The Musée d’Art et d’Histoire (Museum of Art and History) is the largest art museum in Geneva. It was built by the architect Marc Camoletti between 1903 and 1910, and financed by a bequest from the banker Charles Galland (1816–1901).
The façade is decorated with sculptures by Paul Amlehn: an allegory of the arts, depicting painting, sculpture, drawing and architecture, is mounted on the triangular gable above the entrance, and two more allegories, of archaeology and applied art, can be seen in the left- and right-hand corners of the building respectively.
The fine art section has paintings from the Middle Ages to the 20th century, with works by the Italian, Dutch, French, English, Genevan and Swiss Schools. The best-known painting is The Miraculous Draught of Fishes (1444) by Konrad Witz, contained in Witz's St. Peter Altarpiece. Other major artists include Rembrandt, Cézanne, Modigliani, and the sculptor Rodin. The museum also has numerous works by Jean-Étienne Liotard, Ferdinand Hodler, Félix Vallotton and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot.
The applied art section has collections of Byzantine art, icons, weapons from the Middle Ages and Renaissance, silverware and tinware, musical instruments and textiles. The complete interior furnishing and wood panelling from several rooms of the Lower Castle Zizers (late 17th century) have been built into the museum.
The archaeology section displays findings from European prehistory, ancient Egypt (with a mummy from the 9th century BC), the Kerma culture of Sudan, the Near East, ancient Greece, and Roman and pre-Roman Italy, as well as a numismatic cabinet.
References:The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.