Aix's other central museums are in the quartier Mazarin, south of cours Mirabeau. On place St-Jean-de-Malte the most substantial of the Lot, the Musée Granet (daily except Tues 10am–noon & 2–6pm; €2), covers art and archeology. It exhibits the finds from the Oppidum d'Entremont, a Celtic-Ligurian township 3km north of Aix, which flourished for about a hundred years, along with the remains of the Romans who routed them in 124 BC and established their city of Aquae Sextiae, the future Aix. The museum's paintings are a mixed bag: Italian, Dutch, French, mostly seventeenth- to nineteenth-century, not very well hung or lit. The portraits of Diane de Poitiers by Jean Capassin and Marie Mancini by Nicolas Mignard are an interesting contrast, and there's also a self-portrait by Rembrandt. The rows upon rows of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century French paintings, including Ingres' revolting Jupiter and Thetis, are mostly abysmal, though Ingres' portrait of Granet is certainly worth a look. You finally reach one wall dedicated to the most famous Aixois painter, Paul Cézanne, who studied on the ground floor of the building, at that time the art school. Two of his student drawings are here as well as a handful of minor canvases such as Bathsheba, The Bathers and Portrait of Madame.
|
