Musée Réattu is an art museum in Arles, housing paintings, including works by Arles-born painter Jacques Réattu, drawings by Picasso, as well as sculptures and a large collection of photographs.
The museum is housed in the former Grand Priory of the Order of Malta, built in the late 15th century. The building was acquired in 27 parts between 1796 and 1827 by Jacques Réattu, who lived and worked there. Upon his death in 1833, Réattu's daughter Élisabeth Grange inherited the building and her father's collections. The Museum was officially created in 1868, initially featuring the collections and the works of Jacques Réattu. In the 1950s, at the time of the renovations of the building, modern art began entering the collections. Initiated by Lucien Clergue and Jean-Maurice Rouquette in 1965, the foundation of the department of photography was the first of its kind in an arts museum in France. In 1971, Pablo Picasso donated 57 of his recent drawings to the Musée Réattu.
The museum owns 800 paintings and drawings by Jacques Réattu. Twelve exhibition rooms are dedicated to his own works, his collections (mainly 17th century paintings), as well as works by friends, relatives and collaborators, like The Couturiers workshop painted by his uncle Antoine Raspal in the 1780s. Three rooms are dedicated to Picasso and one room to photography. The collections also include contemporary sculptures by César, Richier, Bourdelle, Zadkine and modern paintings by Dufy, Vlaminck and Prassinos, among others.
The collection of photographs comprised over 4,000 works in 2001. Initial gifts by photographers including Richard Avedon, Cecil Beaton, Man Ray, Peter Beard, Werner Bischof, Izis, William Klein and Jean Dieuzaide, as well as by collectors, were followed from 1970 onwards by photographs donated by the artists attending the Rencontres d'Arles.
References:The Arch of Constantine is situated between the Colosseum and the Palatine Hill. It was erected by the Roman Senate to commemorate Constantine I's victory over Maxentius at the Battle of Milvian Bridge in 312. Dedicated in 315, it is the largest Roman triumphal arch. The arch spans the Via triumphalis, the way taken by the emperors when they entered the city in triumph.
Though dedicated to Constantine, much of the decorative material incorporated earlier work from the time of the emperors Trajan (98-117), Hadrian (117-138) and Marcus Aurelius (161-180), and is thus a collage. The last of the existing triumphal arches in Rome, it is also the only one to make extensive use of spolia, reusing several major reliefs from 2nd century imperial monuments, which give a striking and famous stylistic contrast to the sculpture newly created for the arch.
The arch is 21 m high, 25.9 m wide and 7.4 m deep. Above the archways is placed the attic, composed of brickwork reveted (faced) with marble. A staircase within the arch is entered from a door at some height from the ground, on the west side, facing the Palatine Hill. The general design with a main part structured by detached columns and an attic with the main inscription above is modelled after the example of the Arch of Septimius Severus on the Roman Forum.