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The Louvre – art that enlightens

Many visitors "do" the most famous works...
Royal ceiling

 

...then they wander on, tiring as masterpiece after masterpiece flashes before them. Instead of zooming into works that are already familiar, why not see these marvels and also experience art in a way that opens one's mind?

 

We decipher a form of art that nobles commissioned from the 16th century, and that Parisian statues make  part of daily life. The visit takes about an hour, which leaves time to explore other parts of the museum.

 

 
  • The Louvre was originally a palace where the king, most important of the nobles, held court

 

The Louvre is so vast that King Henri III would go outdoors on horseback to call on his mother at the far end. It covers two and half métro stops.

 

Discovering the spectacular royal decor is one of the visit's highights.

 

 

  • That context is perfect for decoding the superhuman figures that are central to royal –

    that is, aristocratic – art  

 

 

Rubens's dramatic series on the life of Queen Marie de Medici (painted in the 1620's) is something like "Dynasty"...

 

We start with Louis XIII's formidable maman, Italian-born Regent Marie de Médicis (1573-1643), who, historians say, loved power too much to let her son rule...

 

She commissioned Rubens to paint 24 episodes of her life – as she wanted it told.

 

Please CLICK.

 

 

    • We continue with adaptations by a middle class that revered the nobles (or at least accepted

        the canon of taste they had set down)...

     

     

    "The raft of the Medusa", by Géricault, 1819

    ...and show how the great Romantics took up the same principles for an opposite purpose.

     

     

     

     

     

    •Costs: Please CLICK

     

     

    A word on the Mona Lisa

     

    It is one masterpiece among hundreds that you can see on the walls fo the Louvre.

     

    It is not very big and looks a lot like the t-shirts. It has no special importance to art history.

     

    Yet as the planet's most marketed work, it does make sense to follow the crowd to see it.

     

     

     

     

     

    Credits: ceiling and room with 19th-century art / Julien Debure;  other photos / Claude Abron
    This magnet gives a free run of the rest of the museum.