Calvet Museum

The Calvet Museum ("musée Calvet") is the main museum in Avignon. Since the 1980s the collection has been split between two buildings, with the fine arts housed in an 18th-century hôtel particulier and a separate Lapidary Museum in the former chapel of the city's Jesuit college on rue de la République. It is one of the museums run by the Fondation Calvet.
Its collections also include goldwork, faience, porcelain, tapestries, ironwork and other examples of the decorative arts, along with archaeology and Asian, Oceanic and African ethnography.
History.
The hôtel de Villeneuve-Martignan.
The museum is housed in a building on the site of the Livrée de Cambrai, named after its last inhabitant, cardinal Pierre d'Ailly, bishop of Cambrai. In 1719, it was sold to François-René de Villeneuve, marquis d'Arzeliers and lord of Martignan, in the Principality of Orange.
In 1734, de Villeneuve's son Jacques-Ignace de Villeneuve decided to extend the building to designs by , but later changed his mind and razed the whole building in 1741, replacing it with a completely new one to designs by . Work on this new construction was only completed in 1749, which was then bought in 1802 by the businessman Deleutre, who then rented it to the city authorities as a home for Esprit Calvet's collections. The authorities acquired it on 3 March 1833 to turn into a museum. The hôtel de Villeneuve-Martignan was made a monument historique on 1 October 1963.
Museum.
A major collector and a physiocrat by training, Esprit Calvet devoted his life to medicine and arts. In 1810 his will left his library, natural history collection and cabinet of antiquities to his birthplace of Avignon, along with the necessary funds to make them accessible as an independent institution. Napoleon I issued a decree on 9 April 1811 from the palais des Tuileries allowing Avignon's mayor to accept the legacy for and in the name of the city of Avignon. The resulting museum was named after him and housed his collection.
Collections.
Prints and Drawings.
It includes leaves by artists from most of the French and Italian schools as well as a smaller number of Spanish and North European works. Northern artists in the collection include Hendrik Goltzius, Jan Van Goyen and Raphael Mengs, whilst Spanish ones include Vincenzo Carducci and Juan de Valdés Leal.
French artists represented include Le Lorrain, Eustache Le Sueur, Antoine Watteau, François Boucher, Charles-Joseph Natoire, Jean-Marc Nattier, Auguste Rodin, Honoré Daumier, Jean-François Millet, Eugène Boudin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Armand Guillaumin, Berthe Morisot, Paul Cézanne, Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Henri-Edmond Cross, Édouard Vuillard, Georges Rouault, Albert Marquet, Marc Chagall, André Lhote, Léonard Foujita and Jean Fautrier.
Italian artists include Domenico Beccafumi, Lorenzo Lotto, Baccio Bandinelli, Daniele da Volterra, Il Romanino, Paolo Veronese, Tintoretto, Jacopo Zucchi, Taddeo Zuccaro, Il Garofalo, Agostino Carracci, Federico Barocci, Mattia Preti, Luca Giordano, Domenico Fetti, Guercino, Alessandro Algardi, Luigi Garzi, Francesco Furini, Pier Francesco Mola, Daniele Crespi, Giovanni Niccolò Servandoni and Amedeo Modigliani.
Tapestries and furniture.
This part of the collection includes:
Key : 1- Daniel and King Cyrus Before those Sacrificing 2- Cyrus Adores the God Bel 3- Daniel Spreading Ashes 4- The Gate of Bel's Sanctuary Sealed by Royal Decree 5- Night Ceremonies by the Priests of Bel 6- Daniel Revealing the Priests' Secret Ceremonies to King Cyrus 7- King Cyrus Arresting the Priests of Bel 8- Daniel Throws Balls into the Dragon's Mouth 9- Habakkuk Preparing to give Provisions to the Harvesters 10- Habakkuk Rescuing Daniel from the Lions' Den 11- Cyrus Sees Daniel Safe in the Lions' Den 12- The Lions Devouring Daniel's Tormentors
Egyptian archaeology.
The Egyptian section consists of Esprit Calvet's collection along with that of Marius Clément from Marseille and other purchases, including: