The Virgin Of The Sacred Heart Analysis

In 1927, the Corsican painter Corbellini, curator of the Fesch Museum, discovered the painting in the Ajaccio Cathedral. Indeed, Corbellini had read in the Gazette des beaux-arts an article of André Joubin describing the subject. He came in the cathedral, did a sketch of the composition and sent it to Joubin who confirmed that it was the painting searched for more than half a century, as related by Corbellini himself: “M. André Joubin après examen du croquis de notre tableau en confirme l’interprétation .” Then, exhibited at the Louvre for the Romanticism centenary in 1930, the Virgin of the Sacred Heart - also called the Triumph of the Religion from that moment -, was transferred to the Fesch Museum in 1931, when has been found a solution to replace it in the cathedral .

Nevertheless, after the World War II and the disappearance in Ajaccio of the archives indicating reasons for the transfer to the museum, the Virgin of the Sacred Heart, once again, was placed in the cathedral. Indeed, no one knew the origin of the Immaculate Conception , a copy of the Murillo painting, commissioned in 1931to replace the rejected commission from Nantes. However, conditions of conservation in the cathedral were not better than before the war, and, one more time, this is a Virgin of the Sacred Heart with altered colour which was exhibited in the

The restorer put a new canvas to, but an important work about varnish and colours was completed in 1988 after the Frankfurt exhibition. Then, the painting returned from Monte-Carlo to Ajaccio on January 1989. So, except in Rouen for the bicentenary of 1998, its colour can only be seen in Corsica. Above all, there was no reproduction usable for art books: publishers used an old photograph taken before restoration. This is why descriptions continued to be misled, frequently describing a dark harmony with ochre and brown however disappeared since