"Musée des Beaux Arts" (French for "Museum of Fine Arts") is a poem written by W. H. Auden in December 1938 while he was staying in Brussels, Belgium, with Christopher Isherwood.[1] It was first published under the title "Palais des beaux arts" (Palace of Fine Arts) in the Spring 1939 issue of New Writing, a modernist magazine edited by John Lehmann.[2] It next appeared in the collected volume of verse Another Time (New York: Random House, 1940), which was followed four months later by the English edition (London: Faber and Faber, 1940).[3] The poem's title derives from the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique in Brussels, famous for its collection of Early Netherlandish painting. Auden visited the Musée and would have seen a number of works by the "Old Masters" of his second line, including Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
Rouen or [ʁuɑ̃]) is a city on the River Seine in northern France. It is the capital of the region of Normandy. Formerly one of the largest and most prosperous cities of medieval Europe, the population of the metropolitan area is now 655,013. Rouen was the seat of the Exchequer of Normandy during the Middle Ages. It was one of the capitals of the Anglo-Norman dynasties, which ruled both England and large parts of modern France from the 11th to the 15th centuries. People from Rouen are known as Rouennais.
Rouen Cathedral is a Roman Catholic church in Rouen, Normandy, France. It is the see of the Archbishop of Rouen, Primate of Normandy. The cathedral is in the Gothic architectural tradition.
The Lycée Pierre-Corneille is a state secondary school located in the city of Rouen, France.
Originally founded by the Jesuits in 1593, the school was secularized following the 1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and the State, and is today non-religious and ruled by the French Ministry of Education.
The school adopted the name of the playwright Pierre Corneille in 1873, and was classified as a national heritage site in December 1985.
