Louvre Museum

The Louvre Museum (in French) Musée du Louvre /myze dy luv//( listen)) is the national museum of France dedicated to both beautiful arts and archaeology and decorative arts prior to impressionism. It is located in Paris, the capital of the country, in the old royal palace of the Louvre. Its extensive collections are the result of the collection developed by the French monarchy over several centuries, which was joined by the efforts of several personalities of the Enlightenment, the dismaying work of the French Revolution, the military victories during the Napoleonic wars, and the archaeological campaigns and purchases promoted during the centuryXIX. In his 210 000 m2 are exposed ' s fake fake fake fake fake fake fake brainchild.487 000 works, of which 7000 are paintings, and some & fake fake fake fake fake fake fake brainstorm. fake fake fake nightmare0380 000 objects and antiques.

The opening of the Louvre in 1793 meant, within the history of museums, the transfer of the private collections of the ruling classes (monarchy, aristocracy and the Church) to publicly owned galleries for the enjoyment of society as a whole. This made it a precedent and model for several museums.

Multiple artists have intervened in its architectural and decorative modifications over several centuries, from Claude Perrault and the painters Simon Vouet and Charles Le Brun in the XVII to Delacroix and Georges Braque, who painted some of its roofs.

The Louvre is the most visited art museum in the world, famous for its masterpieces, especially the Renaissance painting known as La Gioconda by Leonardo da Vinci. Other notable pieces were selected in 2020 by the museum itself under the title "24 essential works". The list includes, in addition to the aforementioned painting, works such as the Code of Hammurabi, The Seated Scribe, The Consecration of Napoleon and Liberty guiding the people, among others.

According to a chronological arrangement of national collections, the Louvre displays works of art from before 1848. Almost all works of the century Late XIX, from Realism (Courbet) to Impressionism and Toulouse-Lautrec, were transferred to the Musée d'Orsay, and modern and contemporary art is exhibited at the Center Pompidou. Additionally, the institution promotes two sub-offices, in Lens (France) and in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates).

24 essential works (according to the Louvre)

Venus of Milo

The Regent

Frieze of the archers

Marly Horses

Freedom leading the people

Hammurabi Code

Diptic Barberini

Portrait of Louis XIV

The Gioconda

The European

Portrait of Durero

The tahúr

The Consecration of Napoleon

The coronation of the Virgin

The ladder

The Medusa raft

The rapture of the sainas

Rebel slave

The scribe sitting

Cana weddings

Victoria Alada de Samotracia

The great odalisca

Alone bulls

Woman in front of the mirror

Fried from a Faucet of the Palace of Darius in Susa, Iran

History

The building before the creation of the museum

The building that has housed the museum since its foundation is the Louvre castle, later converted into a royal palace. Its origins date back to the 12th century, and it was the object of Renaissance and later extensions. King Carlos V (1338-1380) accumulated his artistic collections in this building. Already in the 16th century, the monarchs Francisco I and Enrique II planned reforms to make it a true Renaissance royal residence.

The French monarchs showed, as early as the XIV century, a fondness for acquiring works of art, highlighting the work of Francisco I, who protected the Italian Leonardo da Vinci in his last years. However, it was the queen consort Catherine de' Medici who outlined the project that made the Louvre the great palace it is today, work that Henry IV continued after the wars of religion.

The construction of the Palace of Versailles, accelerated under the reign of Louis XIV, caused the Louvre to be vacated by the royal family at the end of the century XVII, and for this reason, in the XVIII century, the French Academy was installed there and then the other academies. Annual exhibitions of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture were held there. However, the royal collection was relatively small until Louis XIV acquired the collections of the banker Jabach and Cardinal Mazarin. Louis XV acquired the collection of the Prince of Carignan, and Louis XVI, paintings from the Flemish and Dutch schools.

In 1774, the Count of Billarderie d'Angiviller is appointed Director of Buildings for the kingdom and actually begins the research and planning of the Museum in the Grand Gallery of the Louvre, which would eventually be inaugurated after the fall of the &# 34;old regime", in 1793. D'Angiviller took up the acquisitions policy forgotten since the reign of Louis XIV and sought to fill the gaps in the collection to give a more complete idea of the various painting schools represented in it.

In 1784, the painter Hubert Robert was appointed curator of the future museum, beginning the transfer of works owned by the kingdom from the palaces of Versailles and Luxembourg and creating expectations among the population of Paris for having access to the works.

The French Revolution and the Napoleonic period

After the French Revolution that began in 1789, which implied the abolition of the monarchy, the Louvre Palace was assigned (by decree of May 1791) to artistic and scientific functions, concentrating on it the following year the collections of the crown. Part of the Louvre was opened to the public for the first time as a museum on November 8, 1793. This solution was imposed, given that it was occupied by the academies and because, as early as 1778, the project to use its Grand Gallery had been drawn up. as an art gallery The novelty of the measure was that real property assets were nationalized, and that access was free since it was not limited to the educated public nor was it regulated by arranged visits.

The revolution meant obtaining works of art for the state by various means: the suppression of the monastic orders, the disaffection of the churches and the abandonment of goods by the fled nobility. However, with the start of the revolution, d'Angiviller could not see his project come to fruition but he is recognized as the first great promoter of this cultural venue that during the 1780s generated texts such as that of Abbot Thierry who in his Etat actuel de Paris (Current State of Paris) urged completion of this great "monument, so ardently desired by lovers of the arts" and that would make the French capital achieve supremacy in matters of art over Rome.

In July 1793, the Muséum Central des Arts was created by decree, and in August of the same year, the Grande Galerie du Louvre was inaugurated, symbolically, since it had to be closed immediately to carry out repairs, reopening its doors on the 18th of November. Of the 10 days that the week lasted during this post-revolutionary period (decade), the public could only visit the space on 3 days: 5 were exclusively for copyists and two more for cleaning. In April 1794, the gallery closed again for maintenance work, partially reopening to the public in April 1799 and fully reopening until July 1801.

In 1803, when Napoleon Bonaparte was still consul, the site changed its name to Napoleon Museum. Although there was already a policy of appropriating works of art from other countries during military campaigns from the period of the First Republic and the National Convention, the name of the one who would be the first emperor of France would be linked in an important way with this practice. The Napoleonic wars meant a notable increase in the Louvre collections, as the armies requisitioned works in the different invaded countries. Some of these works had to be returned when the Napoleonic regime fell, but some very important ones remained in the Louvre, such as Veronese's The Marriage at Cana. religious works. Other contributions of Napoleon I to the Louvre were the completion of the emblematic "Cour Carrée" (Square Courtyard) and the start of the long-planned project to unite the Louvre with the Tuileries

From the Second Empire to the end of the 20th century

The collection of Italian medieval painting grew substantially thanks to Napoleon III's purchase of the Campana Collection, owned by the Italian financier of the same surname. Part of it is deposited in the Petit Palais in Avignon.

The Louvre building was attached to the Tuileries Palace (Palais des Tejeras) forming a single complex until 1870, when the latter was destroyed in the events of the Paris Commune after the war Franco-Prussian. The artistic treasures of the Tuileries were lost in the fire of the palace, whose ruins were demolished; since then, the Louvre dominates the large open park on that site.

Under the occupation of France by the Axis Forces, various works from the museum were hidden throughout French territory. Starting in 1938, after the annexation of Austria and the crisis in the Sudetenland by Nazi Germany, the French authorities began to evacuate the most precious works to Chambord, including La Gioconda. After the Munich agreements, the works returned to the Louvre. However, the real move began in August 1939, on the eve of World War II.

The museum, whose rooms and corridors span several kilometres, underwent modernization in the 1980s, at the initiative of President François Mitterrand. The most visible element of the project, known as «Le Grand Louvre », was the glass pyramid designed by the architect Ieoh Ming Pei and inaugurated in 1989 to centralize the access of visitors, who descend through it to an underground hall through which the various rooms are accessed of the museum. Despite such modernization, several sectors of the Louvre were still occupied by public bodies, and only recently have they been vacated and adapted as exhibition halls.

The collection was increased by donations from private collectors, as well as by an acquisitions policy that has focused especially on the French school, which was incompletely represented according to the taste of successive kings. Many medieval, rococo and romantic works arrived shortly before 1900. Among the donations, two bequests should be highlighted: that of the collector Louis La Caze, who in 1869 contributed Rembrandt's Bathsheba and The Bowlegged by José de Ribera, and in 1935 the legacy of Baron Edmond de Rothschild (1845-1934), with more than 40,000 engravings, almost 3,000 drawings and 500 illustrated books.

21st century

In March 2004, the opening of a new room dedicated to Islamic art was announced: an international competition was held for its design in 2005 and it was inaugurated in 2008, with an investment of 50 million euros. However, the display of the Islamic collections continued with a larger, underground extension, inaugurated in 2012 and topped by a roof in the shape of a flying carpet. These rooms were sponsored by Islamic countries and magnates, eager to promote the spread of their culture in Europe.

Despite multiple expansions and reforms, the Louvre maintains part of its collections in storage, which explains the opening of a second location in Lens, near the border with Belgium. This city was economically depressed by an industrial crisis, and the opening of the Musée Louvre-Lens in December 2012, with some 600 works, has ensured an estimable tourist flow, at least initially: 900,000 visits in its first year of operation. For its part, the European Union was the second largest funder of the project, with a participation of 37 million euros (24.7% of the total amount).

Additionally, in Liévin, a town near Lens, a large warehouse for the Parisian Louvre is being built; Once inaugurated in 2019, it will provide a safer location for thousands of pieces that in Paris are at some risk due to the occasional overflow of the Seine River. This danger became clear in June 2016, when a flood in the Seine forced thousands of pieces to be moved from the basements to upper floors.

Likewise, the Louvre has agreed to give its name to a second delegation, this one abroad: the Louvre Abu Dhabi museum in the United Arab Emirates. In exchange for nearly US$1.3 billion, the institution has entered into a thirty-year agreement under which it will contribute its name, artwork and advice to a newly built museum designed by Jean Nouvel. This agreement will make it possible to exhibit works that remained in storage, in addition to raising funds for the maintenance of the Louvre building and for the recovery of part of its Flora Pavilion.

Thanks to the attraction of its rich collections and the tourism that flows annually through Paris, the Louvre remains among the most visited museums in the world; throughout 2018 received &&&&&&&010200000.&&&&&010,200,000 visits.

Collections

The collections are spread over five floors and three interlocking wings. The Louvre Museum contains more than 380,000 objects and exhibits 35,000 works of art in eight departments:

Egyptian Antiquities

Comprising more than 50,000 pieces, the department includes artifacts from the Nile civilizations dating back to 4000 B.C. C. to IV century d. The collection, among the largest in the world, depicts Egyptian life spanning Ancient Egypt, the Middle Kingdom, the New Kingdom, Coptic art, and the Roman, Ptolemaic, and Byzantine periods.

The department's origins lie in the royal collection, but it was augmented by Napoleon's expeditionary voyage in 1798 with Dominique Vivant, the future director of the Louvre. After Jean-François Champollion translated the Rosetta Stone, Charles X decreed that a department of Egyptian Antiquities be created. Champollion advised on the purchase of three collections totaling 7,000 works. Growth continued thanks to acquisitions by Auguste Mariette, founder of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Mariette, after the excavations in Memphis, sent boxes of archaeological finds, including The Seated Scribe.

Guarded by the Great Sphinx (c. 2000 BC), the collection is housed in more than 20 rooms. Stocks include art, papyrus scrolls, mummies, tools, clothing, jewelry, games, musical instruments, and weapons. Pieces from the Old Period include the Gebel el-Arak knife from 3400 BC. C., The seated scribe and the head of King Djedefre. Middle Kingdom art, "known for its gold work and statuary," moved from realism to idealization; this is exemplified by the schist statue of Amenemhatankh and the wooden offering bearer. The New Kingdom and Coptic Egypt sections are deep, but the statue of the goddess Nephthys and the limestone depiction of the goddess Hathor demonstrate New Kingdom sentiment and wealth.

Near Eastern Antiquities

Near Eastern Antiquities, the second newest department, dates from 1881 and presents an overview of early Near Eastern civilization and 'early settlements', before the advent of Islam. The department is divided into three geographical areas: Levant, Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Persia (Iran). The development of the collection corresponds to archaeological works such as the expedition of Paul-Émile Botta to Khorsabad in 1843 and the discovery of the palace of Sargon II. These finds formed the basis of the Assyrian museum, the forerunner of today's department.

The museum contains exhibits from Sumer and the city of Akkad, with monuments such as the Vulture Stele of the Prince of Lagash from 2450 BC. C. and the stela erected by Naram-Sin, king of Akkad, to celebrate a victory over the barbarians in the Zagros mountains. The 2.25 meter Code of Hammurabi, discovered in 1901, displays Babylonian laws prominently so that no man could claim ignorance. The mural of the 18th century a. of the investiture of Zimrilim and the statue of superintendent Ebih II from the 25th century BC. C. are also on display in the museum.

The Persian part of the Louvre contains works from the Archaic period, such as Darius I's Persian funerary head and archers.

Greek, Etruscan and Roman

The Greek, Etruscan and Roman department exhibits pieces from the Mediterranean basin dating from the Neolithic to the VI century. The collection spans from the Cycladic period to the decline of the Roman Empire. This department is one of the oldest in the museum; it began with appropriate royal art, some of which was acquired under Francis I. Initially, the collection focused on marble sculptures, such as the Venus de Milo. Works like the Apollo Belvedere arrived during the Napoleonic Wars, but these pieces were returned after the fall of Napoleon I in 1815. In the century XIX, the Louvre acquired works such as vases from the Durand collection, bronzes such as the Borghese Vase from the National Library of France.

The archaic is represented in the jewels and pieces such as the limestone Lady of Auxerre, from 640 BC. c.; and the cylindrical Hera of Samos, c. 570-560 BCE C. After the IV century a. C., increased focus on the human form, exemplified by the Borghese Gladiator. The Louvre houses masterpieces from the Hellenistic era, such as the Winged Victory of Samothrace (190 BC) and the Venus de Milo, a symbol of classical art. The long Galerie Campana displays an outstanding collection of more than a thousand pieces of Greek pottery. In the galleries parallel to the Seine, much of the museum's Roman sculpture is on display. The Roman portrait is representative of that genre; examples include the portraits of Marco Vipsanio Agrippa and Marco Annio Vero; among the bronzes is the Greek Apollo of Piombino.

Arts of Islam

This department, created in 2003, brings together the collections from the area located between Spain and India and date from the origin of the Islamic civilization (622) to the XIX.

There are many jewels of Islamic art here: such as the Al-Mughira Pyx, an ivory box from the year 968 made in the Caliphate of Córdoba; Le Plat au Paon, an important Ottoman ceramic, and especially the Baptistery of Saint Louis, one of the most famous and enigmatic pieces of this art, created by Muhammad ibn al-Zayn at the beginning of the century XIV. Also noteworthy is the material from the excavations in Susa (Iran), in which the museum participated.

The museum soon had to double the space dedicated to Islamic art to display at least 3,005 works.

Sculpture

The sculpture department includes works created before 1850 that do not belong to the Etruscan, Greek and Roman department. The Louvre has been a repository for sculpted material since its days as a palace. Initially, the collection included only 100 pieces, the rest of the collection of royal sculptures is in Versailles. It remained small until 1847, when Léon Laborde took control of the department. Laborde developed the medieval section and bought the first statues and sculptures in the collection, Childebert I and stanga door, respectively. The collection was part of the Department of Antiquities, but was given autonomy in 1871 and organized a broader representation of French works. In 1986 all works after 1850 were moved to the then new Musée d'Orsay. The Grand Louvre project divided the department into two exhibition spaces; the French collection is on display in the Richelieu wing and the foreign works in the Denon wing.

The overview of the collection of French sculpture contains Romanesque works such as Daniel in the Lions' Den from the 11th century and the Virgin of Auvergne from the 12th century century. In the 16th century, the influence of the Renaissance caused French sculpture to become more subdued, as seen in the bas-reliefs of Jean Goujon and the Descent from the Cross and the Resurrection of Christ by Germain Pilon. The 17th and 18th centuries are represented by Gian Lorenzo Bernini's Bust of Cardinal Richelieu from 1640-1, Étienne Maurice Falconet's Woman Bathing and Amour Menaçant, and François Anguier's obelisks. Neoclassical works include Antonio Canova's Psyche Reanimated by the Kiss of Love (1787). The 18th and 19th centuries are represented by the French sculptor Alfred Barye.

Decorative Arts

The Objets d'art collection spans from the Middle Ages to the mid-XIX century. The department began as a subset of the sculpture department, based on the royal ownership and transfer of pieces from the Basilica of Saint-Denis, the burial ground of the French monarchs. Among the most precious works in the collection are the pietra dura vases and bronzes. The acquisition of the Durand collection in 1825 added "ceramics, enamels and stained glass," and Pierre Révoil delivered 800 pieces. The onset of Romanticism revived interest in Renaissance and Middle Age works of art, and Sauvageot's donation expanded the department with 1,500 works of faith and Middle Ages. In 1862, the Campana collection incorporated gold and majolica jewelry, mainly from the 15th and 16th centuries.

The works are exhibited on the first floor of the Richelieu wing and in the Apollo Gallery, named after the painter Charles Le Brun, who was commissioned by Louis XIV the Sun King to decorate the space with a theme solar. The medieval collection contains the coronation crown of Louis XIV, the scepter of Charles V and the porphyry vase from the 12th century. Renaissance art holdings include Giambologna's bronze Nessus and Deianira and the Maximillian's Hunt tapestry. From later periods, highlights include Madame de Pompadour's collection of Sèvres vases and the apartments of Napoleon III.

Painting

The Louvre houses several of the masterpieces of universal art, which have achieved the status of icon. Here is La Gioconda, perhaps the most famous painting, by Leonardo Da Vinci, as well as The Lacemaker by Vermeer, the series of great paintings of La Life of Marie de' Medici by Rubens, The Coronation of Napoleon by Jacques-Louis David and Liberty Leading the People by Delacroix.

In addition to the aforementioned masterpieces, we can find many more works by well-known authors in the Louvre. The collection of French painting is colossal, with the largest collection of works by Poussin and spanning a panorama from the Middle Ages to Ingres and Géricault. Mention should be made of Rigaud's Portrait of Louis XIV, Pilgrimage to the Island of Kythera and Watteau's Gilles, The Great Odalisque by Ingres, The Raft of the Medusa by Géricault and The Death of Sardanapalus by Delacroix.

Italian painting stands out, with abundant examples from Cimabue, Giotto, Fra Angelico (The Coronation of the Virgin), Andrea Mantegna and Paolo Uccello (The Battle of San Romano) to Caravaggio (The Death of the Virgin), Guido Reni... The Renaissance repertoire is singularly rich, with the most valuable set by Leonardo da Vinci (La Gioconda, The Virgin of the Rocks, Saint John the Baptist…) and various works by Raphael Sanzio, Titian, Andrea del Sarto…

The collection from the Netherlands includes first-rate examples from Jan van Eyck (Madonna of Chancellor Rolin), Rogier van der Weyden and Hans Memling to Rubens (51 works) and Van Dyck. The Dutch repertoire shines with fifteen paintings by Rembrandt (The Flayed Ox, Bathsheba with David's Letter), Frans Hals (The Gypsy Woman) and Vermeer, with the famous Lacemaker and The Astronomer. In 2015, the Louvre acquired for 160 million euros, jointly with the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, a pair of Rembrandt portraits: Maerten Soolmans and his wife Oopjen Coppit ; They are the only full-length and life-size ones that the master painted. Among the few German exhibits, Dürer's Self-Portrait with Thistle and a portrait of Erasmus of Rotterdam painted by Holbein stand out, and Spanish painting galleries include El Greco, Zurbarán (Exhibition of the Body of San Buenaventura), Murillo, José de Ribera (El patizambo), Luis Meléndez (Self-portrait), Goya...

Prints and drawings

The prints and drawings department includes works on paper. The origins of the collection were the 8,600 works in the Royal Collection (Cabinet du Roi), which were increased through state appropriation, purchases such as the 1,200 works in the Fillipo Baldinucci collection in 1806, and donations. The department opened in 1797, with 415 pieces on display at the Galerie d'Apollon. The collection is organized into three sections: the main Cabinet du Roi, 14,000 royal copper printing plates, and the Edmond de Rothschild endowments, including 40,000 prints, 3,000 drawings, and 5,000 illustrated books. Properties are displayed in the Flora Pavilion; due to the fragility of the paper support, only one part is shown at a time.

Panoramic view of the Louvre Museum in 2007

Satellite museums

Louvre-Lens

Louvre Abu Dhabi