Louvre Museum
"The vast Palais of Louvre
was constructed around 1200 as a fortress and rebuilt in the
mid 16th century for use as a royal palace. Museum began its
career as a public museum in 1793.
The paintings, sculptures and artefacts
on display have been assembled by French governments over the past
five centuries.
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Among them are works of art and artisanship from all
over Europe and important collections of Assyrian,
Etruscan, Greek, Coptic
and Islamic art and antiquities. Traditionally the
Louvre's raison d'etre is to present Western art from the
Middle Ages to about the year 1848 (at which point the Musee
d'Orsay picks up the torch) as well as the works of ancient
civilisations that formed the starting point for Western art,
but all that is changing as the world's most famous museum confronts
the 21st century and discovers it actually rather likes it.
Both visitors and locals often find the prospect of an afternoon
at a smaller museum far more inviting. Eventually, most people
do their duty and come to Louvre, but many leave overwhelmed,
unfulfilled, exhausted and frustrated at having got lost on
their way to Da Vinci's La Joconde, better
known to us as Mona Lisa. Since it takes several
serious visits to get anything more than a brief alimpse of
the works on offer, your best bet after checking out a few you
really want to see is to choose a particular period or section
of Louvre Musee and pretend that the rest is in another museum
somewhere across town.
The most famous works from antiquity include the Seated Scribe,
the Jewels of Rameses II and that armless duo, the
Winged Victory of Samothrace and
the Venus de Milo. From the Renaissance,
don't miss Michelangelo's Slaves and works by Raphael,
Botticelli and Titian. French masterpieces
of the 19th century include Ingres' La Grande Odalisque,
Gericault's The Raft of the Medusa
and the work of David and Delacroix.
When the Louvre opened in the late 18th century it contained 2500
paintings; today some 30,000 are on display. The 7 billion franc `Grand
Louvre' project inaugurated by the late President
Mitterrand in 1989 has doubled the museum's exhibition space,
breathing new life into the museum with many new and renovated galleries
now open to the public. Seven new rooms containing furniture, silver,
clocks and Sevres porcelain opened in late 1999.
The main entrance and ticket windows in the Cour
Napoleon are covered by a 21m high glass pyramid
designed by the Chinese born American architect IM Pei.
The Museum is divided into four sections:
Sully, Denon, Richelieu
and Hall Napoleon. Sully
forms the four sides of the Cent Carree (literally
`square courtyard') at the eastern end of the building. Denon
stretches along the Seine to the south. Richelieu
is the northern wing along rue de Rivoli. The
split level public area under the glass pyramid is known as
the Hall Napoleon. It has an exhibit on the
history of the Louvre, a bookshop, a restaurant,
a cafe and auditoriums for concerts, lectures and films. The
centrepiece of the Carrousel du Louvre shopping
centre, which runs underground from the pyramid
to the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel,
is an inverted glass pyramid, also by Pei.
[1]. "
Egyptian Antiquities
"One of the most publicized artistic events of 1997 was the
opening of the Egyptian Antiquities collection,
sparking off a whole year of exhibitions across the city on
the Egyptian theme. The new layout recreates
the original 1827 design of the Egyptology
collection's first curator, Jean Francois Champollion
(he who translated the hieroglyphics of the Rosetta
Stone) a thematic circuit followed by a chronological
circuit, ranged across thirty rooms and two floors. The wealth
of the collection makes it the biggest and most important
Egyptian antiquities collection in the world after
the Cairo museum. Starting on the ground floor
of the Sully wing, the thematic circuit leads
up from the atmospheric crypt of the Sphinx (room 1) to the
Nile, source of all life in Egypt, and takes
the visitor through the everyday life of pharaonic Egypt
by way of cooking accessories, , jewellety, the principles of
hieroglyphics, musical instruments, sarcophagi and a host of
mummified cats. Upstairs, on the first floor, the chronological
circuit keeps the masterpieces on the right hand side, while
numerous pots and statuettes of more specialist interest are
displayed to the left. Among landmarks in the development of
Egyptian art are the studious Seated
Scribe statue found at Saqqara. the
bust of AmenophisIV, and the painted relief
of Goddess Hathor Protecting Seti I
found in Seri I's tomb in the Valley
of the Kings.
Post pharaonic Egypt between the fourth and
twelfth centuries AD is exhibited on the entresol level of the
Denon wing, and displays the links between the civilization
of ancient Egypt and that of the Roman
Empire. The legacy of the pharaohs
is easily discernible in the funerary trappings of Roman
Egypt, for example the Mummy of Pdijmenipet,
while the Coptic section illustrates the presence
of Christianity with a fine painting on wood of Christ Protecting
Abbot Mena, displayed in a part reconstruction of the monastery
church at Baouit, in middle Egypt.
[2]. "
References:
[1] Steve Fallon, Daniel Robinson, Tony Wheeler, "PARIS". Footscray, Victoria, Australia: Lonely Planet Publication, 2001.
[2] Kate Baillie, Tim Salmon, Margo Daly, Rachel Kaberry, "PARIS". London: Rough Guides Ltd, 1999.
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