The Cleveland Museum of Art

• Full conservation statement
  Before entering the collection, this entire suite of five monumental paintings by Charles Meynier had numerous conservation issues, including pronounced discolored varnish, years of accumulated grime, and canvases that were detaching from their stretchers, creating large buckles along the edges. The CMA designed a four-year-long comprehensive conservation campaign to address these concerns, which involved removing the grime, reducing the discolored varnish, flattening buckles and undulations in the canvas, followed by inpainting mainly to compensate for pronounced traction cracking in the original paint layers. Traction cracking occurs when the top layers of paint dry faster than the underlayers, creating breaks in the top layers, revealing the underlying preparatory layers that were not intended to be seen. Horizontal cracking at regular intervals is present in each painting and is likely caused by rolling the canvases to transport them to the Castella chateau in Wallenreid, Switzerland, where the paintings remained until the CMA purchased them in 2003. At some point, while in the Wallenreid chateau, likely for prudish reasons, the Castella family had an artist paint a drapery over Cupid. Fortunately, the lead white–containing paint of the overpainted drapery was applied over top of an old varnish layer. This barrier of thick, brittle natural resin varnish allowed for the careful and painstaking mechanical removal of the overpainted drapery, revealing the artist’s intended composition. The exquisitely carved gold leaf frames are original to the paintings.
• Provenance
  In 1819, Nicolas-Antoine de Castella, general of the Swiss regiments in France, purchased the paintings and placed them in his Castle of Wallenreid, Switzerland; direct descendants; Pierre de Castella, Mannaz, Switzerland.
• Citations
  Bellenger, Sylvain, Paul J. and Edith Ingalls Vignos Jr. "Magnificent Muses", Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine. Vol. 44 no. 01, January 2004 Mentioned & reproduced: 6-7 archive.org

  Bracken Sparks, Amy, "Disappearing Act", Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine. Vol. 48 no. 5, May/June 2008 Mentioned & reproduced: p. 10 archive.org

  Meynier, Charles, and Isabelle Mayer-Michalon. Meynier's Masterpiece: The Farewell of Telemachus and Eucharis : an Important Rediscovery from the Salon of 1800, London : Daniel Katz Gallery, 2019. 26. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 26-27, fig. 13.
• Cite this Page
  {{cite web|title=Erato, Muse of Lyrical Poetry|url=false|author=Charles Meynier|year=1800|access-date=13 July 2026|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}