Presentation of two sculptures by Michel Charpentier (1927-2023), from the Frac Île-de-France collection, in the garden of the Maison Jean Cocteau in Milly-la-Forêt.
Opening: Friday 25.05.25
The house in Milly-la-Forêt
Jean Cocteau, novelist, filmmaker, poet, playwright, illustrator and painter, and artist with a thousand faces, has left his mark on the art of the 20th century. The extremely fruitful artist never stopped working until his last breath in 1963. In Milly-la-Forêt, in the house he acquired in 1947 after shooting Beauty and the Beast, for himself and his friends he created a universe that resembles him: poetic, mysterious, elegant. Owned by the Ile-de-France region since 2019, the Maison is a place of memory, labelled Maison des Illustres, and a cultural venue, animated by highlights throughout the opening season, from May to November.
Temporary exhibition 2025
Each year, a temporary exhibition is presented within the House, allowing the public to discover a facet of this prolific artist. In 2025, the exhibition La Chapelle des Simples is dedicated to the paintings of Saint-Blaise-des-Simples Chapel in Milly-la-Forêt, which he painted in 1959 and in which he is buried. For this monumental setting, the poet wanted to celebrate life and health by evoking the medicinal plants known as simples, which were once used to treat lepers under the aegis of the chapel’s patron saint, Saint Blaise. Like spears, they climb from floor to ceiling on three sides of the building: henbane, belladonna, valerian and marshmallow, arnica, buttercup, colchicum, aconite and mint. A scene of the Resurrection of Christ features on the fourth side.
Installation of two sculptures
Echoing the FRAC exhibition on the Middle Ages reinvented, these two life-size figures, the Virgin of Ile-de-France south and the Virgin of Ile-de-France north, will be placed in a part of the poet’s garden facing the house. They will have as a backdrop the walls of the old castle that adjoins the garden, thus linking the Madonnas and Child on the portals of cathedrals and the medieval origin of the castle. But this Middle Ages is indeed reinvented. Charpentier and Cocteau knew each other: their vision of a suffering humanity, and their attraction to the sacred undoubtedly brought them together.
Muriel Genthon, director of Maison Cocteau/Milly-la-Forêt
15 Rue du Lau
91490 Milly-la-Forêt
Ouvert jeu. – dim. 11h-18h