The story
One of the most discussed pictures in Chambéry's fine arts museum is a 15th-century Florentine portrait of a young man in profile. It was long given to Paolo Uccello, the painter famous for his perspective, and many scholars now attribute it to Domenico Veneziano, a Venetian-born painter who worked in Florence in the same years. The question has never been fully settled.
The portrait belongs to one of the richest collections of Italian painting in France, which suits a city that was once the capital of the House of Savoy, a dynasty that ruled on both sides of the Alps. Much of it came from the collector Hector Garriod, who gave 104 paintings to the town between 1863 and 1878 and left 140 more at his death. Visitors find a Trinity altarpiece by Bartolo di Fredi, the Sienese painter, and Mannerist, Caravaggesque and Baroque canvases from Florence, Venice and Naples.
The museum fills the former grain hall, the Grenette, set against the old ramparts by the Leysse river and converted by the architect François Pelaz. It reopened in 2012 after renovation. French works hang there too, among them a galloping horse by Théodore Géricault.
