The Episcopal Palace of Montauban originated in the Middle Ages when the Prince of Wales, Edward Plantagenet, nicknamed the Black Prince, built a castle there during the Hundred Years War. This fortress, reinforced by the Huguenots during the religious wars, was finally destroyed after the takeover of Montauban by Richelieu in 1629. The ruins become a vague land, on which Bishop Pierre de Bertier decided, in the second half of the seventeenth century, to build a classical episcopal palace. This new building incorporates the medieval room of the Black Prince in the lower part, while the upper part adopts a classic brick style, emblematic material of Montauban. The construction is part of a desire to reaffirm Catholicism in this ancient Protestant city, in parallel with the construction of the new cathedral.
After the Revolution, the episcopal palace was confiscated and transformed into a city hall. In 1851, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, a native of Montauban, left some of his collections there, marking the beginning of his museum vocation. The Ingres Hall was inaugurated in 1854, and his death in 1867 enriched the museum with his workshop fonds, including thousands of drawings. Ranked a historic monument in 1910, the building now houses the Ingres Bourdelle Museum, unique in the world for its collections dedicated to Ingres and Bourdelle, two major artists born in Montauban. The museum, renovated and modernized, also preserves local archaeological works and paintings from the 14th to the 18th centuries.
During the Second World War, the museum served as a refuge for major works of the Louvre, including La Monande. Deep renovations, carried out between 1951 and 1958 and between 2016 and 2019, transform the space into a modern museum of 2,700 m2, with a graphic arts firm, an auditorium and spaces dedicated to temporary exhibitions. The basements, remains of the 14th century stronghold, house Gallo-Roman and medieval archaeological collections, while the upper floors present the works of Ingres, Bourdelle and European schools of the 17th and 18th centuries. The museum, owned by the municipality, remains a major architectural and cultural testimony of Occitanie.
The architecture of the Episcopal Palace combines the medieval remains of the Black Prince Castle and a classic 17th-century hotel, organized around a central courtyard and four corner pavilions. The large stone staircase, the low vaulted halls and the exposed floor ceilings recall its double heritage. Materials, mainly brick, reflect local resources. After its transformation into a museum, the building has retained protected elements since its classification in 1910, while adapting to contemporary museum standards, such as accessibility and digitalization of collections.
The collections of the Ingres Bourdelle Museum are structured around 4,500 drawings and 44 paintings of Ingres, as well as 70 sculptures and about 100 graphic pieces of Bourdelle. They also include Greek and Roman antiquities, Renaissance works at 17th and 18th century French and foreign schools (Titian, Le Brun, Van Dyck), and local archaeological remains, such as medieval terracotta tiles or capitals of Grandselve and Moissac Abbeys. The museum showcases these ensembles through thematic routes, a graphic arts firm and temporary exhibitions, such as Constellation Ingres Bourdelle in 2019-2020.
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Work on the Ingres Museum in the former Episcopal Palace began in 1911.
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