On November 16, the Friends of the Cluny Museum acquired at public auction in Paris a walrus ivory figurine from the collection Marquet de Vasselot. The chess piece caught the eye of the curators because of its type, style and antiquity.
On November 16, the Friends of the Cluny Museum acquired at public auction in Paris a walrus ivory figurine from the collection Marquet de Vasselot. The chess piece caught the eye of the curators because of its type, style and antiquity.
The figure (somewhat worn) is that of a bishop (the bishop is now a "fou" in French), and is a descendant of the Indo-Persian elephant, transformed in passing by the aniconic Arabic tradition. The game of chess came from the Orient and was imported into Western Europe in the ninth and tenth centuries.
Its style? The frontal representation of the figure is directly inspired by episcopal seals and is quite different from the bishops of Lewis (Scandinavia, second half of the 12^thcentury), the oldest pieces of this type known today.
Its date? The flattened horns of the mitre suggest a dating in the first half of the 12^th century.
Northern France? England? Mosan or Rhenish? Our bishop seems in any case to come from Northwestern Europe.

The Lady and the Unicorn Prize is attributed this year to the book by Jean-Claude Maire Vigueur : "L'autre Rome. Une histoire des Romains à l'époque communale
(XIIe-XIVe siècle)", published by Tallandier.

The author is a specialist of the Italian city-states and he sketches an animated picture of a medieval Rome where century after century barons and leaders of the popolo, landowners and day labourers, merchants and bankers, cardinals and artists rub shoulders. He brings to life the market place, building sites, the social classes, and the intrigues and reversals of political life.
Contradicting the long-standing and uncomplimentary image of a city left in abandon between the grandeur of ancient Rome and the splendours of the Baroque period, the book shows that the medieval commune was a vibrant entity that affirmed its independence from the papacy with highly adaptable forms of government. There is no doubt in the author's mind that Rome was on equal footing with the great city-states in northern and central Italy.

Awarded by the Friends of the musée de Cluny, the Lady and the Unicorn Prize has been presented at the Cluny Museum.

On June 6, 2011, the Cluny Museum pre-empted a public sale at the Hôtel Drouot in order to acquire with the help of the Friends of the Museum a somewhat damaged, but rather beautiful piece of sculpture that was previously unknown. The limestone statue is 84 cm high and lacks both the head and hands. The man wears a long tunic and a mantle that falls in rolled folds on the right and is buttoned at the left shoulder.

The pose and drapery style bespeak the Ile-de-France during the last third of the thirteenth century. The work will now be studied, cleaned and consolidated. It will be presented to the museum at the end of the year.

It will be put on display in the museum at the end of the year.

Twenty-one of the works restored for the exhibition "Paris, ville rayonnante", in the Spring of 2010, have now found a permanent home among the thirteenth-century masterpieces displayed in the rooms devoted to Gothic sculpture.

Eight fragments coming from the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris - mullions, parts of the rose window, a handrail, and a balustrade - are presented in room 11 with the statues of the apostles coming from this venerable edifice, built between 1246 and 1248.

Thirteen other finely sculpted pieces have been installed in room 12: capitals from Saint John Lateran (first quarter of the thirteenth century) and the Cathedral of Chartres (c. 1230), a gargoyle from Saint-Martin-des-Champs (c. 1240), a console from the cloister of Saint-Denis (c. 1250-1260), elements from the portal of Saint-Gervais-Saint-Protais (c. 1260-1270), and a Parisian foliate mask (1280-1290).

As the two rooms are in the midst of the tourist circuit, work was carried out on Tuesdays, when the museum is closed, between November 2010 and January 2011. At the same time, lighting was improved and information panels updated. The Friends of the Museum provided the funding for three quarters of the work.

Awarded the 28th of September 2010 at the Cluny Museum, the book prize "La Dame à la Licorne" pays tribute this year to the ambitious collective work Histoire du monde au XVe siècle.

Edited by Patrick Boucheron and coordinated by Julien Loiseau, Pierre Monnet and Yann Potin, the book brings together sixty specialists from cultural areas that are very rarely confronted, and this is one of its main appeals. It intends to go beyond a traditional Euro-centric vision and embrace the four continents during the fifteenth century, which is treated here as one of incipient globalization.

Its political atlas presents China during the early Ming Dynasty, as well as the last indigenous empires in the Americas and the kingdoms of Africa. It highlights significant events such as the death of Tamerlane (1405), the sack of Angkor and fall of the Khmer (1431), the consecration of Brunelleschi's dome in Florence (1436), the fall of Constantinople (1453), and the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494).

The book then opens a "library" of the fifteenth century, where one finds the Memoirs of Babur Nama, the Log of Christopher Columbus, or The Prince by Machiavelli, before summing up with some larger historical questions, especially those that arise from travel, the links and general exchanges between men and cultures that mark the fifteenth century.

With this volume, the jury wished to salute a very "French" contribution to the history of globalization, previously studied almost exclusively by Anglo-Saxons, as well as a work that is timely for the understanding of the present era.

Edition Fayard - Novembre 2009 - 896 pages - 85 €

At the end of June 2010, the Friends of the Museum acquired in London a leaf illuminated around 1460-1470 representing the Nativity and Saint Cecilia.

About the size of an A4 sheet of paper, the leaf has been taken from the Méditations sur la Vie du Christ, attributed to Bonaventure and translated by Jean de Galopes. The Méditations are a particular kind of prayer customary in the monastic milieu, combining oral reading and "meditative rumination", which spreads to the laity at the end of the Middle Ages.

The shield in the lower margin reveals that the owner of the work is a member of the Chabannes family, which took possession of the fief of Madic in the Cantal in 1453. The specific owner may be Gilbert de Chabannes, who died in 1493.

The miniature, surrounded by a border of rinceaux and flowers, is of notable artistic interest. According to the great specialist François Avril, the somewhat dry style and brilliant contrasting colours are related to the production of painters in western central France in this period, artists such as Robinet Testard or the Master of the Psalter of Jeanne de Laval.
The leaf has now joined the collection of paintings on parchment at the Musée de Cluny.

The book prize "La Dame à la Licorne" for 2009 honours the biography of Saladin by Anne-Marie Eddé, published in October 2008.

Salah al-Dîn (1137-1193) is a mythical figure in the Arabic-Muslim world. This sultan of Kurdish origin, who was the son of a provincial governor and rose to become the master of an immense empire, is justly celebrated : he forced the Crusaders to retreat, liberated Jerusalem and unified a large part of the Muslim world. But he also inspired the respect, if not the admiration, of his adversaries because of his chivalric spirit and his personal wisdom and tolerance.

Anne-Marie Eddé shows what this double reputation owes to Saladin’s undeniable military and political acumen, but also to the care that he and his circle gave to “communication”. With the intention of confirming his legitimacy, the propaganda campaign of this indefatigable warrior and champion of Islam did everything possible to portray him as the ideal sovereign. Its success continues even today both in the Arabic-Muslim world and in the West.

In distinguishing between the legend and reality, Anne-Marie Eddé, specialist of medieval Arabic history, brings to life the man, his family network, his conception of war, religion and power, and makes accessible his world and troubled times.

The “Dame à la Licorne” Prize has been officially awarded after a presentation of the book on the 14th of October, at the Musée de Cluny, in the lecture series “Un mois, un livre”.

As an enhancement to the documentation of the history of the museum and its collections, the Friends bought a painting by Pierre-Achille Poirot (27 x 33 cm) entitled “View of the great hall in the palace of the baths of Julian in Paris, now used as a museum for monuments of the Middle Ages”.

Dated 1845, this oil on paper shows the frigidarium just one year after it was opened to the public. The room was reserved for sculpture. Under the spectacular groin vault, which is 14 meters high, one can identify ancient works that are still on display today, namely the Pillar of the Navigators and the Pillar of Saint Landry. Easily identifiable are the Roman capitals, set out on the floor, and the headless statues of the apostles from the cathedral of Notre-Dame, Paris, found in 1839.

P.A. Poirot (1797-1855), known for his scenes of Italian monuments, also painted in 1850 two exterior views of the Hôtel de Cluny.

In its second year, the book prize of “La Dame à la Licorne” was awarded by the Friends of the Museum to Jacques Rossiaud, professor emeritus of medieval history at the University of Lyon II, for his book : Le Rhône au Moyen Âge.

The Rhone and its tributaries flow over 850 kilometers from the glaciers of the Alps to the Mediterranean Sea. The river marked the border between the Kingdom of France and the Empire. A confluence of riches, men and ideas mark its history as “an area of passage, transit, contact, fruitful meetings and triumphant history”.

The author retraces the course and evolution of the convoys of wine, salt, and wool over the centuries. He brings to life the men and women of the river and tells the story of its traditions and beliefs. For the medieval historian Jean-Claude Schmitt, “this book is a brilliant combination of all types of historical questions : it is a rare example of total history”.

Éditions Aubier, 653 pages, 24 maps, 29 €.

A rare ivory casket, typical of the work produced in Paris during the years around 1300, entered the collections of the Musée de Cluny.

The ivory was acquired by Groupama, thanks to the intervention of the Friends of the Museum. Groupama, the second most important French insurance firm, took advantage of a legal provision concerning works of art of major interest to the national heritage.

The casket is unusually large (23 x 17 x 10 cm), of excellent quality, and fascinating in its iconography. The five elephant-ivory panels are carved with scenes of courtly love from various sources : The Assault of Love's Castle, Tristan and Isolde, and The Quest of the Grail.

Elements of style, details of posture and drapery, as well as the delicacy of certain faces point to the opening years of the fourteenth century. It is one of the earliest examples of its type. Comparable pieces are found only in Cracow (Cathedral Treasury), Florence (Bargello), London (British Museum and Victoria & Albert), New York (Metropolitan) and Baltimore (Walters Art Gallery). Isolated panels are to be found in other museums.