| We announced in our Sunday number that, from May 20 to 24 included, the direction of the national museums would present, at the museum of the Tuileries Orangerie (Place de la Concorde), the panels executed by Mr. Pierre Girieud for the room Council of the University of Poitiers, on the occasion of the fiftieth centenary of this university. This work, which was subsidized by the General Council of the Vienne, was commissioned to the artist by Mr. François-Poncet, then Under-Secretary of State for Fine Arts, at the request of Mr. Pineau, Rector of the University of Poitiers.
Four panels that will be exhibited at the Orangery, represent Lycurgus and the Spartan oath, Homer among shepherds, Aesculapius at Epidaurus, Pythagoras and his school, and symbolize respectively Law, Letters, Medicine and Science.
A fifth panel is devoted to the glory of the University of Poitiers and groups the illustrations of this institution: Saint-Fortuné, Sainte-Radegonde, St. Gregory of Tours, Charles VII, the Duke of Berri, Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay, Rabelais, Descartes, etc ... Two other large panels frame the war memorials of the university. They evoke France glorious France and Painful. Finally, eight figures in monochrome symbolize the pedagogical virtues.
These panels, which honor the artist who conceived and executed them as much as the university that asked for them, make up a group all to the glory of French thought and art. It is for this reason that the direction of the national museums wanted to present them before their departure for Poitiers. |