Museum of Art and Archeology of Périgord

A first museum was established in 1804 in the city's Jesuit chapel by Count Wlgrin de Taillefer. In 1808, the increasing collection was moved to the Vomitorium of the arena of Périgueux and thence took the name of Vésunien Museum. Count Wlgrin de Taillefer died on February 2, 1833. In his will, he bequeathed his antiquities to Joseph de Mourcin, provided they be deposited in a museum which was to be built near the tower of Vésone, or in a museum in Paris.^[2]

In 1835, upon the proposal of the mayor of Périgueux, the Museum of antiques and objets d'art's collection was transferred to the chapel of the White Penitents,^[3] to the south of the cloister of the Saint-Front Cathedral. The museum took the name of "Archaeological Museum of Dordogne" in 1836 and became departmental thereafter. It was run by Joseph de Mourcin with the assistance of Abbé Audierne and Doctor Édouard Galyuntil until Mourcin's death. Doctor Galy succeeded Joseph de Mourcin upon his death.^[4] He set up the museum in its current location, in the former Augustinian convent^[5][6][7] used as a prison from 1808 to 1866, when it became in fact the museum's new site. The archaeological collection was gradually transferred there between 1869 and 1874.^[8] Michel Hardy, president of the Historical and Archaeological Society of Périgord, succeeded Édouard Galy upon his death.

In 1857, a section dedicated to the fine arts was added to the museum's archaeological nucleus. It was then the only public collection of this nature in Dordogne. Mayor Alfred Bardy-Delisle created a municipal museum for painting and sculpture in Périgueux in 1859.^[9][10] In 1891, upon the consistent bequeath of the Marquis de Saint-Astier of over 150 paintings (Flemish, French and Italian, from the 16th to the 19th century), the city decided to buy the old Augustinian convent, where the collection of the archaeological museum of the Dordogne department is now exhibited, and the buildings around it to create a new structure. On June 27, 1891, Gérard de Fayolle became curator of the municipal museum. In 1893, Gérard de Fayolle was appointed curator of the archaeological museum of the Dordogne department, replacing Michel Hardy who had been curator of that museum since 1887. The two museums were then in the old buildings of the Augustinian convent. In 1895, the General Council ceded the archaeological collection of the departmental museum to the city and made a significant financial contribution for the construction of a new museum.

The architectural competition for the new museum's house was launched in 1893. The current museum was built between 1895 and 1898 on the plans of the architect Charles Planckaert. The first stone was laid by the President of the Republic Félix Faure. In 1903, Gérard de Fayolle was appointed curator of the new museum of art and archaeology of Périgord, which he organized with the help of his assistant, Maurice Féaux, who had previously assisted Michel Hardy in organizing the collection of the department's archaeological museum.^[11]

The archaeological collection was quickly expanded with geology, mineralogy, and prehistory collections as well as pieces from the medieval period resulting from research in Périgord. Archaeological pieces from North Africa (Egypt, Tunisia), Greece, Italy, Oceania, and the Americas were later added to the museum's main collection.

The museum has been a Monument historique of France since 2020.^[12]

The east wing presents major works of medieval art such as a diptych from Rabastens dating to 1280^[13] and a stained glass from the now lost 14th-century church of Saint-Silan;^[14] works of art ranging from the 16th to the 20th century, which evoke the quality and characteristics of the works on display and the collections of non-European ethnography (seventh most important collection in France, with objects from Africa and Oceania).^[15]

On the first floor are exhibited the collections of prehistory (fourth most important collection in France)^[15] with numerous flint tools testifying to the human occupation in Périgord more than 400,000 years ago (Neanderthal fossil skeleton from the cave of Le Regourdou, Montignac, about 95,000 years old; a sapiens fossil skeleton, the so-called Chancelade man, about 12,000 years old; painted and carved blocks from the Blanchard des Roches shelter of the prehistoric site of Castel-Merle in Sergeac, 35,000 years old; stone with carved woman-figures from the prehistoric site of Termo-Pialat in Saint-Avit-Sénieur; the carved reindeer of Limeuil; a collection of Magdalenian bone carvings, including a carved rib from the Cro-Magnon shelter in Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil and the bison bone pendant from the Raymonden shelter in Chancelade.^[16][17]

The cloister is a garden space that connects the east wing and the west wing of the museum, conceived for the presentation of the lapidary collection from the Gallo-Roman, medieval and Renaissance periods. It houses the remains of buildings from Périgueux and the Dordogne that have now disappeared (Romanesque sculptures from the disappeared church of San Frontone, dossals, decorations of private buildings, Merovingian and Carolingian sarcophagi, 13th and 14th century rhombus stones). The setting was inspired by a romantic envisioning of the ruins, typical of the time of their discovery in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The west wing of the museum houses the fine arts section, created in 1857 and enriched thanks to donations and purchases from local collections, from state deposits of artworks from the Louvre collection and from purchases of works from the exhibitions of the Paris Salons.

In 1891, after the aforementioned substantial donation from the Marquis of Saint-Astier, the wing meant to host this section was built, then renovated in 2002 with an installation in which the colors of the walls of the rooms were linked to the chronological period of the works: yellow for the hall of the eighteenth century and green for the hall in the Empire style of the early nineteenth century, light gray or bluish gray for the rooms dedicated to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with progressively lighter colors. In each room there are paintings, sculptures, furniture and art objects of the period, both local and illustrating the art of France, Flanders and Italy.

• 17th century French artworks: Siege of Namur by Jean-Baptiste Martin and two Battle Scenes by Jacques Courtois
• French works of the eighteenth century: Landscapes by Hubert Robert and Pierre Patel; End of a Storm by Adrien Manglard; Madonna and Child by Charles Antoine Coypel and other works by Jean-Baptiste Oudry, Charles-Joseph Natoire and Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes
• Nineteenth-century French works: Adolphe Appian, Léon Bonnat, William Adolphe Bouguereau and Paul Guigou
• French works of the twentieth century: by the painters Maurice Marinot and Emile Othon Friesz and by the sculptors Jane Poupelet and Étienne Hajdu;
• Flemish works: The Extraction of the Stone of Madness by Pieter Huys, still lifes by Jan Davidsz. de Heem and Jan van Huysum, works by Frans Floris and Abraham Bloemaert, Hooded Falcon by Jan Fyt, King Solomon Pays Homage to the God Moloch on Request of His Hundred Women, by Frans II Francken and Allegory of the Occasion, attributed to the latter's workshop; Landscape with Ruins by Bartholomeus Breenbergh
• Italian operas: Saint Paul on the Road to Damascus by Luca Giordano; artworks by Francesco Cairo; Seller of Fish by Giuseppe Recco; Muzio Scevola by Gaspare Diziani; The Wedding Feast at Cana by Sebastiano Ricci; The Grand Canal by Canaletto
• Spanish works: two paintings by Luis de Morales
• Porcelain: Capodimonte porcelain, 17th-century Chinese porcelain, Delftware, Chinese and Japanese porcelain dating to the nineteenth century; Limoges porcelain; works by the ceramist Pierre-Adrien Dalpayrat