The Mona Lisa.
Venus de Milo.
Iconic classics.
It’s highly unlikely you haven’t at least heard them mentioned. Most everyone even knows what they look like.
How about the Winged Victory of Samothrace though. And the Great Sphinx of Tanis, one of the largest sphinxes outside of Egypt?
You can find them all while perusing the art in the Musée du Louvre.
Admittedly, Gary was wondering whether it was worth the hype to go. You hear a lot about the collection being one of the best in the world. You also hear a lot about how vast it is. Once you get there, you can see how big the building is from the street. It seems like it goes on forever. But what is inside is even more impressive.
The Tour
As you probably already know by now, we’re real fans of “Skip the Line” tours.
Our instructions were to meet at the base of the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel in the courtyard of the Louvre. It was inside the Louvre complex, in the middle of the square on the west side. We easily connected with our guide, and we were off and running!
In this particular case, similar to how we set up our tours of the Roman Colosseum and Vatican Museum (St Peter’s Basilica and Sistine Chapel), our tour guide took us through the entrance doors and down the escalator to the ticket area. From there, she walked us right past all the people who were waiting to buy tickets.
Skip the line.
We had our own dedicated staff member who quickly checked all our tickets and we were on our way!
The Louvre Building
Our group started in the crypt. It wasn’t a normal crypt like The Crypte – Cathédrale Saint-Bénigne de Dijon we had visited a few days earlier. This one was intriguing we were able to walk through the uncovered foundations of an original castle. That in and of itself was art.
There were foundation blocks laid with the individual block layer’s stamp on it. That way they knew how many blocks were laid by each block layer per day in order to pay them.
We won’t go through it all, but the structure of the Louvre itself has some pretty impressive history. Remnants of the 12th century castle built by Phillip II are now highlighted in the crypt. There were countless renovations of new buildings and replacement buildings.
The foundation of the holdings were initiated by Francis I in the early 1500s, who acquired the Mona Lisa from Leonardo da Vinci.
Late in the 18th century it was formally opened to the public. To say it’s huge is an understatment. We spent 3 hours touring and felt like we’d only scratched the surface. It wouldn’t be an understatement to say it would take a good year to see it all with any depth of understanding. Even then there would probably be some things that could be missed.
Then we went above. The only reason it isn’t wholly overwhelming is that you can’t see everything all at once. Moving from room to room, you see the art one section at a time. Things are grouped based on similar backgrounds and history so that the flow of your journey makes sense.
The Sculptures and Statues
Some rooms are dedicated to sculptures. Even after hundreds and thousands of years, the detail of each piece is remarkable. Hearing the back stories, history, and yes politics of the various statues really helped to better comprehend some of the nuances within pieces.
To stand close to the Venus de Milo statue and see it in person was jaw dropping. There’s just something about it. It could easily be stated as one of the most famous statues of the world.
The Paintings
Then there are areas that are basically an incredibly long hallway. It’s set up as a series of rooms. Each room reflects a period in history and/or specific artists and there intent. They had the paintings set up with alarms so that if you got too close it would be set off. It happened more than once during our tour (not by us though!).
There were even ceilings that were painted.
After walking through one section, we ended up in a very large room. It was literally filled with people. Hundreds of people. There were two queue lines, each originating at a corner at the same end of the room. As part of our “skip the line”, once again we found ourselves being ushered in front of others, straight to the head of a queue line.
At the far end of the queue line was…the Mona Lisa. You could barely see the painting from the start of the line. Because of being able to skip the line, it took less than 10 minutes to get through the queue, and there we were, standing about 15 feet away from what is arguably the most famous painting in the world.
Until we went back and reviewed the pictures, the Mona Lisa looked as if it sat unprotected on the wall. The protective covering was done so well, it appeared as if there was nothing between the us and the painting.
That could be because we had mere seconds to view the painting before being shushed off so the next tourist could see it. It reminded us of when we climbed the hundreds of steps in the Statue of Liberty only to spend 5-6 seconds looking out on New York City. Well, we were allowed more than a couple seconds, certainly enough to take good pictures. And we weren’t specifically rushed, rather gently and politely reminded that there were others behind us.
But alas, it was still worth it. And lest you think our selfie was disrespectful, staff were encouraging everyone to take a selfie!
What is Art?
The value of art is both tangible and philisophical.
Art almost always contains more than beauty. In fact, art may not be beautiful at all based on today’s societal standards.
Artists intend to evoke a feeling, an emotion, a moment.
It often contains a statement of some sort. The artist works to convey a message to the viewer. It could be history, but surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprisingly, a lot of politics. Not today’s politics. The politics of kings, religious figures, famous people. It makes the art that much more intriguing. We saw some of that when we toured the Vatican Museum.
Art in the form of paintings, sculptures, statues draw in those of us who get the opportunity to see it in person.