Former Tate boss hits out at Louvre over redecoration 'affront' to Cy Twombly ceiling painting

The former head of Britain's Tate gallery group has hit out against the Louvre, criticising the French museum of an "affront" to the painter Cy Twombly after it made drastic changes to the room housing the late American artist’s ceiling painting.

Nicholas Serota's remarkable intervention comes after the Cy Twombly Foundation, of which he is a board member, threatened the Louvre with legal action for repainting the once white walls of the Salle des Bronzes a dark red, which it says "destroys the balance" of Twombly's original vision.

First unveiled in 2010, The Ceiling takes up 3,770 square feet and is meant to evoke an “immense blue sky, dotted with floating spheres and inscribed with the names of illustrious Greek sculptors.”

At the time, the painting was offset by white walls and a marble floor below. But the room has been stripped of the marble during renovations, and replaced with parquet. The walls were also repainted a dark, blood red, and the door frames and woodwork painted black.

Sir Nicholas told The Daily Telegraph: "The design and colours of his ceiling respond to the character and light of the room as well as to the content. His radiant Mediterranean blue and subtle whites and greys float above the white walls and are illuminated from below by light that reflects off the walls and floor. For Twombly the room was a whole.

"Without any consultation, or even notification, the present administration at the Louvre has introduced a deep red on the walls and a black dado and architectural detail, totally changing the light in the room and the harmony of the whole.

Sir Nicholas, who is Chair of Arts Council England, added: "If this is not an ‘affront’ to one of the great painters of the twentieth century, I don’t know what would be."

Twombly had been commissioned to create an installation in the room because of his passion for the mythologies and Greco-Roman antiquities.

The Louvre said the changes were meant to bring more unity between the rooms in the king’s apartment. It also defended the changes saying the Salle des Bronzes hadn’t been renovated since the 1930s and that the painting remained preserved and untouched.

“The artist was aware [that] this room, devoted to ancient Greek bronzes, had already undergone several modifications. Nothing in the agreement says that the room will remain frozen in its museography,” the Louvre said.

However, Sir Nicholas claims this is not true. "When Cy Twombly accepted the invitation to paint a ceiling for the Salle des Bronzes in 2009, he understood that the room would be permanent," he said.

Earlier this month, the Cy Twombly Foundation sent an email to the Louvre’s president Jean-Luc Martinez to express its outrage at the renovations made in the Salle des Bronzes, home to a collection of Roman and Greek statues as well as a prominent Twombly painting — the last major piece before his death in 2011 — on the ceiling overhead.

According to Le Monde, the email, signed by the foundation’s lawyer, demands an “immediate correction” and that the room be restored to its original state.

“Twombly’s shapes echo some of the forms in the bronzes and the deliberately airy atmosphere of the room can be read as a homage to eternity in art, space and time,” Nicola Del Roscio, president of Cy Twombly Foundation, said in a statement to Artnews.

“The deep red that has been introduced violates these harmonies and entirely destroys the balance of Twombly’s sensitive and memorable installation.”