The story
Two small panels in Tours once belonged to one of the great altarpieces of the Italian Renaissance. Andrea Mantegna painted them in the late 1450s for the predella, the row of scenes beneath the main picture, of his altarpiece for the church of San Zeno in Verona. One shows Christ praying in the Garden of Olives, the other the Resurrection. The altarpiece was confiscated by the French in 1797 and taken to Paris. The central Crucifixion stayed at the Louvre, and in 1806 these two scenes were sent to Tours. When the main panels went back to Verona in 1815, the predella stayed in France.
The museum fills the former archbishops' palace beside Tours cathedral, and the collection runs through its old rooms. A small early Flight into Egypt by Rembrandt dates from 1627, his years in Leiden. Peter Paul Rubens is here with a Virgin and Child painted as a memorial for Alexander Goubau, grand almoner of Antwerp, and his wife. Later pictures include Arab Comedians by Eugène Delacroix and a view of the Seine near Vétheuil by Claude Monet.
In the courtyard stands a cedar of Lebanon planted in 1804, now more than 30 metres tall. Nearby you meet Fritz, an elephant of the Barnum and Bailey circus, shot in Tours in 1902 after it ran out of control during a parade, and later stuffed for the museum.
