Christian Zervos

Three Cypriot pieces in the Musée Christian Zervos at Vézelay came from the collection of the founder of Cahiers d'art: a small Red Polished III flask of about 2000 BC (MZ 743), a Base Ring female plaque figurine and a Bichrome IV horse-and-rider¹. Annie Caubet, who published the museum's antiquities in 2006, saw in them his taste for archaic stylisation, close to the Yortan and Cycladic forms he also collected. She quotes Derouet's view that the collection was "what remains of all the barter operations" Zervos made to finance his review and books. How he obtained the Cypriot pieces is not recorded¹.

Christos Zervos was born on Cephalonia on 1 January 1889, studied at the Sorbonne and wrote a thesis on Michael Psellos in 1918. He worked in art publishing from 1923 and founded Cahiers d'art in 1926. In 1932 he married Yvonne Marion, who turned the ground floor of the firm's premises in the rue du Dragon into a gallery^1,3. His books included L'Art en Grèce (1933) and L'Art de la Mésopotamie (1935). During the war he was stripped of French nationality and lived at Vézelay¹.

Yvonne Zervos died on 20 January 1970 and Christian Zervos in September of the same year, on the 22nd according to Caubet and the 12th in other accounts^1,3. His will made the town of Vézelay universal legatee, and the museum bearing his name opened there in 2006¹.