproducing (in book or postcard…sigh, again). But I have the artist’s name and a potential book title to track down…

Month of September: Limoges plate (1562) by Pierre Reymond

And then there was the classic example of how 19thC painters have left us with a grossly permuted idea of what people in the 16thC (and other centuries as well) wore. Here is a painting of Thomas More (for more info on Thomas More, click on this link), in prison just before being executed for not changing spiritual allegiance from the Pope to Henry VIII (sorry the picture is so fuzzy).

Thomas More by Claudius Jacquand (1827)

Now this event occurred in 1535. I can definitely tell you that the gowns that these ladies are wearing are more in line with the 1550s or 60s, that the chemise that is filling in the neckline of the woman in red is more from the 1570s, and that the headdress on the woman in yellow is pure invention (the one for the woman in red isn’t too bad but isn’t from 1535!) !! Sigh….

Woman in red (detail – Thomas More painting)

Woman in yellow (detail – Thomas More painting)

But the museum did provide an excellent specimen for today’s “bit with the dog”:

Sculpted by Georges Gardet around 1894

For dinner, I chose a restaurant that was listed in my Michelin Guide as being run by the same family for 3 generations….and it was close by the hotel. I have a lovely wine that I’d never had before, from Côte de Brouilly, which is in the southern part of Beaujolais, just a bit north of Lyon. My meal consisted of: AMUSE-BOUCHE – 2 little pieces of smoked salmon with a tiny dollop of cream that had dill mixed into it; ENTRÉE – “ballotine de lapin et noisette, coeur de foie gras”, which was a slice of rabbit “boxed” in (ballotine=box) with its “coeur” (heart) of foie gras, kinda like a terrine, but the rabbit was not minced, and served with an apricot coulis…Yummy…and not as overly rich as foie gras can sometimes be; PLAT – slices of Albacore tuna that had a lovely pesto sauce around them and were served with a package that was “wrapped” with lengthwise slices of zucchini and whose filling was cooked eggplant; FROMAGE – a lovely mix of some robuchon, chèvre, rochefort, and a 4th one whose name I forget; DESSERT – Opéra of pistachios (layers of chocolate, pistachio cream, and cherry jam) served with a small scoop of cherry sorbet; it was lovely, but I confess, it was too chocolately for me to really enjoy). HOT BEVERAGE: a lovely green gunpowder tea. I was really, really full, causing not such a great night of sleep. Such sacrifices I make, huh? But I am almost caught up with the blog…..!