Today I went to the Louvre.
I hoped to avoid the larger crowds by coming on a Monday, as advised by
the man running the desk at my hostel.
It opened at 9:00, and I arrived very shortly after that, hardly having
to wait in line at all, which is amazing considering the length of the line as
I was leaving.
Greeting me on my arrival was the famous glass pyramid, designed
by architect I. M. Pei in 1989. In the
lobby at the entrance was the glass inverted pyramid, which features prominently
in Dan Brown’s The da Vinci Code. What you don’t see in the film version,
however, are the shops encircling said inverted pyramid. I am inclined to support the filmmaker’s
decision to edit out the Apple Store in the background. Somehow, it might have detracted from the
sense of mystery.
Today I have truly come to love my student ID card from Paul
Valéry. Counting yesterday and today, it
has gotten me in free to four museums that I otherwise would have had to pay
for. It is not enough to be a university
student; you have to be a student from the European Union in order to get in
free. Technically, I am officially
enrolled at the University of Montpellier III, Paul Valéry, and so I am a student
at a French university. Which was great
for getting in free to the Louvre.
The Louvre was originally a fortress, constructed in the
late 12th Century by Philip II.
In the 14th Century, Charles V converted it into a dwelling
and a century later, François 1ier had it renovated in the style of
the French Rennaissance. Patron of the
famous Leonardo da Vinci, François 1ier contributed “the nucleus” of
the museum’s collection, including La
Jaconde, known in English as the Mona
Lisa. Louis XIV chose to move the
royal residence to Versailles, which led to the site’s temporary decline.
During the Revolution, both the Palais de Louvre and the
royal family’s art collection became property of the state, which opened the
palace in 1893 as a museum for preserving the “national memory.” The
collection was expanded by the confiscation of Church property as well as the
property of the French Nobility who had fled the country from the
Revolution. The Revolutionary Army also
brought home works as part of spoils or treaties. Under Napoleon Bonaparte, the museum had a rebirth. The building underwent expansion and its
collections were augmented by paintings and sculptures “gained” during his
military conquests. After Waterloo, the
original owners sought their property, which prompted the Louvre to hide many
of its paintings in private collections.
The Restored monarch, Louis XVIII, negotiated a big art trade with Italy
in order to keep certain important Italian paintings. Throughout the next hundred years, the museum
continued to expand its collection at a startling rate. The administrators of the Louvre began to
grow worried in the late 1930s at the threat of war with Germany, and beginning
with the German occupation of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, the museum
began to discreetly ship away its most valuable works to more obscure, rural
museums or monastaries. When the Nazis
occupied Paris, the Wehrmacht officers rushed to the Louvre, eager to loot it
for the profit of their private collections.
They found the museum almost completely empty, save for a few works too
large or heavy to carry out and left in the basement. After the war, the art miraculously flowed
back to the museum.
Setting off from the entrance, I first headed to the
Richelieu wing. It is named for the
infamous cardinal who was the antagonist mastermind of Dumas’s The Three Musketeers. The real life Richelieu was indeed the chief
minister to Louis XIII and is probably most responsible for the political
maneuvering that centralized power in the French monarchy that made Louis XIV
so powerful when he assumed the throne.
The Richelieu wing is probably my favorite part of the
museum. The ground floor bears large sculptures
from the last three-hundred years, all very impressive. The floor above that contains furniture and ornamentations
from the monarchy and from Napoleon’s years as emperor. It is all very lavish and very impressive. Above that reside paintings from the Northern
European schools and from the French schools.
This was my favorite section. I
entered in the Holland School area, which is probably my favorite style. It is very emotive and the lighting is used
to make it very dynamic. The persons in
the painting show both intricate detail and personality, and there is so much
going on in the backgrounds of the painting that each painting bears several
minutes of careful scrutiny. In the collection
of French artists, there is plenty of Delacroix, who is my favorite French
artist. Most famous for Liberty Leading the People, Delacroix
has a very unique style that allows him to convey powerful emotion through his scenes.
Passing from the Richelieu wing on my way to see the Mona Lisa, I passed by the Apollo
Gallery. It is breathtaking. My jaw literally fell. Constructed to celebrate the Sun King, Louis
XIV, at the pinnacle of France’s glory, it combines paintings, murals, and
sculpture, all combined and intricately gilded and woven together in a massive
hall. Swirling with mythological
allegory, the zodiac, and the allegories for the months of the calendar, it
contains portraits of Frances’s greatest architects up to that point as well as
Louis XIV and several of his illustrious ancestors. My feeble words fail to do it justice.
From that point onward, in touring the Louvre one must
remember to always look up. The ceilings
of many of the galleries are often as ornately decorated as the masterpieces below. It is probably the most beautiful building
that I have ever been in, disregarding its content.
My next stop was la
Jaconde, the Mona Lisa, center of so much history and intrigue. Surrounded by a massive crowd and protected
by bulletproof glass, it has its own wall dedicated to it. Confession time: I found it overhyped. Compared to the other Italian works around
it, it just seemed another portrait to me, especially after seeing the French,
Hollandaise, Flemish, and German masterworks before. Call me tasteless, but it was a letdown for
me.
I finished my tour of the Louvre at a special visiting
gallery of important American works that were on loan from American
museums. The Louvre considered them to
be important defining works in the launching the American school of art. They were quite good and I was filled with patriotic
pride at their inclusion.
I left the Louvre just after 2:00, five hours after first
setting foot inside of it. I traversed
the Tuileries Gardens, which I imagine are very beautiful in the summer, but
seemed forlorn in the winter. I will definitely
have to come back in the warmer weather.
I visited the Orangerie Museum next, home to Claude Monet’s Nymphéas, a series of eight massive
murals of the water lilies on his private estate that he painted over the course
of his final years, from 1915 until 1926.
It also houses the donated private collections of John Walter and Paul
Guillaume, including 25 paintings by Renoir, 14 by Cézanne, 11 by Matisse, 12
by Picasso, 9 by Rousseau, 10 by Utrillo, 22 by soutine, and 28 by Derain. They were all very good. Once
again, my University of Montpellier student ID got me in free.
After that, I walked the Champs Élysées. As I stopped for lunch, I came upon a
realization. It is a well-known fact that
in expensive restaurants, you pay just as much for the atmosphere as you do for
your food. In Paris, you pay extra just
because you have the privilege of being in Paris. It is almost like a culture tax. I also came to the understanding that this
isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
After lunch, I decided that come wind, snow, sleet, hail,
rain, or some ungodly combination of all five, I would press on to see the Arc
de Triumph before heading in for the evening.
Sure enough, I got my wish and received what can only be described as
Spite-Precipitation, which is an ungodly combination of wind, snow, sleet,
hail, and rain. I pressed on despite the
horrible weather and got to the massive structure. Again, worth it.
Tomorrow, most of the museums are closed, so I am not
exactly sure what I’m going to be doing.
I have narrowed it down to either seeing Notre Dame and the sights
nearby along the Seine or else doing my work at the Bibliothèque Nationale for
my thesis. I’ll update you tomorrow of what I settled on.
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