Germanic Paintings in French Public Collections Under Scrutiny at the INHA

Whether fundamental or applied, scientific research is a little-known, abstract and disembodied world whose unobtrusive work and impenetrable labs only add to its mystery. The same is true of most investigations by art historians, where the aim is to examine, authenticate, attribute and compare groups of works whose origins and traces have virtually disappeared into space and time. Taking up this challenge, Isabelle Dubois-Brinkmann, Chief Curator of Heritage, and Aude Briau, Research Fellow at the INHA (National Institute of Art History), have launched into the somewhat obscure field of medieval and Renaissance Germanic schools. “As a resident at the INHA from 2019 to 2023, I expanded the research I began in Mulhouse, Strasbourg and Colmar in 2014, and carried on verifying 500 works present in French museums, churches, chateaux and private museums open to the public, like Chenonceau and the Fondation Bemberg in Toulouse,” says Dubois-Brinkmann. These four years of investigation and analysis have not only spawned a “List of Germanic paintings in French collections (1370-1550)”, but also contributed to…