Avignon is the prefecture of the Vaucluse department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region of southeastern France. Located on the left bank of the river Rhône, the commune had a population of 93,671 as of the census results of 2017, with about 16,000 living in the ancient town centre enclosed by its medieval walls. It is France's 35th-largest metropolitan area according to INSEE with 337,039 inhabitants (2020), and France's 13th-largest urban unit with 459,533 inhabitants (2020). Its urban area was the fastest-growing in France from 1999 until 2010 with an increase of 76% of its population and an area increase of 136%. The Communauté d'agglomération du Grand Avignon, a cooperation structure of 16 communes, had 197,102 inhabitants in 2022.
Pierre Mignard or Pierre Mignard I, called "Mignard le Romain" to distinguish him from his brother Nicolas Mignard, was a French painter known for his religious and mythological scenes and portraits. He was a near-contemporary of the Premier Peintre du Roi Charles Le Brun with whom he engaged in a bitter, life-long rivalry.
Michel Laclotte was a French art historian and museum director, specialising in 14th and 15th century Italian and French painting.
Museum Requien is a natural history museum in Avignon, France. Some of Jean Henri Fabre's work is displayed here.
Esprit Calvet was a French physician and collector.
The Musée du Petit Palais is a museum and art gallery in Avignon, southern France. It opened in 1976 and has an exceptional collection of Renaissance paintings of the Avignon school as well as from Italy, which reunites many "primitives" from the collection of Giampietro Campana. It is housed in a 14th-century building at the north side of the square overlooked by the Palais des Papes. The building, built in the early 14th century as the residence of the bishops of Avignon, was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site as part of the historic center of Avignon in 1995.
Ibrahim Shahda was a figurative French painter born in Egypt.
The Musée Gadagne is a museum located in the center of the Vieux Lyon, in the Saint-Jean quarter, in the 5th arrondissement of Lyon, France. It is composed of the Musée d'Histoire de Lyon and the Musée des Marionnettes du monde. The building was classified as a historic monument in 1920. It was acquired by the city of Lyon between 1902, and 1941. After it was determined to be in need of repair, the museum closed in 1998 for more than ten years for renovation and expansion. It was re-opened on 12 June 2009.
Giuliana Setari Carusi is an Italian contemporary art collector and a major figure in the international art world. After many years in Brussels, New York and Milan, she currently lives between Paris and Brussels. Together with her husband Tommaso Setari she started in the early 80s collecting contemporary art: their collection is now well known internationally. She is the founding President of the non-profit charity organization Dena Foundation for Contemporary Art.
The Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours is located in the bishop's former palace, near the cathedral St. Gatien, where it has been since 1910. It displays rich and varied collections, including that of painting which is one of the first in France both in quality and the diversity of the works presented.
The Musée Magnin is a national museum in the French city of Dijon in Burgundy, in the Côte-d'Or department, with a collection of around 2,000 works of art collected by Maurice Magnin and his sister Jeanne and bequeathed to the state in 1938, along with the hôtel Lantin, a 17th-century hôtel particulier in the old-town quarter of Dijon where it is now displayed as an amateur collector's cabinet of curiosities and as the Magnin family home.
Étienne Martellange was a French Jesuit architect and draftsman. He travelled widely in France as an architect for the Jesuit order and designed more than 25 buildings, mostly schools and their associated chapels or churches. His buildings reflect the Baroque style of the Counter-Reformation and include the Chapelle de la Trinité in Lyon and the church of Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis in Paris. In the course of his travels he made almost 200 detailed pen drawings depicting views of towns, buildings and monuments. These pictures have survived and provide an important historical record of French towns in the first third of the 17th century.
Léon-Honoré Labande (1867-1939) was a French museum curator, historian and archivist. He was the curator of the Calvet Museum in Avignon from 1890 to 1906. He was the archivist of the Prince's Palace of Monaco from 1906 to 1939. He was the author of many books about prominent families from Provence, the city of Avignon, and the principality of Monaco.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Avignon in southern France.
Joseph Girard was a French historian, librarian and museum curator. He was born and died in Avignon, where an avenue is named after him.
The Angladon Museum - Jacques Doucet is a museum at 5 rue Laboureur in Avignon. It is based in the hôtel de Massilian, a former hôtel particulier built in the 18th century. The museum was established in 1996 according to the wishes of Jean and Paulette Angladon-Dubrujeaud, heirs to the widow of the Parisian couturier Jacques Doucet (1853-1929). Its collections includes artworks from the 18th to 20th century.
The Calvet Museum is the main museum in Avignon. Since the 1980s the collection has been split between two buildings, with the fine arts housed in an 18th-century hôtel particulier and a separate Lapidary Museum in the former chapel of the city's Jesuit college on rue de la République. It is one of the museums run by the Fondation Calvet.
The Alana collection is a private collection of paintings, owned by the Chilean economist Álvaro Saieh and his wife Ana Guzmán and kept at their residence in Newark, Delaware. The couple have been collecting since the late 1990s, starting with Italian 'primitives' and Renaissance paintings and later broadening to Baroque art. The collection is described in three volumes:
The Victors of the Bastille in Front of the Hôtel de Ville is a large oil on canvas painting by French painter Paul Delaroche, from c. 1835. it is held in the Petit Palais, in Paris.
