Écouen Guide

French language

Installed in the Château d'Écouen, some rooms of which have retained their original furniture, the museum is made up of part of the Cluny Museum's Renaissance collections.
The place of painting in the National Renaissance Museum is emblematic of French Renaissance painting.

The ten pieces that make up the tapestry of David and Bathsheba, revealed to the public by an exhibition at the Grand Palais in 1971, are said to have contributed to the opening of the National Renaissance Museum.
Écouen also possesses fine examples of fireworks from the French Renaissance (ceramics, glassware, enamels, stained glass).
Concerning the sculpture collection, Italian bronzes, tinted waxes and alabaster plates are to be admired.
The so-called Clairvaux cupboard (1550) is certainly one of the most beautiful pieces of furniture of the Renaissance period. The cabinets each have a particular aspect of this piece of furniture, endowed with a rare quality. The museum also has three "fan" tables.

In the Metal Arts section, the National Museum of the Renaissance now displays the hundred or so works of German civil goldsmith's art that Baroness Salomon de Rothschild bequeathed to the Musée de Cluny, which is an example of the very mannerist taste of the alliance between gilded silver, engraved or embossed decoration and exotic materials.