It is the centerpiece of the “Paris-Athens. Birth of modern Greece 1675-1919 ”. With its impressive dimensions (2.64 m by 5.17 m), the painting The Embassy of the Marquis de Nointel in Athens in 1674 is hung in the Louvre, in Paris, in the first room of the exhibition, visible until February 7. “This is the last view of the Acropolis before the partial explosion of the Parthenon, in 1687”, underlines Grégoire Hallé, the curator of the Museum of Fine Arts, in Chartres (Eure-et-Loir). But before it was exhibited in the most famous Parisian museum, it was not easy for the city of Chartres, owner of the painting, to convince the Greeks to return it.
Purchased from a Parisian second-hand dealer in 1882, the work, attributed by specialists either to Jacques Carrey (1649-1726) or to Arnould de Vuez (1644-1720), had been loaned to Athens in 1974 for an exhibition. “She stayed there and never came back. No document, nor agreement, ratified its deposit “, explains the young curator, who had to plunge back into the history of this painting and who took care of its return to France:” Some attempts were made to recover it , but in vain. “
The file of the Carto-Greek painting is at a standstill. “At the time, we tried to work on cross deposits, for Athens to deposit some of his works in Chartres, but this was unsuccessful either. “At the beginning of the 2000s, a little hope:” The painting has been transferred to another museum in Athens, we have received a request for authorization. My predecessors put an agreement back on the table to sign. But nothing to be done yet, the work will remain in Greece. We will have to wait until the Louvre museum recently made contact with the Greek capital. An agreement is reached. The Athenians will lend the monumental work. But at the beginning of July 2021, “I received a call from the curator of the Louvre exhibition telling me that they no longer wanted to lend the flagship work. It was the start of the fight, ”remembers the 30-something.
“They had to be reassured”
“We had to resort to a lot of diplomacy,” says Grégoire Hallé. Art can be a hot issue with some restitutions, look at Benin (this African country, a former colony, has just recovered looted works that were exhibited at the Quai Branly museum). But it was very pleasant to work with the Louvre. “
In the absence of the table, it is therefore several letters that the museums exchange. But no question of frustrating the Greeks, of pointing them. “They had to be reassured. I told them that the painting would then return home, that an exhibition at the Louvre is unheard of, that we cannot refuse and that the painting would have immense visibility. But the gentle, benevolent method does not work … The Greeks find excuses.
“Supposedly, the painting couldn’t come out of the room because of a wall. This is a false excuse, ”specifies the curator, who knows full well that a work can be“ rolled up ”on a cylinder to transport it better. The tone changes: “As the owner of the painting, we demanded that it be loaned and we imposed that it be rolled up, that is to say removed from its frame, which we call a frame, then rolled up on a large tube.
Coincidentally, Hervé Giocanti, art restorer in Marseille (Lazulum workshop) and acquaintance of Grégoire Hallé, is visiting Athens. “He went to see the painting. We have an excellent level of art restoration in France. We know how to be reassuring, ”says our curator. At the beginning of September, relief: The Embassy of the Marquis de Nointel in Athens in 1674 arrived in France. What a story, but what a great story! », Confides our Chartrain. After the exhibition, the painting will return to Athens. An agreement should be signed between the two cities to regularize the filing of the painting and that, for this time, the exchange takes place.
Who is the Marquis de Nointel?
Charles François Marie Olier, Marquis de Nointel, was born in Chartres in 1635. After a career in the judiciary, he was entrusted by Louis XIV with a diplomatic mission in the Ottoman Empire to strengthen commercial ties with France then appointed ambassador to Constantinople. In 1673, he undertook a great diplomatic expedition to the Cyclades, Palestine, Egypt and Athens and took the opportunity to amass a rich collection of art objects. Riddled with debt, he was recalled by Louis XIV in 1680.
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