PARIS— With their strong tradition of state sponsorship of the arts — which dates all the way back to the centralization of political power in the person of Louis XIV — the French are not at all accustomed to relying on the individual donors who play such a crucial role in American and British cultural funding. But in its attempt to purchase Lucas Cranach the Elder‘s 1531 masterpiece “The Three Graces,” the Louvre is one million euros shy of the €4 million ($5.4 million) price tag and has created a Web site and a Facebook page to appeal to French citizens to pick up the tab, encouraging the public to “participate in the acquisition of a masterpiece.”
“The Three Graces” painting has always been in private hands, has, in fact, been owned by members of one French family since 1932, Le Parisien reports. The small work depicts three nude women — seen from the back, the front, and in profile — whose identity is not certain. The fundraising Web site asks, “Are these the three Graces, as the title indicates, or, as some specialists believe, is this an allegorical representation of Charity, Friendship, and Fidelity?” The unusual poses of the three young ladies add to the mystery: the woman in the center for instance sports an unusual flat hat, which is somewhat out of keeping with an allegorical representation, and the woman on the right clasps her raised ankle as if stretching her quadriceps.
The Louvre is eager to bring the painting into its collection, declaring on the Web site that “the work’s astonishing perfection, its extreme rarity, and its remarkable state of preservation allow it to be called a ‘national treasure,’” though it was painted not in France but in Germany. The work’s small size likely indicates that it was commissioned for a patron’s home, and Louvre experts speculate that this allowed Cranach to make the painting more provocative, for the painting emits a “disturbing eroticism,” according to the site, with the black background focusing all attention on the women’s flesh. In a video interview, Vincent Pomarède, head of the museum’s painting department, praises the artist’s extreme skill at depicting nudes, adding that laboratory testing showed that there were no preliminary studies underneath the painting, indicating that it was the work of Cranach the Elder’s hand alone.
While this kind of public fundraising by a museum is a first in France, it happens frequently in Great Britain. The Tate Gallery used publicly-raised funds to buy a Rubens drawing for £5.7 million ($10.5 million) in 2008. Even more impressively, the National Gallery of Scotland managed to raise £100 million ($156 million) to purchase two Titian paintings from the Duke of Sutherland in 2009. And back in 1994, the National Gallery of Scotland kept a different “Three Graces” in its country — this one a sculpture by Canova — using funds from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and a large donation by the late philanthropist John Paul Getty II.
The three million euros raised so far come from the Louvre’s acquisitions funds and the support of the Mazars Company. On the Louvre’s fundraising Web page, gifts as small as €20 ($27) are accepted, but individuals contributing €200 ($270) will be invited to a special viewing of the painting, while those who donate €500 ($680) will have the opportunity to preview the work before it is revealed to the general public. The museum has until January 31, 2011, to raise the necessary funds.
Cranach is known to have treated the theme of the three Graces only twice. The other painting, which dates from 1535, is in Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins Museum. Cranach must have had his previous “Three Graces” in mind, for the women’s bodies are similarly arranged, though their gestures are more formal, and the flashy hat has disappeared.
