In order to beat the crowds at the Louvre, we got up at 7:30. By 8:05, we were out the door, heading to the Pyrenees Metro. After exiting at Metro Chatelet, we were near the front of the line at the underground shopping mall entrance to the museum--Le Carroussel de Louvre--by 8:40. The ticket counters opened at 9:00, and we headed straight for the Mona Lisa, hoping to get it in before the room got too crowded. When we got there, it was still fairly crowded.
One of the reasons the Mona Lisa is valued so highly is that Leonardo Da Vinci only produced 15 paintings that survive today. Another reason is that the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in August 1911 by a thirty-year-old Italian man named Vincenzo Peruggia, who once worked at the Louvre. The painting was recovered 28 months later when Peruggia tried to sell it in Italy.
Théodore Géricault was 27 years old when he completed "The Raft of the Medusa." Its subject: a French ship--"The Medusa"--that ran into a sandbank off the coast of Senegal on July 2, 1816, with over 150 soldiers on board. According to the Louvre website, the ship's mission was to colonize Senegal, but I'm suspicious of the "colonization" work that would require 150 soldiers (sounds more like "conquer and subjugate" to me). Apparently, the captain of the ship had not sailed for over twenty years before he took command of the Medusa. The ship did not have a sufficient number of lifeboats, so 150 stranded passengers built a raft, which they drifted on for 13 days. Well, some of them drifted for 13 days: ten, to be exact. The others died. And some of them were eaten.
Géricault chose to focus on the desperation of the passengers, not the joy of their rescue. The sail of ship that could rescue them is just evident on the horizon, though.
The painting was "the star at the Salon of 1819," but some critics expressed disgust at its distasteful attention to a "pile of corpses." (I assume these critics were not excited by the prospect of touring Paris's catacombs, either.) As the painter Marie-Philippe Coupin de la Couperie put it in his review, "The goal of painting is to speak to the soul and the eyes, not to repel." Other, admiring critics, like historian Jules Michelet, saw the painting a comment on contemporary social conditions: "our whole society is aboard the raft of the Medusa [...]
I encouraged the kids not to smile when I was taking their photo in front of this grim subject.
Eugène Delacroix completed "July 28: Liberty Leading the People" in December 1831, just five months after The Paris uprising of July 27, 28, and 29, 1830, which is commemorated in the painting. The uprising overthrew the last Bourbon king, Charles X--the guy who used to give the ladies of the court tours of the Catacombs. Delacroix witnessed the uprising first hand. Though Delacroix was sympathetic with the rebels, according to the Louvre website, he helped protect the Louvre's collections from the rioters.
Some viewers have suggested that the fellow with the top hat on the left side of the photo represents Delacroix himself. In a letter to his brother dated October 28, 1830, he wrote, "although I may not have fought for my country, at least I shall have painted for her. It has restored my good spirits."
The towers of Notre Dame can be seen in the distance on the right side of the painting.
On the left in the photo above is Delacroix's painting "The Barque of Dante" (1822), completed when the painter was 24.
Jacques-Louis David finished "The Consecration of Napoleon and the Coronation of Josephine" in 1807. The ceremony itself took place on December 2, 1804 at the Notre-Dame Cathedral. Pope Pius VII consecrated the ceremony. He is the one sitting behind the Emperor holding up the first two fingers of his right hand to bless the event, though he was not given the honor of crowning the Emperor. Instead, Napoleon crowned himself, "facing the congregation rather than the high altar to mark his independence from the Church," as the Louvre website reports.
David was at the ceremony, and he depicted himself in the massive painting with a sketchbook in his hand, but he is just outside the frame in the photo above. David's initial sketch represented the Emperor in the act of crowning himself, but the final painting, above, shows him crowning the Empress.
The woman seated in the center gallery above Josephine is Napoleon's mother. In fact, she chose not to attend the coronation ceremony. She was mad at Napoleon for some reason; the Internet does not agree with itself about what (she didn't approve of Josephine? she didn't approve of the way Napoleon told his younger brother Lucien he couldn't marry the woman he had married? she didn't like being called--"Madame Mere"--Madame Mother?). Apparently, she had many reasons to be displeased by her son, the Emperor. David worked for Napoleon, though, and in his painting, Madame Mere is delighted with the proceedings.
Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun's self-portrait with her daughter Julie was finished in 1789, when Le Brun was 34 years old. Le Brun, who mostly taught herself how to paint, had became the fourth woman in the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture six years earlier, thanks in part to the intervention of her friend, the Queen, Marie Antoinette. When the people of Paris marched to Versailles to seize Antoinette and her husband, the King, Le Brun fled to Italy.
For Le Brun and Marie Antoinette, being fashion-forward meant favoring a more natural, less luxurious style--discarding powdered hair, heavy make-up, jewels, and elaborate hoop skirts for simple, white muslin cloth, free-falling curls, and no make-up or jewels at all. Ironically, Antoinette's more democratic fashion statements helped her enemies label her as a foreign threat who disdained traditional French customs and identity.
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Louvre’s collection represents all periods of European art up to the Revolutions of 1848. Works painted after that date were transferred to the Orsay Museum when it opened in 1986. The last time I visited the Louvre, in 1982, the Orsay did not exist. I. M. Pei's Pyramid was not here, either.
We had lunch on this balcony.
According to Encyclopedia Britannica, Francis I tore down an old castle and began to build the Louvre Palace in its place in 1546. Almost every French King from Francis forward gave orders to extend the construction. The most prominent additions were made on orders from Louis XIII and Louis XIV. But when Louis XIV, the Sun King, moved his court to Versailles in 1682, the Louvre was no longer a royal residence.
After the Women's March on Versailles in October 1789, the government was forced to come back to Paris, where it took up residence in the Tuileries Palace at the Western end of the Louvre complex. Louis XVI was held captive here until he was forced from the throne in August 1792.
In 1793 the revolutionary government opened the Louvre's Grande Galerie to the public.
In 1800, Napoleon moved into the Tuileries. Louis XVI’s brothers, Louis XVIII and Charles X, stayed there on their return to power but surrendered the palace to their cousin Louis-Philippe when he took power in 1830
Revolutionaries burned down the Tuileries Palace during the Paris Commune uprising of 1871, and the palace's ruins were demolished in 1883.
In 1832, fifty-two-year-old Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres finished this portrait of Louis-François Bertin, the journalist-owner of the
Journal des Débats, who was jailed during Napoleon's reign because he supported a constitutional monarchy. Bertin helped put Louis-Philippe on the throne in 1830. Some critics of this painting thought Bertin's pose was inelegant, making him look like a "fat farmer," instead of the "Buddha of the bourgeoisie." Like David, whom he studied under, Ingres was considered a defender of classical painting from the Romantic emotionalism of painters like Delacroix.
While he was living in Rome, Ingres finished this portrait of the "Seated Bather" in 1808 (it is also called "The Valpincon Bather" after one of the painting's first owners). While some artists used narratives from Ancient Greek mythology to explain their interest in painting nudes, Ingres, in this case, did not.
This one is called "Hero Overpowering a Lion," but the Louvre website notes that it is "often identified with the hero Gilgamesh"), and that's how we recognized it, having read multiple versions of the Epic of Gilgamesh, who is both a legendary figure and a historic king of Uruk. All of our kids are fans of the Gilgamesh stories, which were first written down around 2000 BCE, making them one of the oldest works of literature in the world. This Assyrian (Iraq) sculpture dates to the reign of Sargon II (721-705 BCE), which means it is 28 centuries old. It was found in the excavated throne room of the palace of Sargon II.
Rain scuttled our plans to go on a cruise on the Seine after leaving the Louvre. Instead, we walked along the Seine and spent some time under the Sedar Senghor footbridge, which connects the Musee D'Orsay and the Tuileries Gardens. The bridge was built in 1999 and named after the first President of an independent Senegal, who was also the first African elected as a member of the
Académie française.
When the rain lightened, we headed to the Tuileries Gardens, where we enjoyed crepes: sugar and lemon for me (German pancakes?) and Nutella for everyone else.
After crepes, we walked down the Champs Elysees toward the Arc de Triomphe. On July 14, 1940, Hitler's troops marched down this avenue. German troops had also marched here after a victory over France in 1871. A parade celebrating the Allied victory in the First World War culminated here in 1919. The French 2nd Armored Division marched here on August 26, 1944 after the Nazis had evacuated the city.
Every year on Bastille Day on 14 July, the largest military parade in Europe passes down the Champs-Élysées, reviewed by the President of the Republic.
Since 1975, the last stage of the Tour de France cycling race has finished on the Champs-Élysées.
In order to keep retain the avenue's status as a destination for luxury shopping, the City of Paris has from time to time prohibited some global chain stores from opening on the avenue (they call the trend they're resisting: "banalisation").
Napoleon ordered construction of the Arc d'Triomphe to commemorate the victories of his armies over the Austrians and the Russians at Austerlitz in 1805. The Arc was not finished when Napoleon's armies were defeated at Waterloo in 1815.
We decided not to buy tickets to climb to the top of the Arc. We took the Metro home, via the Colonel Fabien stop, and walked by the headquarters of the French Communist Party, where we saw the plaque in the photo above. The English translation is: "Here millions of French and foreign volunteers passed between 1936 and 1938 to enlist in the International Brigades with the goal of helping the Spanish Republic, victim of a coup d'etat by General Francisco Franco, supported by Hitler and Mussolini. There were around 35,000 volunteers, 10,000 of them French, representing 53 nationalities who battled courageously for liberty and democracy and at the side of the people of Spain. This was the first act of international resistance against fascism."
We had dinner at home.
Gerardo came home from work at 8:30.
He and Nina enjoyed an Adele singalong.
I ask everyone what their three favorite experiences from the trip are. These are their answers:
