The Grand Tour should have included ... Abu Dhabi

Today marked the end of our fourth week of The Grand Tour and today was ...

... The Louvre! What a marvelous day, from 9:30 until 5:00. We devoted an entire day to this place. Good thing.

After careful research, I created a list of 8 "must see" Louvre items and brought the list with me. Number One on the list was:

Portrait of a Woman by Leonardo DaVinci. I've always so loved this unknown woman and couldn't wait to see her. We looked and looked in the Italian section and finally asked a guard, who took us to this:

An empty space! The small card says the painting is on loan to Abu Dhabi?!?

What are the chances, I ask you. The Louvre has 380,000 works of art. I had a list of eight must-sees. This DaVinci isn't even real popular. (BTW, the same thing happened years ago when I went to the Chicago Art Museum for the first time, another list in hand, and my #1 request Nighthawks by Edward Hopper was on loan somewhere.)

The Mister remarked that it's a darn shame Abu Dhabi isn't on our Grand Tour.

As we traveled around the museum (how incredibly huge this place is, as those of you who have been here know), we found the others on my Must See list.

The Lacemaker by Vermeer (below) ...

The Astronomer by Vermeer (below) ...

Venus de Milo (below) ...

 

 The Coronation of Napoleon by Jacques-Louis David (below) ...  more breathtaking than I imagined ...

The Winged Victory of Samothrace (below) ...

Grande Odalisque by Ingres (below) ... 

And one more!  Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People.  When we went to a room that had only Delacroix paintings in it, Liberty wasn't there! Don't tell me it's happening again. But the guard told us there is a special Delacroix exhibition right in the Louvre itself, and my Delacroix is the star of it, of course.

Happily, we found the exhibition and the painting I wanted, in all its glory.

Some of my observations on The Louvre ...

• It wasn't hard to get into. The line wasn't long, especially if you have tickets, which we did.
• The crowds in certain sections (Italian and French painters) are enormous. But it makes me happy that art work can attract a SuperBowl crowd day after day after day. About 47,000 people come to the Louvre every day.
• The Dutch painters (always my favorite) are not heavily visited so that was wonderful strolling. The Louvre has rooms and rooms of Dutch masters.
• Some photo takers are absolutely nuts. Earl and I stood and watched as a woman almost raced through, holding her camera up and clicking it at a painting and then moving on without even looking at any painting.
• But all in all, the Louvre crowds are nice people and it's a good group to be with, even if it gets a bit noisy.
• The Louvre was better than I ever imagined it could be. I think I had believed too much of its "bad press." I thought it was phenomenal, truly.
• I liked I.M. Pei's pyramid more than I thought I would. I didn't before I actually saw it but at least I didn't hate it.

Yes, we did see the Mona Lisa, never a favorite of mine but a you-gotta-see-it, right?

Believe it or not, the Mona Lisa is BIGGER than I thought. For decades people have been telling me how disappointingly small it is so I was prepared for far smaller than she actually is. (I still don't understand why she's popular.)

Here are a few more pictures to share ...

A frame we loved (below) ...

and a ceiling we loved (below).

A trip to a museum isn't complete without a visit to the gift shop. I went away with one souvenir, a notebook featuring Liberty.

These sculptures (below) ...

... got me pining for the most beautiful works of art I know (below).

Hooray for Facetime tonight! The grands even were sitting in the same order as the sculptures. Again, what are the chances?!?


Thanks for reading my blog!
Jane