Louvre Museum

“ The court of the louvre is one of the finest in Europe, and its art galleries are among the richest in the world. The Long Gallery alone covers nearly an acre and a quarter, being 42 feet wide and 1,322 feet long! A person can well spend weeks or even months in the museum of the Louvre, but simply to walk through all of its brilliant galleries will require about three hours! I cannot stop to say more than that its collections of paintings and of sculpture is probably much larger than any other in the world. ”

“ Here one passes from room to room without the intervention of corridors, and the temptation to go on and see just a little more is enhanced by the variety in the shape of the rooms and by the material displayed. On the other hand nothing is so wearisome as the long gallery in the Louvre, where one passes some of the most remarkable paintings the world has ever known but is too wearied by the oppression of their nearness and the interminable length of the space that must be covered to be able to enjoy them. ”

“ When we have satisfied ourselves with what Paris itself is, although we have not seen anything like the whole of it, we shall set about visiting some of its especial attractions. And the first place we shall go to will be the great palace of the Louvre. This palace, with its courts and buildings, covers some twenty acres. Here have lived kings, queens, and princes; but now the palace has been made into a museum for the people, and its grand halls and galleries are filled with paintings, statuary, and other works of art, ancient and modern, from all parts of the world. ”

“ This collection is interesting, both because it contains a number of valuable fragments of French Renaissance work, especially architectural, and also because of its Museum of Copies, including transcripts (mostly very good) of the best pictures of various ages, many of which are useful to the student of art-history for comparison with originals in the Louvre and elsewhere. Everybody who has not been to Rome, Venice, and Florence, should certainly try to visit this Museum ”

“ No person is admitted with a stick, and guards attend to preserve the pictures from injury, and the exhibition from riot. The gallery of the Louvre is at present, unfortunately, badly lighted110 throughout, owing to the light issuing chiefly on one side, from long windows. This inconvenience, however, is soon to be remedied; by observing the same manner of lighting, as in the adjoining apartment.
From the museum, we descended into la Salle des Antiques, which contains all the treasury of grecian and roman statuary. ”

“ Yet it seemed impossible to obtain admission to these hidden treasures. “It is the universal complaint,” writes Lepsius, “that Louis Philippe does nothing in any way for the monuments of antiquity, his taste is all for modern works of art, and he now employs all the artists and officers of the Museum on the historical picture gallery in Versailles.{89} Just now, also, several guardians of the Louvre are occupied there, and therefore they represent that it is impossible to detail a guardian for me in the magazine.” ”

“ Modesty is not prominent among the virtues of the French, though of course there must be many good people among them. Vice flaunts itself more in Paris than in any city I have ever seen. There is a certain brazen shamelessness even in French art that one does not see in New York or London. But the collection in the Louvre is one of the richest aggregations of antiquarian and artistic objects in the world, and surely no museum was ever so splendidly housed. The Moabite Stone, the oldest extant Hebrew inscription, was one of the things that we made a point of seeing. ”

“ Nanteuil’s original drawings in pencil, crayons, and pastels are fewer by far than those of the Clouets or the pastellists of the eighteenth century which have been preserved to us; probably not more than twenty are now to be found in public collections. To my knowledge the Louvre has two, the Museum of Rheims four, the Chartres Museum one, Florence three, Chantilly four, and Stafford House, London, six. They are supremely interesting for that simplicity and sincerity, that living truth, which make one feel as if he recognized old acquaintances. ”

“ It is well to inform future historians and all sensible persons that this portion of the Louvre—called to-day the old Louvre—which projects upon the quay and is connected with the Louvre by the room called the Apollo gallery (while the great halls of the Museum connect the Louvre with the Tuileries) did not exist in the time of Charles IX. The greater part of the space where the frontage on the quay now stands, and where the Garden of the Infanta is laid out, was then occupied by the hotel de Bourbon, which belonged to and was the residence of the house of Navarre. ”

“ THE ARTISTIC REVIVAL IN EUROPE Italian architects found a cordial reception in France, Spain, the Netherlands, and other countries, where they introduced Renaissance styles of building and ornamentation. The celebrated palace of the Louvre in Paris, which is used to-day as an art gallery and museum, dates from the sixteenth century. At this time the French nobles began to replace their somber feudal dwellings by elegant country houses. Renaissance sculpture also spread beyond Italy throughout Europe. ”

“ A picture of a Turk seated is at the Victoria and Albert Museum, while the British Museum owns two of his drawings. The Louvre has, besides twenty-two drawings, a portrait of General Hérault and a portrait of the artist is to be found at the Sala dei pittori, in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence. ”

“ The Museum of [Pg 42] Natural History is at the end of the garden opposite the entrance; it is open on Tuesday and Friday. We could not see it the day we were at the garden.
LIMONADIÈRE LOUVRE AND PALAIS ROYAL May 8th.—As we had taken a house at Passy, the servants and trunks went there: but we staid till the afternoon that we might see the Gallery of the Louvre and as much of Paris as we could. In the first saloon of this museum are the earliest works of the French and Italian artists. ”

“ For, as tradition has it, there is always some permanent risk of fire in [Pg xl]
[Pg xli] the vicinity of the Museum! On the same side, the Civil Service had run up temporary buildings which, from the small courtyard of the Sphinx to the gate facing the Saints-Pères bridge, enclosed the ruins of the ancient church of Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre and its dependencies, such as the Priory where Théophile Gautier, Gérard de Nerval, Nanteuil, Arsène Houssaye, and others, had established their "Bohème galante." ”

“ Interesting as the Louvre may be by its ancient history, the old palace is above all famous in the present day for its admirable picture {201} gallery, first thrown open to the public in the darkest, most sanguinary days of the French Revolution. The modern collection was formed by Francis I., who, during his Italian campaigns, had acquired a taste for Italian art, and who not only invited celebrated Italian artists to his court, but gave princely orders to those who, like Raphael and Michel Angelo, were unable to visit France in person. ”

“ This has nothing to do with the Louvre, except as showing that humanity is the same everywhere. If any other moral can be got out of it I have no objection.
All over the Louvre are statues of men who are famous in French history—those who have achieved fame in art, science, literature or war. They are here, and in stone that will last for ages ”

“ On a brilliant day in May, of the year 1868, a gentleman was reclining at his ease on the great circular divan which at that period occupied the centre of the Salon Carré, in the Museum of the Louvre. ”

“ He went forth, satisfied that the Louvre was a fine gallery of Art, that Art was a very fine thing, that painters and sculptors ought to be encouraged, and that he had been looking at many things which were worthy a man's consideration. ”

“ I could indulge myself, did I not fear to weary you, by dwelling much longer upon my agreeable recollections of this extensive exhibition—containing, by the way, 2,174 pictures,—and might particularise many very admirable works. Nevertheless, I must repeat, that thus hiding the precious labours of all schools, and of all ages of painting, by the promiscuous productions of the living artists of France during the last year, is a most injudicious device for winning for them the golden opinions of those who throng from all quarters of the world to visit the Louvre. ”

“ The Louvre Musée is a vast collection of classified art, and occupies the palace of that name, any room of which will repay one's effort to see it.
Just wander about alone until some work of art compels you to stop before it. 144 Then look at your Baedeker and see if it is something noted. It tickles one's vanity to find one has selected a masterpiece without having it pointed out. ”

“ The Great Gallery and Saloon of the Louvre are solely appropriated to the exhibition of pictures of the old masters of the Italian, Flemish, and French schools; and the Gallery of Apollo to that of their drawings; while a suite of lofty apartments has been purposely fitted up in this palace for the reception of original antiques, in lieu of those copies of them before-mentioned. In other rooms, adjoining to the Great Gallery, are exhibited, as formerly, that is during one month every year, the productions of living painters, sculptors, architects, and draughtsmen. ”

“ After this the moyen-age Louvre, attributable to Saint Louis and Charles V, with its great tower, its thick walls of stone and its deep-dug moats, came into being. With Francis I came a more sympathetic, a more subtle era of architectural display, a softening of outlines and an interpolation of flowering gables. It was thus that was born that noble monument known as the New Louvre, which combined all the arts and graces of a fastidious ambition. ”

“ To understand all these, we must know something of Florentine art, Umbrian art, Venetian art, Flemish art, Spanish art, and so forth. The finest pictures of any in the collection are not French at all, and cannot wholly be comprehended by the light of works in this gallery alone. Therefore it is best, if possible, to return to the Louvre after visiting every other great school of art in Europe. On the other hand, a few great artists are here very amply represented; among them I may particularise Raphael, Titian, Mantegna, Leonardo and the Leonardesque school, Gerard Dou, and Rembrandt. ”

“ We have been in and through the Louvre, not in one visit, but again and again, over acres of flooring, past miles of pictures,—a plethora of luxurious art,—days of wonder, and hours of sight-seeing. How many originals we have gazed upon that we have seen copies of in every style! how many pictures of great artists that we have read of, and how many curious and wonderful historical relics and antiquities! ”

“ It is not possible in a chapter, a book or a five-foot shelf to limn all that is even of cursory interest. The well-known, the little-known and the comparatively unknown mingle in varying proportions, according to the individual mood or attitude. To some the appeal will lie in the vastness of the fabric, to others in the varied casts of characters which have played upon its stage, still others will be impressed with the dramatic incidents, and many more will retain only present-day memories of what they have themselves seen. The Louvre is a study of a lifetime. ”

“ I shall never end if I begin a detailed account of the art treasures of the Louvre, and I will therefore conclude by saying that the sculpture of different nations is represented in the lower floor as painting is in the upper. One can spend days and days usefully amid the monuments of an ancient world,—monuments from Egypt with their hieroglyphics, 2,500 years before Christ, monuments from Assyria and Babylon with their cuneiform inscriptions 1,500 years before Christ, and the marble monuments of Greece and Rome never since equalled in their nobility of form and grace. ”

“ If the character of the architecture of the Hotel des Invalides accords well with the object to which that building is destined, the character of the Louvre is not less in unison with the spirit of the fine arts, to which it is consecrated. It is impossible for language to convey any adequate idea of the impression which this exquisite building awakens in the mind of a stranger. ”

“ No other edifice in Europe contains so vast a treasure of things beautiful and rare as the great royal palace of the Louvre, whose growth we have traced in our story. From periods so remote that works of art sometimes termed ancient are in comparison but of yesterday to the productions of the generation of artists who have just passed away, we may study the varying phases of the manifestation through the ages of the artistic sense in man. ”

“ A little more violent access of fury, a little more fiery declamation, a few more bottles of vin bleu, and the Gallery of the Louvre, with all its treasures of art, compared with which the crown jewels just sold are but pretty pebbles, the market price of which fairly enough expresses their value,--much more, rather, than their true value,--that noble gallery, with all its masterpieces from the hands of Greek sculptors and Italian painters, would have been changed in a single night into a heap of blackened stones and a pile of smoking cinders. ”