Musée des beaux-arts de Rennes, Art museum in Rennes, France.
The Musée des beaux-arts de Rennes occupies the former university palace on quai Émile-Zola, a long stone building with a rusticated ground floor of arched, iron-grilled windows and two upper storeys of rectangular windows framed by pilasters. A triangular pediment carved with figures crowns the central section above the entrance inscribed "MUSEE DES BEAUX-ARTS". Its galleries hold European painting and sculpture from the 14th to the 20th century, plus Egyptian, Greek, Etruscan and Roman antiquities.
The museum began in 1794 during the French Revolution, when artworks from churches and public buildings entered state collections through government action. These acquisitions shaped what you see today.
The drawing cabinet holds 1,107 sheets from the collection of Christophe-Paul de Robien, president of the Parlement of Brittany, divided in roughly equal parts among the Italian, French and Northern schools. The 17th-century French paintings form the core of the museum, including Georges de La Tour's Nouveau-né and Philippe de Champaigne's Madeleine pénitente of 1657.
The museum occupies the former university palace on quai Émile-Zola. Metro line A stops at République and line B at Saint-Germain. Since 1 February 2025 a free annex, the musée Maurepas, shows two exhibitions a year on 400 m² at the foot of the building nicknamed "La Banane".
The drawings cabinet holds 1,107 sheets from the collection of Christophe-Paul de Robien, president of the Parlement of Brittany, divided in roughly equal parts between Italian, French and Northern schools. Among them are sheets by Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Dürer and Rembrandt.
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