Date: Fri 05-Feb-1999

Publication: Ant

Author: LIZAM

Quick Words:

Louvre-Poussin-Sotheby's

Full Text:

Louvre Is Anonymous Buyer Of Poussin

PARIS, FRANCE (AP) -- The anonymous bidder who shelled out a record high $6.7

million for a painting by French master Nicolas Poussin, offered January 28 at

Sotheby's New York, turns out to be the Louvre Museum, the curator said in a

newspaper report published February 2.

According to the daily Liberation , "The Agony in the Garden," a work thought

to have been painted between 1594 and 1665, is the Louvre's 38th Poussin.

"The work is a great masterpiece which portrays one of life's great dramas ...

and was executed by an artist at the height of his career," Jean-Pierre Cuzin,

the Louvre's chief curator, told the Liberation .

The work depicts the plague ravaging Rome which took the lives of the artist's

niece and sister-in-law in 1656.

"It's the painting we didn't have -- representative of a whole period," he

said, adding that the Louvre had not acquired any Poussins since 1911.

Cuzin said the painting was in rare, excellent condition. It surfaced several

years ago after being stashed in an attic for decades.

He did not say when it would go on public display.