Two churches (and an art gallery)

Aix-en-Provence and Puyloubier (weeks 12-13)

Musée Granet entrance and Eglise Saint-Jean-de-Malte

Henry Pearlman was a New York businessman who eventually collected a large and well-respected collection, now nominally housed at Princeton University.  However, the art travels a lot, and since Henry liked Aix's favourite artistic son Cézanne, his travelling exhibition was hosted by the Granet Museum over the last few months.  The Pearlman Collection was impressive, with 20+ Cézannes and samples of other great artists including van Gogh, Degas, and Renoir.  The permanent collection was perhaps less impressive, focussing on lesser-known local talent, but still an interesting mix of paintings of all sizes, sculptures, and excavated Roman antiques.  This Wednesday's trip was our first attempt at an art museum with the boys, and they did very well, probably because of the variety of media and subject matters.  Since there is no photography allowed in the museum, you'll have to click on the links to see the interior.

The museum is located in the former priory buildings of the Hospitallers in Aix, hence the Crosses of Malta adorning the building (in the above picture, you can see one in the foreground bottom-right on a fountain), and the name of the adjacent church: Eglise Saint-Jean-de-Malte.  The interior of the church is very sparse, it having been ransacked and turned into a storehouse during the Revolution.  However, it is in the process of being restored with a mix of old and new: the bells are brand new (they are sitting in a chapel by the entrance awaiting installation) and the organ was installed in 2006.  The organist was practising while we were there.  It's hard to tell the size of the bells from the picture, the middle one is ~one metre tall.

On Sunday, we were out early to take a look inside the Puyloubier church.  The parish covers churches in Peynier, Trets, and Puyloubier, so there aren't always services on Sunday, and the times can vary.  This week there was mass at 9:30 in Puyloubier, so we poked our head in.  The church is bright and airy, with minimal but interesting decoration.  Like in Canada, the number of parishioners was quite small.  Yes, this is what a church in a village of 1800 people looks like!  Because the alter is at the eastern end of the church, the sunlight coming through the windows unfortunately washes out the very nice stained-glass in this picture.