The Draguignan Museum of Fine Arts is currently offering a very special exhibition with an incredible history.
Indeed, originally from the south of France, Marguerite Maeght knows the story of Saint Roseline well, whose miracles are famous in this region. She then decides to ask him for a grandson (she already has several granddaughters). Her wish granted, the collector and patron feeling indebted, called on her closest artist friends to tackle the restoration of the chapel dedicated to the saint, located in Arcs-sur-Argens. Giacometti, Chagall, Bazaine and Ubac will participate in this project and will give this building a celestial dimension.
Marguerite Maeght’s wish is presented at the Draguignan MBA until September 22.
Marguerite, a local child
For Marguerite Maeght – born in Cannes, raised in Bargemon – religiosity and superstition, faith and hope merge in the figure of the saint to gradually become a family reference within the Maeghts. “Her grandfather, a sailor, had already dedicated himself to the saint. After the war, on the occasion of the Parisian exhibition Le Surréalisme in 1947, at the Galerie Maeght, Marguerite would secretly sprinkle holy water on the irreverent works. Similarly, during a malaise in the United States, she entrusted her fate to the saint.” comments Yohan Rimaud. “And if in 1964, the Fondation de Saint-Paul de Vence was dedicated to the memory of their son Bernard, who had died ten years earlier, the transformation of the Chapelle Sainte-Roseline would respond to Marguerite’s specific wish to welcome a grandson into her family,” adds the curator.
In 1968, when Jules was born, Marguerite saw a dear wish come true. She approaches Father Gamba, priest of Les Arcs and visits the dark and dilapidated chapel, to which only the headlights of her car can bring a little light. She first proposed electrification then, in 1969, restoration work was launched. The 16th century altarpiece and seven paintings on the central wall will be restored. The reliquary of the saint’s eyes is placed in a modern case. The roof, vaults, walls and floors were reworked and the stained glass windows replaced by new frames designed by Jean Bazaine and his accomplice Ubac. Through her project at Les Arcs, Marguerite Maeght seems to extend, in the private sphere and in the intimacy of her devotion, the work of the Foundation, which welcomes and supports in particular the friends and masters of modern art such as Diego Giacometti, Raoul Ubac, Jean Bazaine and Marc Chagall. Thus, after having been since the 16th century the chapel of the Villeneuve family, bringing together the funerary slabs of its members, the church invested by the artists de facto enters the family bosom of the Maeght where, moreover, the funerals of the patron.
