The Louvre

John Springman
Mar 9, 2016
3 min read

The metro stop for the Louvre empties out into an underground mall constructed of beautiful marble, so you must run the gauntlet of shops before you even get to the entrance. Luckily, we arrived before the shops were open, so we weren't delayed by my shopaholic ladies.

The Louvre started life as a fortress built by Phillip II in the 12th century. In 1682, Louis XIV moved to Versailles, and this former fortress was converted to a palace used primarily to house the art collected by Louis and his predecessors. It is a huge structure and today has over 652,300 sq. feet of floor space dedicated to displaying the art collected by the rulers of France over the centuries. It is the most visited museum in the world, according to wikipedia.

Here's Ellie by the famous inverted glass pyramid near the entrance to the Louvre museum. Notice her new pink beret...very "French tourist"!

I took pictures of only the most moving and impressive object and paintings, but still took well over 100 for the visit. And we didn't get to see even half of it..it is so huge you could spend a week here. I'm going to post a few of the best of the best so as not to bore everyone.

This one seems to have had the skin removed to show the detail in the muscle structure, or maybe he just had a very low BMI. I wondered who the model was?

There was a whole section devoted to religious sculpture. Here are just a couple of samples. This baby Jesus seemed to me to be able to see into his own future, and he looked worried to me!

This was so lifelike:

This one made me feel his sadness:

The hallways are huge and have very casual displays of some of the most beautiful sculpture

The "Venus de Milo" is casually stuck in a corner

The "Mona Lisa" is so adored, that we couldn't get close to it, even on a Friday when the crowds were relatively sparse, the closest I could get was about 80 feet away. So the picture is not very good as I didn't bring a telephoto lens, thinking I would be able to get close. The graininess is due to the extreme enlargement. The acutal painting is very smoothe and done on wood.

Here is "Winged Victory" stuck by herself in the hallway at the top of the stairs

If you didn't look up at the ceiling everywhere, you would miss some of the best art in the whole place

Look at the visage of resolution in this man's eyes and the set of his jaw.

I had the feeling this young fellow was posing because his mother made him

The tears and the blood..it all seems so real

These next two are actually from the same painting, but I had a hard time (with many of the paintings) eliminating the reflection of the incandescent lights. The photo shows the paint texture too a fault, but when you see them at the proper distance, the skin tones in this painting are magnificent.

The sculptures are amazing. I have no idea how a man can pull these kind of images out of marble. They would be amazing if they were carved out of soap. The way clothes are draped over the bodies is breathtaking. The looks on peoples faces, the hands and feet..it is all so life-like, you feel like you could talk to them. I did notice that the women had a hard time keeping their shirts on, and I have deleted a few wonderful pieces just because they were too graphic, but there were a few I couldn't not include, and I hope you can forgive me if they offend.

From here on, I loaded the pictures into a gallery. You can click on any of them to enlarge them to full size, and to see a slide show: (Not automated)