TOULOUSE, France, Feb. 20 (UPI) -- The French Ministry of Culture is donating national art treasures to the museums where they have been on loan for many years, starting with Toulouse's museums.
A spokesman for the ministry said Thursday Toulouse has accepted ownership of 536 works that have hung in city museums, some since 1910. The ministry estimates that more than 100,000 paintings and sculptures from the national collection are currently on loan to regional museums throughout the nation.
Among the paintings accepted by Toulouse were one by Perugino, two by Peter Paul Rubens, and one of Eugene Delacroix's largest Orientalist canvases.
The handover of part of the nation's vast art patrimony to museums in French cities other than Paris is the result of new laws decentralizing culture that went into effect earlier this year.
