Musée Magnin 2.07

The Musée Magnin is a national museum in the French city of Dijon in Burgundy, with a collection of around 2,000 works of art collected by Maurice Magnin and his sister Jeanne and bequeathed to the state in 1938 along with the hôtel Lantin, a 17th-century hôtel particulier in the old-town quarter of Dijon where it is now displayed as an amateur collector's cabinet of curiosities and as the Magnin family home.BuildingBuilt between 1652 and 1681 for Etienne Lantin, councilor in the Accounts Chamber, the townhouse became the property of the Magnin family in the 19th century when Jean-Hugues Magnin bought it in 1829. Without altering its historic flavor, the town house was redesigned in the 1930s by the Parisian architect Auguste Perret, to house the collection that Maurice Magnin, a year after the death of his sister Jeanne, willed to the State in 1938. In accordance with the donor's wishes, the museum has retained its characters as an amateur's cabinet and private dwelling. CollectionMaurice Magnin, referendum councilor in Accounts Court and art lover, and his sister Jeanne, painter and amateur art critic, randomly put together, through public auctions, a collection of major artists and little known minor masters. Brother and sister "looked less for the often illusionary spark of great names than for a chain of talent throughout the ages". PaintingsThe collectors manifested a predilection for the French School from the 16th to the 19th centuries, especially well represented. Important 17th century works from Eustache Le Sueur, Laurent de La Hyre, Sébastien Bourdon and Jean Baptiste de Champaigne highlight this latter collection.