The mayor of Amiens, Brigitte Fouré, "begged" in a video the American star Madonna to "lend" her a painting from her personal collection, similar to a work of the city which disappeared during the First World War, so that the inhabitants can "see" her again.

"Madonna, (...) I learned that you had bought a painting, 'Diana and Endymion', a work by Jérome-Martin Langlois (1779-1838), a few years ago", declares Brigitte Fouré in this video posted Monday on his Facebook page, and spotted by the Courrier picard.

"It is likely" that this painting "is a work lent by the Louvre Museum to the Museum of Fine Arts in Amiens (now Museum of Picardy, Editor's note) before the First World War, and of which we then lost track. "

Emphasizing not to "contest in any way the legal acquisition" of the work, she explains that she wants to "show" it to the public in 2028, on the occasion of the city's candidacy for the title of "European Capital of Culture".

Mayor UDI told AFP that she had been alerted by an investigation by Le Figaro, published on January 9.

"Probably a copy of the hand of the artist"

According to the article, this painting, sold for 1.3 million dollars to the singer by Sotheby's in 1989, had been recognized by a curator in a photograph of Paris Match, taken at her home.

Monumental, it represents the naked goddess Diana flying towards the shepherd Endymion, a mythological scene.

"I'm not sure if it's the authentic painting", but whether it is or is a copy, "it looks a lot like the work" and "I would like the people of Amiens to be able to see it again", explained the chosen one.

The original was a royal order, placed in 1817 to adorn the Palace of Versailles, detailed for AFP François Seguin, acting director of the Museum of Picardy.

Left at the Louvre museum, then exhibited in Amiens from 1872, the work will be declared missing after the war, he continues, without being able to specify its exact fate.

The painting exhibited at Madonna's "reappeared in the 1980s on the Parisian art market. The Louvre Museum, where it was shown in 1988, considered "that it is most certainly a copy, no doubt by the hand of the artist himself".

In the absence of signature, date and stamp, and with a "difference in format of about 3 cm", "it is unlikely" that it is the original, believes François Seguin.

But it remains "the only testimony of the missing work".

With AFP

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