166 - JEAN-JOSEPH WEERTS (FRANCE/ 1846–1927) The Parchment Fair during the Lendit Festival, circa 1894 Oil on canvas 12.5 x 31 cm Annotated “WEERT” on the reverse (Damage, missing areas) The son of a former student at the Antwerp Academy, Jean-Joseph Weerts settled in Paris in 1867, enrolling at the city’s École des Beaux-Arts. After a stint in the studios of Isidore Pils and Alexandre Cabanel, Weerts began exhibiting his academic works—featuring both religious and decorative subjects—at the Salon as early as 1869. While his body of work comprises no fewer than 700 pieces, it can be divided into two parts: on the one hand, portraits of the most illustrious figures of the Third Republic, and on the other, the large-scale decorative works in public buildings throughout Paris and the provinces, such as the murals at the Sorbonne, for which this painting might have served as a model. The subject of the painting resonates with the place where it was created and is now housed: from the Latin *Indictum*, meaning “place of assembly,” the Fête du Lendit, which originated in 1053 during the exhibition of the relics of the Passion by the Abbey of Saint-Denis, captures a moment in medieval Parisian academic life, a time when Western trade was at its peak. Held over two weeks, from June 11 to 24—that is, from Saint Barnabas’ Day to Saint John’s Day—the Fête du Lendit is dedicated to the heart of learning and knowledge transmission: the purchase by university students of the parchments they needed for the year. It is this episode from the parchment fair that Weerts depicts in this composition, executed in a purely troubadour style. While the final work, installed under the arcades of the main courtyard, measures 310 x 860 cm, our modello—though modest in size—contains all the details featured in the final composition: parchment merchants’ stalls, the flag of the city of Paris, a gathering of young university students, and other elements associated with the festive scene. With this commission, dated 1894 and delivered ten years later, Weerts followed in the footsteps of the greatest decorative artists of the late 19th century—both in terms of the quality and historical accuracy of his depiction and the cost of the project, the cost of 40,000 francs rivaling Pierre Puvis de Chavannes’s *Le Bois sacré* for the Grand Amphitheater in the same city. Although the museum dedicated to his work was established during his lifetime in Roubaix in 1924, it was upon the museum’s closure in 1981 that the entire collection was transferred to the Musée de La Piscine. Although the Sorbonne Interuniversity Library (BIS) holds a collection of 16 preparatory drawings for the major commission of 1894, it should be noted that a painted sketch depicting the *Cortège des étudiants* (Procession of Students), the counterpart to our composition, is housed at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris (inv. PDUT1870). Expert: Thomas MORIN-WILLIAMS