The new gallery of time is adorned with its most beautiful works

Well packaged, accompanied and handled with great care. Four crates have just arrived at the Louvre-Lens. Four well-known works, seen by all schoolchildren in their school books. Arcimboldo’s Four Seasons took place in the new Time Gallery of the Lensois museum which will be inaugurated on December 4, 2024. The museum is in full swing.

One by one, the paintings are taken out of their crates. Using a flashlight, they are then examined carefully. Works that are “an image of Epinal from our childhood”, says Annabelle Ténèze, director of the Louvre-Lens.

Arcimboldo’s Four Seasons are carefully installed on the walls of the Time Gallery of the Lensois museum. For two years, they will be one of the centerpieces of this new development.

Bust and profile portraits that work in pairs. Winter looks at spring. Autumn looks at summer. Each time, a man, a woman.

Everyone knows them in pictures, sometimes without knowing who the author really is. Or what period they are from.

Annabelle Ténèze, director of the Louvre-Lens

“What is astonishing about Arcimboldo’s Four Seasons is that everyone knows them in pictures, sometimes without knowing who the author really is. Or what period they are from. Because when we look at them, one could have the impression with their humor, their strangeness that they could be surrealist works as well as works of the Renaissance, as they are.”

Compositions of fruits, flowers, plants, vegetables. An allegory of abundance, but also a representation of the four ages of life, time passing, seasons after seasons.

Captivating, surprising paintings at different reading levels. “It’s like the quintessence of all genres of painting: portraiture, still life, landscape. There are all genres brought together in four works, I think that’s also what creates the fascination,” says Annabelle Ténèze.

It’s like the quintessence of all genres of painting: portrait, still life, landscape. There are all genres brought together in 4 works, I believe that this is also what creates the fascination.

Annabelle Ténèze, director of the Louvre-Lens

Giuseppe d’Arcimboldo painted these paintings in the years 1563 and 1573. The painter from Milan was recognized for his art at the time.

With the Four Seasons, a new page in the cultural entertainment offered to visitors and residents of the region also opens for the Louvre-Lens. Annabelle Ténèze says : “These are paintings with enigma, with humor, paintings to rediscover, with the double image: we can see these portraits, these seasons, and also try to recognize all the plants. Realize that some are very common or are not present like tomatoes. Or that the potato is very recent for the European continent, since it is only known from the meeting between the American and European continent, that is to say not so long before these paintings.”

One of the games in front of these surprising works is, undoubtedly, to try to put a name to each plant painted by Giuseppe Arcimboldo. The director of the Louvre-Lens displays a radiant smile in front of them : “I find that they take on an incredible meaning in this museum which is in the middle of a park. There is also a very strong link, with the fact that we have this park, this place of life, the vegetable garden. works, they say as much about us as a portrait of time, as a portrait of the botany of the time.”

Closed since the end of September, the Galerie du temps is gradually coming back to life. Although visitors still have to wait before being able to wander around, the excitement is there every day. With days more or less charged with emotion.

A few days before the arrival of Arcimboldo’s masterpieces, an Egyptian sarcophagus entered the doors of the Louvre-Lens. Ua polychrome cardboard envelope, which covered the remains of a member of the clergy of the civilization of Thebes in perfect state of conservation, dating from 900 years BC.

Kept for two years in the Louvre’s reserves, the funerary ensemble was transported to the gallery of time, with the greatest precaution. Hugo Descamps, who participates in the installation, tells : “We are on something exceptional, we are not used to working with this type of work, we try to be as careful as possible.”

Present for the trip, Emeline Marquilly, manager of works of Egyptian antiquity at the Louvre, explains that : “Lhe greatest risk in the conservation of objects is movement and handling, a fortiori transport. There, the object traveled as calmly as possible.

Each time an object kept by a museum is moved, it is carefully examined by conservation officers. Leaning over the head covered in gold leaf, almost three millennia old, Alexandra Bouckellyoen, art restorer, confides in this always intense moment : “I am checking areas where the polychromy, painted areas are lifted or missing. I look to see if the scale is mobile, if it moves or not. If it moves, it will have to be stabilized, but this is not the case.”

For these experts, working on such a work remains a privilege : “Even when we see them every day, all year round, we are still in front of objects that are several thousand years old, it is a testimony to a civilization that continues down to us.”says Emeline Marquilly.

The coffin tank which has further suffered the ravages of time is then placed alongside the mortuary envelope. The sarcophagus tells the story of the deceased arriving at the gates of the afterlife. Hélène Bouillon, ddirector of conservation and exhibitions, describes the scene : “We see the deceased brought by the hand by the God Orus before the God who presides over all the dead, Osiris. This is something that all the deceased do, they are brought before a court and the supreme judge, the god of the dead Osiris will judge if he can be granted new life.

The sarcophagus holds a majestic place in the new Gallery of Time. Nearly 250 works are being installed. Just a little more patience, it will be inaugurated on December 4, 2024.