Louvre

Once in Paris, one of the first places Ali and I went to was the Louvre Museum. We walked through it on the way from the bus stop to initially find our hotel and we could immediately see that it was no ordinary museum. The Louvre is HUGE! We also learned that because we were students studying in the European Union, and we were under 26, we got in for free! This meant that we could come and go as we pleased and when we started to feel overwhelmed, we just left and we wouldn't feel guilty about wasting money to go see the museum for only an hour. We made several trips to the Louvre throughout our trip, it was a great way to start off the day, it was really nice!

The Louve has classic Paris architecture.....

and super cool, big, contemporary, glass, pyramids surrounded by fountains. The Pyramids are the main entrance to the main underground lobby.

Stormy skies over the Louvre!

The Louvre is the largest museum in France and one of the largest in the world! It houses massive collections of antiquities from around the world and has art from the classical greek and roman periods, through the renaissance and even a little into impressionism and there is art and collections of antique objects from around. They have fancy statues and paintings. Here is a fancy classical statue. Some of the fancier statues used different colored stones to show different parts of the sculpture and most of the marble sculptures were actually painted! The ancient world was a very colorful place. I think these multi stone statues are neat. The marble they are made of is beautiful!

The Renaissance exhibition was neat and it was one of the first things we went to. I can remember my Aunt Jaime and Uncle Joe telling me how they liked seeing the chronological order of the renaissance paintings. I liked it too! Here is a famous Ghirlandaio we learned about.

All of the descriptions in all the French museums were all in French and there was no english translations. Luckily, we took lots of Art History but there were plenty of options for guides.

They had a really neat Milanese painter from the late 1500s, Arcimboldo. I first saw him at an exhibition at the National Gallery in Washington DC. I think he is a very neat painter and I really like the fruit faces.

At the National Gallery, they turned this one into a huge tree sized sculpture! Arcimboldo also makes faces out of sea animals and other neat things. He is a really cool painter.

We got to see some great Da Vinci paintings.....

This is Leonardo's, "Virgin on the Rocks" painting. There are actually two versions of this painting but this is the one he submitted for the commission. Leonardo was notoriously slow and had a reputation for never finishing his commissions. He was a very open minded free thinking guy who was constantly researching whatever interested him at the time. He only worked enough to get by and he certainly wasn't working to make a ton of money. He did what he wanted and when he did work, he had to make it just perfect. Da Vinci's last supper Fresco was painted in 3 years when it should have taken him 6 months. Leonardo went to the markets every day to sketch faces and he had to find just the right ones to portray the emotions on the disciples faces. Leonardo didn't really know how to paint frescoes and he had several disastrous experiences with them. His last supper Fresco was painted improperly and a few years after the fresco was completed, cracks formed deep beneath it and the painting began to peel off the wall.

Of course we saw the Mona Lisa..... this was the room she was in. She is way back past that crowd of people.

The Mona Lisa became such an icon that its meaning today has completely shifted and gone way beyond any original intention. It is similar to Andy Warhol printing an image until it becomes meaningless except the Mona Lisa did this on her own and she was reproduced so many times that she took on an iconic meaning of her own. Leonardo painted Mona Lisa after disastrously ruining a huge commission to paint the, "Battle of Anghiari" frescoes in Florence. Leonardo pained the entire fresco in  oil paints (not correct) and after about three years of work on the beautiful fresco when it was about to be finished, the oil was not drying and was dripping off of the walls (plaster is water based). Leonardo planned to light fires underneath the fresco to dry the oil out and he did. Unfortunately, Leonardo couldn't get the heat right and he ruined the entire fresco. It certainly didn't help his bad reputation for not finishing his work. We don't know much about this time of Leonardo's life after this disaster. In this time, he painted the Mona Lisa. Although he had lots of people who wanted him to paint their portraits, (he painted portraits well) he didn't paint any and it is unclear why he chose to paint Mona Lisa (probably because he needed money). We believe Mona Lisa is the second wife of a Florentine merchant. Leonardo paints her in the pose he loved to paint women and painted her outdoors like most of his paintings (Leonardo loved nature). Since Leonardo was such a perfectionist and often worked for fun doing what he wanted, he took the painting (and a few others) with him when he left Florence to live in France with the king of France in his palace. This was towards the end of his life and when Leonardo died, Mona Lisa and the rest of Leonardos possessions became property of the king of France (he was living in the Kings palace). Thats how Mona Lisa ended up in the Louvre. Its nice to have art history classes!

Here is another example of a classical multicolored stone bust. Ali says that maroon stone was extremely rare and only found in a remote desert somewhere in Afghanistan I think. She said for awhile the location of where to find the stone was lost but I think they found it again. Pretty cool!

This lady was copying some of the old master paintings. I wonder how you get that job?

I have always thought these paintings of the salons were neat. Literally a painting of a bunch of paintings and classic antiquities. These were done after the rennaissance and the salons were held for the upper bourgeoise class especially in Paris when there was a middle class that could afford to buy the art and show off their wealth by patronizing beauty.

Ali and I decided to go check out Napoleons apartments. In Europe you see this a lot when climbing stairs and even on sidewalks, check out how worn down the stone stairs are! Its crazy how many people from around the world walk up and down these stairs. Its also interesting how everyone seems to walk on the same spots even though the staircase is super wide.

Napoleons apartments were super lavish! Everything was gilded and everything was decorated to the maximum level. Its times like these that I wish I had brought my Modern Western History notebook. I learned SO MUCH in that class and I wrote down almost everything Professor Romanchuk said because it was all so interesting. We learned all about this kind of stuff in his class. 

Big hallways with crystal chandeliers. If this was in Venice, the chandeliers would be glass and from Murano. I would REALLY like to see that!

Check out these chairs! Napoleons Apartments had some really wild furniture!

Theres some more cool chairs in the foreground and a way cool spiral staircase in that back room. Spiral staircases are so cool! 

These chairs had super boxy cushions. Even more impressive is to think how they made all this at Napoleons time. Im sure there isn't some sort of polyurethane foam underneath those cushions to make them that shape. All the legs of the chairs and all the wood would have been hand carved and hand painted. Can you imagine where that fabric is from!? This furniture is impressive by todays standards and Im sure back then it was the creme de la creme. You simply do not find beauty like this anymore. Not after the industrial revolution. That time period is very interesting and it changed the world. Not only is this kind of stuff not made anymore, but people wouldn't be able to afford it- the wealth has just been spread out so much. Perhaps the biggest oil tycoons could afford something like this today. It would be interesting to see what their houses look like, and compare them to these apartments.

Napoleons chair. It was kind of funny seeing this because it is like a throne but it is very small. Keep in mind, Napoleon ruler of such a great empire and military genius, was only about four feet tall. Thats short even by the standards back then (people didn't grow to be as big and tall as they do today).

Look at that table! Its made of gemstones! Amethyst and Im not sure what the red stone in the middle is.

After Napoleons Apartments, Ali and I were feeling visually overstimulated, so we decided to leave. It is so nice to not have to worry about not getting your moneys worth because we got in for free! We thought that the French government had more money because everything seemed a bit more developed compared to Italy. Our teacher Lorenzo told us that the French government is just as bad as the Italian government now and that is one reason why admission prices to the museums are so much. Ali and I were sure glad that we didn't have to pay them.

 This big arch was between the Louvre and the massive garden that is in front of the Louvre.

Here is another view of the Arch from the inside of the Louvre. Just to give you an idea of the immensity.... the gardens are to the left of the arch and way off to the right of the picture are the pyramids. The Louvre stretches even further back than the pyramids too as there is another large enclosed courtyard beyond the pyramids that you walk through. I believe in the center of that roundabout, in the middle of the garden, there is the top of the upside down pyramid that is in Le Carrousel.

 These gardens are very well kept. I have never seen a mower like this one, it just trimmed the very tips of the grass, they kept it very short. They must have mowed the grass a lot because I never saw it very long.

The Eiffel Tower from the gardens of the Louvre. The gardens of the Louvre, like the Louvre, are very big and they are very well kept.

This is one of the entrances to, "Le Carrousel Du Louvre". Located underground to the east of the Louvre, Le Carrousel is a huge mall complex that also has huge auditoriums and parking lots and things.

There is a big upside down glass pyramid in Le Carrousel.

When its less crowded you can see there is a smaller pyramid beneath it. Its pretty cool! There is an Apple store right behind me.

There are two Starbucks right next to each other in Le Carrousel. 

The Louvre likes the Nintendo 3DS. They have an app for them and you can rent them as electronic guides. It was very surprising to see everyone carrying them around. I think there were kids playing games on them when they were bored of the museum.

 Just another hall at the Louvre. The Museum is very fancy.

Old glass, Ali and I love seeing old glass and after blowing glass at Angus's "Roman furnace", it is really interesting to see the shapes they make. You can understand why they make the shapes they make after you have experience the kind of heat gradient that comes from the furnaces they use. Its neat! The iridescence on the glass vase to the right comes from being buried underground for thousand or so years. The acid in the soil reacts with the glass over a long time to form the iridescence.

This is the actual "Code of Hammurabi" stone. From the ancient mesopotamian civilization that flourished in about 6000 BC in the Fertile Crescent in southwest Asia. This stone had all the laws of the land on it and these laws were very advanced. Hammurabi was a leader ahead of his time.

The giant stone was covered 360 degrees with Cuneiform, the ancient form of writing once used in Mesopotamia.

First written onto wet clay pots using a reed, Cuneiform writing was developed to do business and keep laws. Eventually it would be carved into stone, (like the code of Hammurabi).

These huge statues were of ancient Mesopotamian rulers. Only the rulers kept beards like that. The statues were massive. The French (especially Napoleon) were infamous for pillaging and taking lots from ancient sites (so was everyone though, The Pope took tons of statues from the coliseum and from all over Rome).

Despite knowing that the Louvre is close on Tuesday and thus it would be most crowded on Mondays and Wednesdays, we decided to go anyways on a Wednesday and it was waaaaay crowded. DONT go to the Louvre on Monday or Wednesday and don't go to Versailles on a tuesday (like we stupidly did even though we knew it would be most crowded then).

On the Wednesday we went to the Louvre, we went and saw some of the Egyptian artifacts. The Louvre has one of the biggest (if not the biggest) collection of Egyptian artifacts in the world. (thank you Napoleon).

Little Egyptian glass vessels. It appears they loved to "comb" color wraps. Thats how you make that pattern.

An old egyptian mirror.

Wooden egyptian caskets. They are like Russian dolls, they all fit inside of each other. Its amazing how well preserved all of this wood stuff they have it, considering it is all thousands of years old. Sealed Egyptian tombs were great places to preserve things.

Egyptian Mummy!

These "Canopic Jars" went with the Mummy. During the embalming process, the organs of the person to be mummified would be placed in these jars. There were separate jars for the heart, brain, and other organs, each with its own lid.

Egyptian grains. Speaking of well preserved, Archaeologists once found peanuts in an egyptian tomb that were thousands of years old, yet so well preserved that they were STILL edible! In my Ancient Mediterranean class, I learned all about the different nuts, grains and fruits of the ancient world. Egyptian life changed dramatically after the Greeks showed them a type of grain that didn't have to be de husked before using it. This meant much less work to process the grain for the Egyptians and thus much more food and more people free to do other jobs. The Egyptians fed much of the Mediterranean with the breadbasket of the fertile Nile River.

A wooden Egyptian sarcophagus covered in Hieroglyphics.

Eventually Ali and I got so tired of how many people were in the Egypt exhibition and we left to go see  the "graphic arts" (old prints). They were neat but we weren't super impressed.

On the way to the print section, I stumbled upon these old paintings of my favorite Italian city, Venice! This is a painting of the Rialto. It still looks very similar to how it looks today. Way cool!

Here is another one. The Painters name is "Canaletto". Check out how many gondola boats there were back then! They must have been used much more back then especially since there were no motorboats. In the corner you can see there is a sail boat which must have been hard to use in the canals that were really crowded with gondolas.

On our last visit to the Lourve we decided to visit the temporary Florence Renaissance Exhibition (Florence was the city of the Renaissance). They didn't allow photos so this is the only one I got while I was in the exhibit. This is a wooden model of the Medici Palace that is in Florence which we walk by almost everyday. They probably built this model to make their proposal to the Medici family. We wanted to see these works since they wouldn't be back in Florence till after January.

It was really great to see the Lourve, one of the biggest museums in the world with the most diverse collection of art works from around the world throughout time.