La Coupole De Callet Et Son Étonnant Destin Du Palais Bourbon Au Musée Du Louvre

Graceful and sensual, the dome painted by Antoine François Callet (1741-1823) belongs to the history of the great decoration of the French 18th century. Between its execution in 1774 for the disappeared pavilion of the "Petits Appartements" of the Prince de Condé in the Palais Bourbon and its arrival in the Louvre 240 years later, the work went through many vicissitudes: abandonment in 1789 when its commissioner went into exile, its rescue when the building was finally destroyed in 1846, a generous attribution to Fragonard at the beginning of the twentieth century, its purchase by Göring in 1941, its return from Germany in 1948 through the good care of Rose Valland and finally, lastly, its restoration and installation in 2014 at the Louvre, within the new rooms devoted to eighteenth-century objets d'art.

This book recounts the astonishing destiny of this dome, which has witnessed the history of France's monumental heritage and history.