Dusty Painting Hidden Behind Door Turns Out To Be Brueghel 'Masterpiece', To Be Presented For Auction In Paris On Tuesday

A rediscovered painting of Flemish 17th-century painter Pieter Brueghel the Younger, for years hidden in a family house, will be presented for auction in Paris on Tuesday and is expected to fetch 600,000 ($647,340.00) to 800,000 euros.

The painting L'Avocat du village (the Village Lawyer) is one of Brueghel's largest known works, measuring 112cm high and 184cm wide, and was unknown in the art world as the most recent generation of the family who had possessed it since the 1900s thought it was fake.

The family, who wishes to remain unknown, had asked Malo de Lussac of auctioneers Daguerre Val de Loire to estimate the value of their house but instead discovered a masterpiece.

"I found this painting [in the house], behind a door in the television room," de Lussac told Reuters, calling it one of the biggest surprises in his career.

"I started estimating this room and when I turned back, I saw this painting. It was a very good surprise for me."

De Lussac said he believes the artwork was bought as an authentic one, but over several generations had completely lost its authenticity within the family.

"And that's what's incredible," he said. "We are giving them back this authenticity by saying 'in fact your artwork is real'".

Brueghel the Younger, whose father Brueghel the Elder died when he was only five, didn't use one of his father's compositions for this painting as he usually did but did revisit the popular theme of the village lawyer.

Art experts estimated that the artwork was painted between 1615 and 1617.

($1 = 0.9269 euros)

By Yiming Woo

Travelore News: Louvre Staff Block Entrances As Part Of Pension Protest

PARIS (AP) — The Louvre Museum in Paris was closed to the public on Monday when its workers took part in the wave of French protest strikes against the government’s unpopular pension reform plans.

Dozens of Louvre employees blocked the entrance, prompting the museum to announce it would be temporarily closed.

The demonstrators toted banners and flags in front of the Louvre’s famed pyramid, where President Emmanuel Macron had celebrated his presidential victory in 2017. They demanded the repeal of the new pension law that raises the retirement age from 62 to 64.

The showbusiness, broadcasting and culture branch of the CGT union tweeted an image of the Mona Lisa with an aged and wrinkled face, with the words: “64 it’s a No!”

The action comes on the eve of another nationwide protest planned for Tuesday against the bill — and as Macron holds a meeting with Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne to discuss the way forward. The Louvre is always closed on Tuesdays, so staff protested a day earlier.

Some tourists were stoic about the artistic blockade.

“If you firmly believe that this will bring some change, there’s plenty of other things that we can see in Paris,” said Britney Tate, a 29-year-old doctoral student from California.

Others who had traveled thousands of miles were more vocal about the inconvenience.

“We’re going to respect their strike tomorrow, but to do this today, it’s just heartbreaking,” said Karma Carden, a tourist from Fort Myers, Florida. “We knew that Versailles would not be open because of the protest, but we knew the Louvre was open.

“I understand why they’re upset, but (it’s bad) to do this to people from around the world who’ve traveled from around the world for this and paid thousands of dollars,” she added.

Paris Bars Face Possible Closure As Virus Patients Fill ICUs

 

Naguey drinks a final beer with his cat Nela before bars and restaurants close, in Marseille, southern France, Sunday Sept. 27, 2020. As restaurants and bars in Marseille prepared Sunday to shut down for a week as part of scattered new French virus restrictions, Health Minister Olivier Veran insisted that the country plans no fresh lockdowns. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)

PARIS (AP) — With COVID-19 patients now filling about one-third of the intensive care units in the Paris area, France’s health minister threatened Thursday to close bars and ban family gatherings, if the situation doesn’t improve.

Intensive care units in other regions of France are also filling up with virus patients, as more than two months of increasing infections have now spread to the country’s elderly and vulnerable populations.

But while other countries have imposed new localized lockdowns to fight rebounding cases, France’s government is taking pains to avoid that and adopting relatively modest localized measures instead.

French Health Minister Olivier Veran warned that the government could classify Paris and nearby suburbs as a “maximum alert zone” starting Monday, leading to measures such as shutting bars and banning “family parties” or other big gatherings.

He didn’t set a limit on group sizes or indicate what the alert zone designation might mean for the French Open, currently under way on Paris’ western edge and open to up to 1,000 spectators per day.

Amid now-daily protests against virus restrictions on French cafes, Veran said restaurants might be able to stay open -- if they impose tighter rules.

The maximum alert level means that “the risk of hospital saturation is very high,” Veran said, as authorities unveiled region-by-region data showing that the number of patients in intensive care in some areas is rising faster than the government predicted a month ago.

The Paris region looks especially worrying, with 30-35% of ICU beds now occupied by virus patients, and hospitals delaying some scheduled surgeries to make space for COVID cases, the health minister said. Paris is now registering nearly 200 positive cases per 100,000 people per week, and more than 100 positive cases per 100,000 elderly people.

The situation in the capital is starting to resemble that of the Mediterranean city of Marseille and the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, where all restaurants and bars were shut down after the government put them at the maximum alert level last week.

Veran said there are signs that the infection growth is slowing in Marseille, Bordeaux and Nice. But he said it is too early to lift restrictions, and that France overall is still “in the phase of an aggravation of the situation.”

France has been recording more than 10,000 new confirmed cases a day for the past two weeks, and has reported a total of 31,956 virus-related deaths, among the highest tolls in Europe.

Eiffel Tower To Reopen After Longest Closure Since WWII

PARIS (AP) — Workers are preparing the Eiffel Tower for reopening next week, after the coronavirus pandemic led to the iconic Paris landmark’s longest closure since World War II.

France’s tourism industry is opening back up, but the 324-meter (1,063-feet) tall wrought-iron tower won’t immediately welcome visitors the way it did before the country went into lock down in March.

Only limited numbers of people will be allowed in when the Eiffel Tower opens again on June 25. Elevators to the top will be out of service, at least at first, and only the first and second floors will be accessible to the public.

“At first, only visits by the stairs will be available,” Victoria Klahr, the spokeswoman for the tower’s management, said Tuesday.

Everyone over 11 years old will be required to wear face masks, and crowd control measures will be in place.

“We are optimistic that visitor numbers will pick up, even if it will likely be local tourists who visit the monument in the first weeks,” Klahr said.

The tower’s director told The Associated Press on Tuesday that he hopes access will be back to normal by August.

A stringent cleaning operation is in place and will continue daily from next week.

“There is a new protocol,” said Eiffel Tower hygiene consultant Alain Miralles. “The day cleaning teams will be able to clean all the points of contact every two hours, from the opening of the site to its closing,”

Tourists planning trips to the City of Light are advised to book tickets to visit the Eiffel Tower online once the ticket office reopens Thursday.

Paris tourism officials have expressed muted optimism about the city’s reemergence as a travel destination. Since confinement measures were imposed in March, tourism levels have dropped by around 80% compared to the same month in previous years, they say.

“To visit Paris now is quite exceptional, as we of course don’t have many visitors and we don’t expect this summer to be at the same level as previous ones,” Corinne Menegaux, the director of Paris’s businesses and tourism office, told The AP.

Hotel owners are also keen to welcome visitors again, if realistic about the challenges ahead - and the competition among European countries to draw tourists back in the coronavirus era.

“Everyone is Europe is looking to draw the European clientele. The Italians want to bring in the French, the Germans want to attract the Danes,” said Serge Cachan, president of France’s Astotel Group. He pointed out the plexiglass protections in the reception area of one of his hotels and arrows to ensure social distancing.

He welcomed the French president’s decision Sunday to let Paris restaurants reopen earlier than planned. “Without restaurants, there is no conviviality, there is no tourism, there are no clients in hotels,” he said in an interview.

“The message I would like to on-pass to the city of Paris is: Hurry and open up all of the tourist attractions and activities.”

By THOMAS ADAMSON

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Oleg Cetinic, Jeff Schaeffer and Masha Macpherson in Paris contributed.

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Follow AP pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak