Le Triptyque de Moulins - Présentation

Jean Hey’s Triptych of Moulins is one of the absolute masterpieces of French painting on the eve of the sixteenth century. Its restoration (2022–2025), initiated and overseen by the Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs (DRAC) Auvergne–Rhône‑Alpes, carried out at the Centre for Research and Restoration of the Museums of France (C2RMF) and executed by restorers from the Arcanes and Tournillon workshops, is a major event in France’s heritage news. It marks a crucial moment for the study of French painting around 1500: the conservation work has revealed the brilliant colours of the three panels that compose it, long forgotten; moreover, this restoration and the in‑depth studies conducted at the C2RMF alongside it raise new questions about the pictorial experiments of the painter Jean Hey, formerly known as the “Master of Moulins” prior to his identification. Trained in Flanders, he is the most brilliant artist active in France in the final decades of the fifteenth century.

The completion of this fundamental restoration, the first since 1879, now gives the Louvre, DRAC Auvergne–Rhône‑Alpes and the C2RMF the opportunity to present the Triptych in an exceptional display immediately adjacent to the Louvre’s French painting galleries. The public will thus be able to share this historic moment and to discover or rediscover Jean Hey’s masterwork. The Triptych’s presence in Paris, where it had not been exhibited since 1937, is indeed a unique chance to bring it together with the works by Jean Hey held in the capital: five paintings and a drawing at the Louvre, as well as the Vierge Bacri, acquired in 2013 by the Musée de Cluny. Surrounding this corpus, several painted panels, along with drawings, illuminations and goldsmiths’ objects from the Louvre’s collections, will help visitors better understand this masterpiece of French heritage and what makes it an exceptional creation of Western art at the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.