The exhibition Italian Art from Cimabue to Tiepolo received exceptional loans from Italy. The entire ground floor of the Petit Palais was cleared of its permanent collections in order to install this ensemble, which began with a presentation of the monumental statue of the Muse Melpomene from the Louvre in the entrance hall of the museum, followed by a reproduction of the Capitoline Wolf.
Many of the greatest masterpieces were displayed here, including the Birth of Venus by Botticelli, the Madonna della Seggiola by Raphaël, the Doni Tondo by Michelangelo, the Venus of Urbino by Titian, and Bacchus by Caravaggio. The Louvre Museum, one of the most significant contributors to the exhibition, along with the museums of Florence, also loaned Leonardo da Vinci’s Virgin of the Rocks and Virgin and Child with Saint Anne.
Resources available online:
Description of the archive materials held at the Petit Palais
A little guide to the exhibition, written by Raymond Escholier, curator at the Petit Palais, was published on 1 June 1935 in a special edition of the newspaper L’Excelsior:
Talk by Benjamin Couilleaux, curator at Cognacq-Jay Museum, entitled "De Cimabue à Tiepolo aux Bas-fonds du baroque : huit décennies d’exposition d’art italien entre enjeux politiques et regards scientifiques, 1935-2015 (From Cimabue to Tiepolo to the lower depths of Baroque: eight decades of Italian art exhibitions involving political imperatives and scientific perspectives, 1935-2015)" as part of a conference on The Major Exhibitions of the Museums of the City of Paris, organised on 11-12 March 2016.
Colloque The Major Exhibitions of the Museums of the City of Paris par Paris Musées
