last year at the royal monastery of Brou, Bourg-en-Bresse, had been mounted an exhibition of the biblical figures of Mary Magdalene. In several paintings and sculptures, the beautiful penitent was shown in the hair (when she retired in the desert, it has more cut). Or, as in the statuette in alabaster of the sumptuous tomb of Margaret of Austria seen in the church, with a veil. This season the director Pierre-Gilles Girault wanted to expand on this report “veiled/unveiled” in a rich course of nearly a hundred works from all periods and all places.

” today, we see first the veil as an effect of the religious. But this is to forget the veil of the profane.

Pierre-Gilles Girault, director of the royal monastery of Brou

“the Aunt of Charles V, regent of the netherlands between 1506 and 1530, Margaret of Austria, who founded the monastery, legitimized his virtue and his power through his image in the widow’s veil”, noted the manager. With a specialist of the question, Bruno Nassim Aboudrar, a professor of art sciences at Paris III, and author of How the veil …

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