Aix's other central museums are in the
quartier Mazarin , south of cours
Mirabeau. On place St-Jean-de-Malte the
most substantial of the lot, the
Musée Granet (daily except Tues
10am-noon & 2-6pm; 10F/¬1.53), covers
art and archeology. It exhibits the
finds from the Oppidum d'Entremont
, a Celtic-Ligurian township 3km north
of Aix, which flourished for about a
hundred years, along with the remains of
the Romans who routed them in 124 BC and
established their city of Aquae Sextiae,
the future Aix. The museum's paintings
are a mixed bag: Italian, Dutch, French,
mostly seventeenth- to nineteenth-century,
not very well hung or lit. The portraits
of Diane de Poiters by Jean Capassin and
Marie Mancini by Nicolas Mignard are an
interesting contrast, and there is also
a self-portrait by Rembrandt. The rows
upon rows of eighteenth- and early
nineteenth-century French paintings,
including Ingres' revolting
Jupiter
and Thetis , are mostly abysmal,
though Ingres' portrait of Granet is
certainly worth a look. You finally
reach one wall dedicated to the most
famous Aixois painter,
Paul Cézanne
, who studied on the ground floor of the
building, at that date the art school.
Two of his student drawings are here as
well as a handful of minor canvases such
as
Bathsheba, The Bathers and
Portrait of Madame .