The story
A woman sits by a candle and crushes a flea between her fingernails. Georges de La Tour, the Lorraine painter of candlelit scenes, made this picture around 1632 to 1635, and nobody is sure who she is. She may be a servant, Mary Magdalene, or even the Virgin. The jet bracelet on her wrist, a poor woman's jewel, tips the reading towards the first. The canvas was rediscovered in the mid-20th century, and in 1955 the museum's own learned society bought it through a public subscription so that it would stay in Nancy.
That society is the root of the whole institution. Local antiquarians who formed the Société d'archéologie lorraine in 1848 created the museum in the old Palace of the Dukes of Lorraine, and in 1862 it took over the Galerie des Cerfs, the dukes' long ceremonial hall. In 1871 a fire destroyed the gallery's coffered ceiling and much of the collection. The rebuilding was quick and paid for by gifts, among them one from the Emperor of Austria, whose family descended from the dukes, and the museum reopened in 1875.
Today the palace is closed for a long renovation and extension, with the works due to return around 2029. What stays open is the Église des Cordeliers next door, the church where the dukes of Lorraine were buried.
