A small museum site that has been taken over since the opening ceremony

The communications manager from the Magnin museum in Dijon he was not in front of his TV on Friday 26 July. But the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Games he quickly invited himself into his life. “I was contacted on my phone with calls from different social networks,” Leslie Weber-Robardet says today. It was then that I realized that a comparison was made between the “Feast of the Gods” scene from the ceremony “and the painting” of the same name that was exhibited at the Magnin museum.

Feast of the Gods has been hanging since 1938 in the same small room of the museum, which is visited by nearly 15,000 people every year. This painting by the Dutch painter Jan van Bijlert, which was done around 1635-1640, never enjoyed such glory.

Seen on social media

But at the opening ceremony, an animated tableau imagined by the team of Thomas Jolly showing the actor and singer Catherine Philippe almost naked, disguised as Dionysos, the Greek God of wine, in front of the Christmas feast, the fate of Jan van Bijlert’s painting changed.

The ceremony was not even finished, the scene was indeed subject to criticism from the ex-Reconquest MEP Marion Maréchal, as well as the former American president Donald Trump through the Italian sovereign Matteo Salviniwho saw it as a reference to the Last Supper.

The ceremony’s artistic director Thomas Jolly denied it was inspired by Christ’s last supper, claiming it was a reference to “a great pagan festival linked to the gods of Olympus”. On social networks, some then mention the “Feast of the Gods” in Dijon.

“It’s a mythic work of inspiration. This is a ceremony that takes place in Olympus. It is the wedding of Thetis and Peleus. For example, we recognize Neptune, Apollo, Diana and, of course, Bacchus, together with a bunch of grapes,” explained Leslie Weber-Robardet.

“Not at the origin of this comparison”

“The museum is not at all the source of this comparison,” she assures, acknowledging that she has not been able to “identify the first Internet user who was able to make this connection. “

The museum nevertheless appreciates the publicity stunt. “There was a huge increase in our website: we went from about 150 visitors to 150,000 overnight,” she says happily, not being able at this time to assess whether physical visits have been effective .