The Louvre

My granddaughter Alli wants to go to Paris to see the Eiffel Tower.  When David and I went to Paris, I wanted to see the Louvre. I wanted to see this museum which houses most of the paintings I saw on slides in the History of Art class I took in college. .

On that dark night when I first drove into Paris, I recognized the two-block-long palace and pointed it out to David. 

David said, “That’s one big building.”

I said, “That’s only one wing of the Louvre.  There’s another three-story wing just as long on the other side of the courtyard.  I would like to spend a week there.” 

David said, “I don’t want to spend a week in any museum.”

So we went for one day. 

The building itself is fabulous.  For centuries it was the royal palace, home of the kings of France.  Each king redecorated and added rooms, making it bigger, more ornate and impressive than his predecessors.  Napoleon kept part of it open to the public as a museum and kept the rest as home for the emperor.  His portrait by the French artist David presides over one gallery.  On a later visit I found tucked away in an upstairs corner the private apartments of his sad successor, Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie; it is all red velvet and Victorian kitsch. 

Dramatically poised over the grand staircase was the 10-foot-tall Winged Victory of Samothrace, a copy of which stood in a similar position on the steps of the “Old Main” building where I attended college.  With wings out-spread it symbolized women accomplishing every goal, something none of us done so far.  Certanly my life has turned out differently than I expected.

Down in the classical galleries I found the Venus de Milo.  We had a copy of that on top of a shelf in the library at my high school.  I was told was the armless statue was ideal figure of a woman.  She has very small breasts. 

The paintings were upstairs.  Some were so familiar from art class that it was hard to realize that I was finally seeing the originals.  I walked in one of the side galleries and there was Gericault’s “Raft of the Medusa.”  In college the professor spent a whole day talking about it.  I can not get enthusiastic about shipped-wrecked Frenchmen who turned into cannibals.  What surprised me in the Louvre was the painting’s enormous size.

Everything in the Louvre seemed to be over-sized.  Among giant paintings is the one of Napoleon crowning Josephine.  There is another just like it at Versailles.  Did David paint duplicates? 
 
One large room was devoted to a series of giant paintings by Rubens glorifying Marie di Medici, who got to be Queen of France for the same reason as her cousin Catherine – they were related to the pope.  Catherine was clever; Marie was not.  But from those paintings in the Louvre you’d think Marie, too, was a great queen.  It is art as propaganda on a grand scale. 

After a couple of hours of walking through those vast rooms, my feet hurt.  My eyes began to glaze over from seeing hundreds of paintings.  I scarcely noticed the ornate decor on ceilings and walls installed by Kings of France when they lived in these rooms as a royal palace. 

“David,” I said.  “I’ve had enough of the Louvre.”

I learned another lesson.  Two hours is as much as I can take at one time in any museum.  The only way to get to know a great collection of art is to go back time after time, preferably seeing only a small part – maybe just one painting – at a time.  Fortunately I’ve been able to do that in the greatest museums in the World, including Chicago’s magnificent Art Institute.

I returned to Paris half a dozen times.  On each visit I spent my two hours in the Louvre.  I still have not seen it all.