Jacquelin de Montluçon. A Painter in Bourges and Chambéry in the Late Middle Ages

Edité par Frédéric Elsig

In January 2016, at the annual meeting held by the Trustees of the A. G. Leventis Foundation and the members of the Honorary Committee of the A. G. Leventis Gallery, the Gallery’s Director, Loukia Loizou Hadjigavriel, the Curator of the Paris Collection, Myrto Hatzaki, and the collaborator in Paris, Sylvie Hartmann, presented an ambitious plan designed to bring a lost masterpiece to life. ‘The Jacquelin de Montluçon Project’ was conceived as a research and exhibition programme that would bridge the gap between academic discovery and the desire to address a broad public. Intended to transform the recent findings of art-historical research into an engaging travelling exhibition, it promised to bring together scholars and museum experts, broaden the understanding of the oeuvre of an outstanding 15th-century artist and illuminator and revisit the panels of the lost altarpiece created for the Antonine monks of Chambéry, currently housed among four European museums.

The project set the pace for an extensive journey of research, restoration and planning, under the guidance of Professor Frédéric Elsig of the University of Geneva and with the collaboration of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Chambéry, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the A. G. Leventis Gallery in Nicosia. As the project progressed, the Centre de recherche et de restauration des musées de France [C2RMF] in Paris also came on board, undertaking the X-raying and digital scanning of the panels, as well as the analysis of colours and pigments used by the artist, adding valuable information about the creative process behind the panels.

The present volume, published in English and French, stands as a testimony to the hard work and determination of all parties to present this important body of research before the public. As it stands, ‘The Jacquelin de Montluçon Project’ represents the power of art-historical research to lend itself to original, out-of-the box thinking and truly allows us to reimagine the lost altarpiece painted for the Antonine monks of Chambéry in a way never previously possible.

Mandragora, Firenze 2024.

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