A Louvre-ly Day
Jun. 11th, 2003 11:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darcydodoYeah, I knew there was a reason I was fooling around on lj. It's 'cause I meant to post an entry. Right. :)
Ever since my French class started, there's been constant noise outside the window, which consists of loud clanging and drilling and suchlike. This makes it impossible to hear what's being said inside the room much of the time, though it's somewhat better when the windows are closed. So we've been alternating between suffocating and sweltering with the windows closed, or going completely deaf and having to repeat everything several times with the windows open. But today they started painting outside in the hallway. So we couldn't have the door open unless we wanted to breathe lovely paint fumes. Which made the window situation a bit more serious... so during our break, the professor went and investigated the possibility of a room on another floor on the other side of the hallway. She found one on the 2nd floor, and we can have it for the rest of the week, which means two whole less flights of stairs to climb tomorrow and Friday! :)
After class, I went to the Louvre, as I had planned. I determined that my first goal would be to get to the Mona Lisa, because a) I've seen the Antiquities in the Louvre previously, and b) I never have seen the Mona Lisa, and I felt that it was something I should do at least once in my life. Getting to the Mona Lisa entailed going through some galleries of religious sculpture (Italian, Armenian, and maybe some other stuff) and Italian paintings. Many of the paintings were religiously themed, of course, which doesn't make them any less pretty or awesome, but I get tired after just so many Annunciations and Adorations. I've decided that I tend to like paintings of John the Baptist as a boy, though. He's always portrayed with this sort of shaggy brown hair that's very endearing. There was a painting by Francesco di Cristofano Bigi (aka Franciabigio) that I very much liked. It was simply a portrait of a man, but he looked intriguing, like a real person with a story to tell. There's a cast in the Ashmolean cast gallery that strikes me the same way: a youngish man with toussled hair and a far-off look to his eyes. I'll probably go back to the Louvre at least once more this summer, and I'll see if I can find a postcard of this painting. (The same goes for any other paintings I like that much, of course.)
Another thing in the Italian paintings section was the set of four paintings by Arcimboldo that portray the four seasons, completely composed of fruits, vegetables, and flowers. I know I've seen them, or at least one or two of them, reproduced somewhere before; I think it might have been in an article I read on portraiture. Alternatively, that could have been a similar painting of some Archduke or other. :) Anyway, the seasons are highly amusing, though I don't care for the flowery Spring so much. The skin made from hydrangeas seems too much of a cop-out. I also tended to be fond of paintings by Reni. (Yes, I wrote down all these names, my memory really isn't that good.) And lastly, in this section, I saw two paintings by Pannini that I absolutely adored: Galerie de vues de la Rome antique and Galerie de vues de la Rome moderne. They each show a room, apparently in a gallery, from the titles, with the walls covered floor-to-ceiling in paintings, each of which shows a scene (often identifiable) of Rome. There are people in the galleries, too; I think they're probably the artists. And there are sculptures. They're completely chaotic and equally fascinating. A postcard wouldn't do them justice, but even a poster would be too small, given how large the actual paintings are.
The Mona Lisa itself was actually an extreme disappointment. I can say with certainty that unless they change the viewing arrangements, I will be perfectly happy to look at posters or even postcards of the painting from now on. What I like about looking at paintings in museums is how you can stand by a painting and see the brush-strokes, see how the work was composed. They've got a railing surrounding the Mona Lisa that keeps you so far back that it really does just seem that you're looking at a poster, especially given how dark da Vinci's paintings seem generally to be. I can say "yes, I've seen the Mona Lisa," but I don't actually feel as though I have. Well, maybe they will change the display set-up one day.
Past the Mona Lisa is a bit more Italian painting, and I was looking at various paintings that I liked and wondering how on earth they were supposed to represent 'dead nature,' 'cause there seemed to me to be very little about them that represented death. And then I realized taht nature morte was the French for still life, and I felt really stupid.
I went down into a newish display of African, Oceanian, and Native American art, and that was very cool. There was a neat statue of a wargod, though I didn't write down where it was from or exactly which god, that had a strange sword and a hat with agricultural implements and was made out of iron. And there was a dog that had "fur" made out of big old nails. There was also a "Fang sculpture" from either Equitorial Guinea or Gabon that had 3 blue beads for each of its eyes and hence reminded me strangely of Cúchulainn with his 7 different-colored pupils. The small bit of Aztec sculpture was fantastic as well. And there was a great transformation mask.
After I looked at this section, I returned upstairs and discovered some sketches and studies that were on display. They were being displayed because the special exhibit at the moment is the drawings and notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, so they're working up enthusiasm for it, I guess, by displaying other painters' sketches in the main museum. (I think I shan't pay extra for Leonardo. I certainly didn't today.) I was interested to see that they used to use silver (or some other metal) on paper prepared with pink paint, instead of using graphite, or at least that's how I interpreted the French. Any insights into this,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sschmitt?
Then I continued into the rooms of the French painters. The first painting that struck my gaze was La jeune martyre by Delaroche; it's a lovely painting of a young woman floating in water, while someone on horseback stands far off on the shore. It could almost be Ophelia, but it so clearly isn't at the same time. I really liked the French paintings, by and large, generally better than the Italians, for all that Raphael and Boticelli and everyone else are indeed very good. The French paintings had a sense of life that a lot of the Italian paintings were missing. The Italian ones often made me think that someone had stuck a bunch of statues around the room and then painted that scene, rather than actually portraying living people.
Then I started finding things that amused me. Not that they themselves were funny, just they amused me. Namely: I saw a painting by Jacques-Louis David called "Léonidas aux Thermopyles," and I was like, "I've seen that before." And then I realized, no, I've only seen the main warrior-figure in it before, 'cause it's the naked guy that's on my twisted-art Renoir postcard of "On the Terrace." So I've got that placed now, which is cool. And then I saw another awfully familiar painting, "Le sommeil d'Endymion" by Anne-Louis Girodet Trioson, which I identified as being the picture in the front of my translation of Barthes' S/Z. So yes, these things amused me.
On my way out, I passed through part of the antiquities — actually not part that I'd previously seen, I think. The first thing I saw was a fantastic fresco from Boscoreale, essentially of a winged demon. It might not have been demonic, in fact, but it looked like it could have been. Anyway, it was very very cool. (It was from the villa of Fannius Synistor.) Then I eventually got to a display of bits of metopes from the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, and I got vaguely cross. It turns out that they've got bits of the metopes at the Louvre, and bits of the same metopes at Olympia. And only little diagrams to show them together. And that just sucks. I don't care whether they are all at the Louvre or all at Olympia, but they should really have all the bits of any given metope together.
By the time I left the Louvre, it was nearly 9:30pm, and I hadn't eaten dinner. So instead of going to the Louvre métro station, I went out the front, by the big glass pyramid, and wandered south and vaguely east, hoping to find a créperie. I didn't, but I found a brasserie with cheap sandwiches, so I had a baguette with paté. (They translated it as 'country pie,' which cracked me up.) I wandered about another block south and discovered a métro station that was on the perfect line; it was actually on the 4, which meant that I didn't have to make any connections at all. I seem to have relatively good luck with finding appropriate métro stations, so far. Going home from Porte d'Orleans, I bought two yummy nectarines from a fruit seller.
So that was my day... and I so need to do laundry. But not tonight, 'cause it's late, which means that me + tomorrow + clothes should be an interesting sociological study of some sort.
Ever since my French class started, there's been constant noise outside the window, which consists of loud clanging and drilling and suchlike. This makes it impossible to hear what's being said inside the room much of the time, though it's somewhat better when the windows are closed. So we've been alternating between suffocating and sweltering with the windows closed, or going completely deaf and having to repeat everything several times with the windows open. But today they started painting outside in the hallway. So we couldn't have the door open unless we wanted to breathe lovely paint fumes. Which made the window situation a bit more serious... so during our break, the professor went and investigated the possibility of a room on another floor on the other side of the hallway. She found one on the 2nd floor, and we can have it for the rest of the week, which means two whole less flights of stairs to climb tomorrow and Friday! :)
After class, I went to the Louvre, as I had planned. I determined that my first goal would be to get to the Mona Lisa, because a) I've seen the Antiquities in the Louvre previously, and b) I never have seen the Mona Lisa, and I felt that it was something I should do at least once in my life. Getting to the Mona Lisa entailed going through some galleries of religious sculpture (Italian, Armenian, and maybe some other stuff) and Italian paintings. Many of the paintings were religiously themed, of course, which doesn't make them any less pretty or awesome, but I get tired after just so many Annunciations and Adorations. I've decided that I tend to like paintings of John the Baptist as a boy, though. He's always portrayed with this sort of shaggy brown hair that's very endearing. There was a painting by Francesco di Cristofano Bigi (aka Franciabigio) that I very much liked. It was simply a portrait of a man, but he looked intriguing, like a real person with a story to tell. There's a cast in the Ashmolean cast gallery that strikes me the same way: a youngish man with toussled hair and a far-off look to his eyes. I'll probably go back to the Louvre at least once more this summer, and I'll see if I can find a postcard of this painting. (The same goes for any other paintings I like that much, of course.)
Another thing in the Italian paintings section was the set of four paintings by Arcimboldo that portray the four seasons, completely composed of fruits, vegetables, and flowers. I know I've seen them, or at least one or two of them, reproduced somewhere before; I think it might have been in an article I read on portraiture. Alternatively, that could have been a similar painting of some Archduke or other. :) Anyway, the seasons are highly amusing, though I don't care for the flowery Spring so much. The skin made from hydrangeas seems too much of a cop-out. I also tended to be fond of paintings by Reni. (Yes, I wrote down all these names, my memory really isn't that good.) And lastly, in this section, I saw two paintings by Pannini that I absolutely adored: Galerie de vues de la Rome antique and Galerie de vues de la Rome moderne. They each show a room, apparently in a gallery, from the titles, with the walls covered floor-to-ceiling in paintings, each of which shows a scene (often identifiable) of Rome. There are people in the galleries, too; I think they're probably the artists. And there are sculptures. They're completely chaotic and equally fascinating. A postcard wouldn't do them justice, but even a poster would be too small, given how large the actual paintings are.
The Mona Lisa itself was actually an extreme disappointment. I can say with certainty that unless they change the viewing arrangements, I will be perfectly happy to look at posters or even postcards of the painting from now on. What I like about looking at paintings in museums is how you can stand by a painting and see the brush-strokes, see how the work was composed. They've got a railing surrounding the Mona Lisa that keeps you so far back that it really does just seem that you're looking at a poster, especially given how dark da Vinci's paintings seem generally to be. I can say "yes, I've seen the Mona Lisa," but I don't actually feel as though I have. Well, maybe they will change the display set-up one day.
Past the Mona Lisa is a bit more Italian painting, and I was looking at various paintings that I liked and wondering how on earth they were supposed to represent 'dead nature,' 'cause there seemed to me to be very little about them that represented death. And then I realized taht nature morte was the French for still life, and I felt really stupid.
I went down into a newish display of African, Oceanian, and Native American art, and that was very cool. There was a neat statue of a wargod, though I didn't write down where it was from or exactly which god, that had a strange sword and a hat with agricultural implements and was made out of iron. And there was a dog that had "fur" made out of big old nails. There was also a "Fang sculpture" from either Equitorial Guinea or Gabon that had 3 blue beads for each of its eyes and hence reminded me strangely of Cúchulainn with his 7 different-colored pupils. The small bit of Aztec sculpture was fantastic as well. And there was a great transformation mask.
After I looked at this section, I returned upstairs and discovered some sketches and studies that were on display. They were being displayed because the special exhibit at the moment is the drawings and notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, so they're working up enthusiasm for it, I guess, by displaying other painters' sketches in the main museum. (I think I shan't pay extra for Leonardo. I certainly didn't today.) I was interested to see that they used to use silver (or some other metal) on paper prepared with pink paint, instead of using graphite, or at least that's how I interpreted the French. Any insights into this,
sschmitt?Then I continued into the rooms of the French painters. The first painting that struck my gaze was La jeune martyre by Delaroche; it's a lovely painting of a young woman floating in water, while someone on horseback stands far off on the shore. It could almost be Ophelia, but it so clearly isn't at the same time. I really liked the French paintings, by and large, generally better than the Italians, for all that Raphael and Boticelli and everyone else are indeed very good. The French paintings had a sense of life that a lot of the Italian paintings were missing. The Italian ones often made me think that someone had stuck a bunch of statues around the room and then painted that scene, rather than actually portraying living people.
Then I started finding things that amused me. Not that they themselves were funny, just they amused me. Namely: I saw a painting by Jacques-Louis David called "Léonidas aux Thermopyles," and I was like, "I've seen that before." And then I realized, no, I've only seen the main warrior-figure in it before, 'cause it's the naked guy that's on my twisted-art Renoir postcard of "On the Terrace." So I've got that placed now, which is cool. And then I saw another awfully familiar painting, "Le sommeil d'Endymion" by Anne-Louis Girodet Trioson, which I identified as being the picture in the front of my translation of Barthes' S/Z. So yes, these things amused me.
On my way out, I passed through part of the antiquities — actually not part that I'd previously seen, I think. The first thing I saw was a fantastic fresco from Boscoreale, essentially of a winged demon. It might not have been demonic, in fact, but it looked like it could have been. Anyway, it was very very cool. (It was from the villa of Fannius Synistor.) Then I eventually got to a display of bits of metopes from the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, and I got vaguely cross. It turns out that they've got bits of the metopes at the Louvre, and bits of the same metopes at Olympia. And only little diagrams to show them together. And that just sucks. I don't care whether they are all at the Louvre or all at Olympia, but they should really have all the bits of any given metope together.
By the time I left the Louvre, it was nearly 9:30pm, and I hadn't eaten dinner. So instead of going to the Louvre métro station, I went out the front, by the big glass pyramid, and wandered south and vaguely east, hoping to find a créperie. I didn't, but I found a brasserie with cheap sandwiches, so I had a baguette with paté. (They translated it as 'country pie,' which cracked me up.) I wandered about another block south and discovered a métro station that was on the perfect line; it was actually on the 4, which meant that I didn't have to make any connections at all. I seem to have relatively good luck with finding appropriate métro stations, so far. Going home from Porte d'Orleans, I bought two yummy nectarines from a fruit seller.
So that was my day... and I so need to do laundry. But not tonight, 'cause it's late, which means that me + tomorrow + clothes should be an interesting sociological study of some sort.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-06-12 01:38 am (UTC)Kathrid
no subject
Date: 2003-06-12 02:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-12 06:04 am (UTC)And I agree about the Mona Lisa, it's not terribly impressive, even if you do manage to catch a glimpse of it through the crowds. I think the colours must have faded over time, if not, I don't think much of Leonardo's technique.
no subject
Date: 2003-06-12 09:04 am (UTC)Every time I saw a painting that was that incredibly difficult to make out, all I could think of was the painting hanging over the altar in the Corpus chapel. It was really dark in my first year, and then it got taken away and cleaned, and then it was really vibrant. I figure they just need a good round of soap and water with all these masterpieces. ;)
no subject
Date: 2003-06-12 12:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-12 08:16 am (UTC)no subject
Cool descriptions indeed, Darcy!
no subject
Date: 2003-06-12 09:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-12 08:58 am (UTC)