First timers usually "do" the most famous works...
|
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 genuinely - that is, in a way that opens one's mind?
|
 |
This visit explains principles that apply to much of the art that France produced between the 16th and 19th centuries, and affected sensibilibilities until World War 1 at least. It takes about an hour, which leaves time to explore other parts of the museum.
|
|
|
•Examples & costs
 - Royal ceiling
Originally a palace, 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 its spectacular décor is part of the experience a visit offers... as is finding out that most visitors head to the Mona Lisa, which we glimpse behind hordes of picture-taking tourists.
We proceed to paintings by Rubens, Gericault and Delacroix.. |
|
|
|
- In a room which we will have almost to ourselves, we give keys to understanding the superhuman
figures that nobles demanded...
|
|
 - A cliff-hanger all to ourselves
|
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. (in 1624-26)
|
|
|
|
- ...and 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. |
|
|
|
* * *
Ceiling / Julien Debure; 19th-century art / Julien Debure
•Top of page
•Celebrated sites
