Atlanta Museum Presents Eye Of Josephine

"The Eye of Josephine," opening concurrently with "The Louvre and the Ancient World," will reassemble more than 60 masterworks from the collection of Greco- Roman and Egyptian antiquities that were installed by the Empress Josephine at Malmaison, her residence located on the outskirts of Paris.

In 1801 Ferdinand IV, King of Naples, gave Napoleon Bonaparte, then prime Consul, and his wife Josephine a collection of antiquities unearthed at Herculaneum and Pompeii as a peace offering.

The exhibition, which will reunite Josephine's antiquities for the first time since their dispersal in 1814, after Josephine's death and their acquisition by the Louvre among various collections from 1819 until 1865, will feature fragments of frescoes, bronzes, marbles, an extensive group of Greek vases and an Egyptian sculpture. Key works from this collection include a paestan calyx-Krater (ca. 360-350 BC), a bronze statue of "Mercury" (before AD 79) and a set of nine frescoes depicting the muses and Apollo from Pompeii (AD 62-79). A group of objects matching the taste evoked by Josephine's antiquities collection will also be on view to represent their influence on 19th-century style.

Following "The Eye of Josephine" will be an exhibition presenting the work of Jean-Antoine Houdon, a major artist of the French Enlightenment whose portraiture depicted some of the prominent intellectual and political figures of the time. "Houdon in France and America," on view June 7 through September 7, 2008, will feature approximately 20 works portraying intellectual and political leaders, including famous busts of Denis Diderot and François-Marie Arouet Voltaire, portraits of our American forefathers George Washington and Benjamin Franklin and well-known portraits of Houdon's wife and children. The Louvre Museum possesses the largest and most important collection of the works of Jean-Antoine Houdon, and this presentation in Atlanta will enable the first-time publication of a complete catalogue of the Louvre's unequalled holdings of Houdon in French and English.

The picture shows "Calliope, Muse of Poetry," AD 62-79, mural fragment, Musée du Louvre. Photo: Peter
Harholdt by permission of the Musée du Louvre, Paris/High Museum of Art, Atlanta. -- www.high.org