Musée des Beaux-Arts (Fine Arts Museum)

Musée des Beaux-Arts (Fine Arts Museum) Review

In the elegant 17th-century Palais St-Pierre, once a Benedictine abbey, this museum has one of France's largest collections of art after that of the Louvre, including Rodin's Walker, Byzantine ivories, Etruscan statues, and Egyptian artifacts. Amid old master, Impressionist, and modern paintings are works by the tight-knit Lyon School, characterized by exquisitely rendered flowers and overbearing religious sentimentality. Note Louis Janmot's Poem of the Soul, immaculately painted visions that are by turns heavenly, hellish, and downright spooky. A recent legacy has endowed the museum with a new trove of treasures including works by Manet, Monet, Degas, Bacon, Braque, and Picasso.