Bonsai Dijon Escale

The museum is proud of the local artists it has nurtured or outsiders it has encouraged when Burgundy was powerful. Philippe de Champaigne (17C) was born in Flanders but became French and a prominent location is reserved for his large religious canvas of the "Presentation at the Temple". On the ceiling of the Statue Gallery is a Pierre-Paul Prud'hon "copy" of a Cortone ceiling in the Barberini Palace in Rome "Triumph of Religion" (1787). He was the first Roman scholarship winner of the Beaux Arts and did this as a demonstration of what he had learned. Among a select number of 17-19C French canvases are displayed two busts, one of Jean-Philippe Rameau who was born in Dijon, by Caffieri, the other sittting before an emblematic Aubisson Tapestry is of Louis XIV by Coysevox. The entry to the museum is via the remains of the Sainte Chapelle which holds many ancient statues and in a protected niche displays a golden crown and an 11C crozier, both covered by an old wooden door bearing the seal of the Golden Fleece. With displays like this one wanders through the entire museum continually encountering its treasures in room after room.