Museum: The Louvre acquires a collection of 272 Christian icons from the East

The Louvre Museum announced on Wednesday, February 26, 2025, that it had acquired a private Lebanese collection of 272 Eastern Christian icons that will be presented in its future department of Byzantine Arts and Eastern Christianity from 2027. The amount of this "private agreement" acquisition has not been revealed.

This is the collection of Georges Abou Adal, a great private Lebanese collector, who built it up mainly between 1952 and the beginning of the 1970s. It was completed by his son through acquisitions at public auction in the 1990s.

Icons from Greece, Russia and the Balkans

It includes icons from Greece, Russia and the Balkans in particular, made by a wide variety of artists and illustrates a production ranging from the beginning of the 15th century to the first years of the 20th century. Among them, "a rare set of icons produced in the context of the revival of the Greek Patriarchate of Antioch in the 17th century, in Aleppo in particular, and by Arabic-speaking Christians in Syria, Lebanon and Jerusalem" , the Louvre details in a press release.

The collection was revealed to the general public in 1993 at the Carnavalet Museum in Paris, then presented at the Museum of Art and History in Geneva in 1997. Many of its icons, exhibited elsewhere since then, have been the subject of scientific studies and publications.

The collections of the future department of Byzantine and Eastern Christian arts at the Louvre bring together around 20,000 works, several hundred of which will be exhibited to visitors from 2027 on 2,200 m2. Its works range from the origins of the Christian image in the 3rd century to the 20th century and span a geographical area from Ethiopia to Russia, from the Balkans to the Near East and ancient Mesopotamia.