+Added to my favoriteItem already present

Presentation

What if works of art were to take us on a journey of discovery to a lost underwater continent?

With ‘AFFUNDÀ, the expedition’, the Palais Fesch – Musée des Beaux-Arts invites us all on a sensory and fantastical journey, from familiar shores to the mysterious depths of the ocean.

Through seascapes and still lifes from the museum’s historic collections, depictions inspired by the great oceanographic explorations, and contemporary works by Jean-Marie Appriou and Jenna Kaës, the exhibition brings to life a world populated by unknown forms, strange creatures and inner landscapes.

An expedition where art and science converge, where the centuries engage in dialogue, and where works we thought we knew suddenly reveal a completely different story.

From the shores to the depths: the story of a long-hidden world

For centuries, the sea has fascinated artists, scientists and explorers. A realm of navigation and discovery, it is also a territory of mystery, whose depths have long eluded the human gaze.

On the shores, painters observe the movement of the water, fishing activities and the marine creatures brought ashore. In 17th- and 18th-century seascapes and still lifes, fish, rays and shellfish became the subjects of careful observation, but also of compositions whose forms may now seem strangely fantastical to us.

Gradually, the focus shifted. It was no longer simply a matter of depicting the sea from the land, but of discovering what lay hidden beneath its surface.

From the 19th century onwards, major scientific expeditions opened up new frontiers of knowledge. Naturalists, draughtsmen and painters accompanied the explorers to observe, catalogue and depict species hitherto unknown. Their works bear witness to an extraordinary encounter between the rigour of scientific observation and the power of the artistic imagination.

A story that resonates with that of the Palais Fesch

In the early 19th century, whilst Joseph Fesch, Napoleon Bonaparte’s uncle, was building up the exceptional collection of paintings that formed the basis of the Palais Fesch, Nicolas Baudin’s expedition, launched in 1800 under the Consulate and supported by Napoleon Bonaparte, set sail for the southern lands.

On board, the naturalist and draughtsman Charles-Alexandre Lesueur took part in a major scientific and artistic adventure. The thousands of specimens collected and the drawings produced during the voyage helped to reveal to the European public a marine world whose forms and colours had hitherto seemed unimaginable.

This intersection between the history of the Palais Fesch’s collections and that of the great discoveries lends AFFUNDÀ, the expedition, a special resonance.

The exhibition also recalls the oceanographic expeditions of Prince Albert I of Monaco, whose research and collections made a profound contribution to our understanding of the deep sea.

The works on loan from the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco bear witness to this scientific adventure and to the vital role played by artists in depicting a world that had long been inaccessible.

Some of the artists and works in the exhibition:
Else Bostelmann (1882–1961)
Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919)
Jenna Kaes
Jean Marie Appriou