故事
The fine-arts museum of Agen, a market town in south-west France, fills four Renaissance mansions of pale stone built around courtyards. Its reputation, though, rests on Spain. In 1901 a local diplomat, the Comte de Chaudordy, left the museum a rare group of paintings by Francisco de Goya.
Among them is a small self-portrait from 1783, the young painter staring out of the canvas with fierce concentration, together with other Goya scenes that are unusual to find outside Spain. The rest of the collection runs from Italian and Flemish old masters to 19th-century French painting, and includes an ancient Greek marble Venus unearthed in the countryside nearby.
The medieval vaulted cellars beneath the mansions hold the archaeology.
