Friday, February 8
The first time we were in the Louve, almost three years ago, we were a little manic. It’s a huge museum, much larger than the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and we wanted to see the entire thing. We practically ran through the entire thing but we saw just about everything. It took six hours and we were absolutely exhausted. This time we felt much more comfortable. In fact there was only one thing that we really wanted to see and everything after that was gravy.
We had tickets for the first entry at 9:00 am. The first thing we did was head upstairs to see the Mona Lisa. We’d seen it before but it almost seemed impolite to go to the Louvre and not see what is arguably it’s premier exhibit. As displayed the painting is actually much less impressive than you might think. First of all it’s rather small. It’s also covered with glass and, for security reasons, you’re not able to get closer than 15 feet. From that distance you can barely see it at all. I took some photos with a 70mm lens and the painting barely filled half the frame. That’s pretty absurd. I never thought to bring a long lens when visiting a museum. Most everyone else was taking pictures with their phones. It’s hard to imagine how bad those photos are. At least mine is at a high enough resolution that I can blow it up and still have a picture of some quality. We suspect it’s actually a scheme to raise money by getting people to purchase prints in the gift shop.
(Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci)
Now it was time to see what we really came for. Leonardo de Vinci only painted four portraits of women and we had it in our minds to see them all. One, of course, is the Mona Lisa. We’d already seen Lady with an Ermine in Krakow and there is one at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC called Ginevra de’Benci which we have plans to see sometime later this year. The last one, called La Belle Ferronniere, is supposed to be in the Louvre. We asked one of the docents where we could find it and he said it was on loan to Abu Dhabi. We were absolutely heartbroken. It had been the one thing in the Louvre that we were dying to see and now it was out of reach. It took us quite a while to get over our disappointment. We later learned that it is on display at the Louvre in Abu Dhabi, a museum created in 2017 as part of a thirty year agreement between France and the city of Abu Dhabi.
After that we spent a lot of time in the section on Italian art. We were able to go slowly and really study many of the pieces in detail. After that we made an obligatory stop at “The Winged Victory of Samothrace”, a greek sculpture of the goddess Nike thought to be from the 2nd Century BC. Nike is portrayed standing on the bow of a ship with the wind rippling through her clothing. It’s a wonderful sight and, unlike so many Greek statues that are only known through their Roman copies, is absolutely original.
(Winged Victory of Samothrace)
Normally we would spend a great deal of time viewing the paintings from the Italian wing but this time we decided to spend a significant amount of time in areas of the museum that we would typically gloss over. We saw Napoleon’s apartments, art from the East and spent had a great time exploring ancient Babylonia where we found a recreation of an ancient palace and humongos sculpted walls that were in pristine condition.
(Entrance to Ancient Babylonia Palace)
Of course we couldn’t help exploring the French sculptures and the enormous two-level sculpture garden. By now we were getting tired and so we decided to have lunch at one of the cafes in the museum. Deborah had the onion soup, which was pretty good, and I had a plate of forgettable eggs benedict.
After lunch we saw the rooms where the royal jewels were kept. You have to remember that the Louvre was originally built as a castle in the 12th Century and was converted to a palace that was used as the primary residence of the royal families until The Palace of Versailles was constructed during the reign of Louis XIV in the 1690s. On August 10, 1793 the building was officially repurposed as a museum that primarily contained art from the royal collections. Today it is the largest museum in the entire world. It’s important to try and notice the building as well as the exhibits. It really is beautifully decorated.
The next collection was Roman sculptures. It was almost as good as being back in Rome. There are two very nice sculptures by Michelangelo on display. Neither had been completed. A sentimental favorite was a Roman copy of a now lost Greek original from from 150 BC of a person in a reclining position. Bernini thought that the statue lacked something so in 1619 he carved a mattress which the figure now rests upon.
The last section we saw was Greek sculptures. Given that we’d just come from more than two months in Greece we felt confident of our abilities to properly discern what we were about to see. Surprisingly most of the works were Roman copies of Greek originals that had been lost. We did, however, find three large stones from the pediment of the Temple of Apollo from Olympia. There were also some surprisingly large and intact pieces from the frieze from the Parthenon. It seemed odd to have to travel to Paris to see what you’d expect to see in Greece but in any event we were delighted to see them.
(Procession of the Panathenaic Festival from the Parthenon)
We really wanted to go back and see the Dutch/Flemish paintings but by this time we just didn’t have the energy. All told we spend 8.5 hours in the museum this time, which was 2.5 hours more than the last time. We thought that was a triumph in and of itself. By the time we left we were quite exhausted and had almost gotten our disappointment at not seeing La Belle Ferronniere.
Distance walked: 10.8 miles