Musée d'Art et d'Histoire
Encyclopedic museum of art and archaeology holding a fifteenth-century panel of a real, recognizable lake landscape.
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About this audio guide
This guide to the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire in Geneva centers on one panel: a 1444 painting by Konrad Witz that trades the Sea of Galilee for the real shoreline of Lake Geneva outside these walls. It follows what Witz dared to do that no European painter had risked before, working out how light bends underwater as he painted Christ's fishermen wading into the lake. You'll hear how the panel once belonged to a larger altarpiece inside Geneva's cathedral, and how it alone survived when crowds tore through that building in 1535. Step back outside afterward and you're following the same shoreline the painter once looked at.
This audio guide was created using AI.