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| Louvre Museum, Paris |
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| Louvre Museum (Night View) |
Before writing about my short visit to the Louvre Museum, it seems proper to give a brief introduction about this world-famous magnificent museum which would help you in understanding the gradual evolution of this museum from a primitive medieval fortress to a spacious palace and then into a museum with a vast collection of more than one million rare works of art collected from various parts of the world, a very gigantic enterprise in which many kings, nobles, donors, architects, sculptors, archaeologists and other artists of various countries contributed their best. At this place in 1190 the French king Philip Auguste (1180--1223) built a rampart to defend the small town of Paris from Anglo-Norman forces. The fortress was a quadrilateral building with round bastions at each corner. Even now the tower hall (Salle Basse), a vaulted ceiling on two columns at the center of the hall with supporting walls is seen in the lower ground floor of the Sully Wing. Charles V (1338--1380) extended the fortress by constructing an earthen rampart to cover the neighboring areas on the right bank of the Seine river. Raymon Du Temple, the architect under Charles V transformed this old fortress into a royal residence with a central court, pleasure gardens, sculptures and images on roof tops.
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| Model of Medieval Louvre Fortress in Sully Wing Ground Floor |
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| Salle Basse (Lower Room) |
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| Petite Galerie (small gallery) |
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| Sculptures near the petit galerie |
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| Grand Galerie |
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| Grand Galerie with paintings on walls |
After the death of Charles VI there were no improvements till 1527. Later Francois I demolished the medieval keep (Gross Tour) ie. a large tower, to provide more space and light. The medieval west wing was demolished and replaced by the Renaissance style of new the buildings in 1546. Henri II (1519--1559) demolished the castle's medieval south wing and built a new wing. He created the Hall of Caryatids (sculptured female figures used as pillars) on the ground floor and built the king's pavilion (Pavilion du Roy) at the junction of the new building and the king's private apartments on the first floor.Their decoration work was completed under Henri IV. In 1564 Henri's widow Catherine De Medicis ordered the building of a new palace just at a short distance to the west. In 1566 Charles X (1757--1836) built the ground floor of the petite gallerie as a starting point for a long corridor connecting the Louvre to the Tuilleries -- a link between two palaces. Henri IV (1553--1610) built King's Gallery (Galerie du Roi) on the top of the Petit Galerie. He also built the waterside gallery as a link between the royal apartments in the Louvre to the Tuilleries Palace ending with the pavilion de Flore between 1595 and 1610. The main work of the Grand Gallery was completed by Henri IV. But due to Henri IV's assassination on May 14th 1610, the interior decoration work was not completed. His successor Louis XIII (1601--1643) was only a boy of nine years. Work begun by him was completed after fifteen years by Louis XIV. The extension of the west wing of the Cour Carree (Courtyard in the shape of a quadrangle) under Louis XIII was completed by Louis XIV (1638--1715). With this the construction of the Louvre Palace was over.
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| Cour Carree |
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| Lescot Wing |
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| Clock Pavilion or Pavilion Sully |
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| Clock Sculpture at the entrance |
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| Museum of Arts with 35,000 artifacts in eight sections |
But the kings lost interest in the palace as they moved to Tuilleries Palace. In 1624 Louis XIII carried out the grand design planned by Henri IV . He demolished a part of the northern wing of the medieval Louvre palace and replaced it with the continuation of the Lescot Wing. Between the old building and the new building a monumental clock pavilion (Pavilion Sully, a model for the palace's other buildings) was constructed by the architect, Jacques le Mercier in 1639. Between 1655 and 1658 Regent Queen Anne of Austria (Mother of Louis XIV) commissioned six interconnecting rooms on the ground floor of the Petit Galerie. Between 1660 and 1664 the north wing of the Cour Carree was completed and the south wing was extended by the addition of two new pavilions at the eastern end and one in the center. In 1668 the width of the palace was doubled and a new facade was built overlooking the Seine. The last vestiges of the medieval Louvre were demolished.The ravaged parts of the upper story of the Petit Galerie were destroyed in fire in 1661. But they were re-constructed by Louis XIV . As Louis XIV stayed at Versailles Palace, the buildings of the Cour Carree were left unroofed and remained so nearly for one century.
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| Salles des Caryatides (sculptured female figures as columns) |
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| Statues in Salles des Carytides |
In 1692 Louis XIV created a gallery of ancient sculptures in the Salle des Caryatides . Many academeys like Academie Francois, Academie Rouyal de Peinture et de sculpture, Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Letters funtioned here till 1792. In 1699 the Academie de Peinture et de Sculpture held their first exhibition here. In 1756 the wings begun in Louis XIV's time were partially completed. The north, east and south sides of the Cour Carree (court yard in the shape of a quadrangle) were over. Later a complex of ancillary buildings in Cour Carree was dismantled.
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| Anne of Austria's Apartments in lower petite galerie |
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| Entrance to Anne of Austria's Summer Apartments |
In 1791 the revolutionary Assemblee Nationale declared that the Louvre and Tuilleries Palaces as a national property to house the royal and the historic collections of the arts and sciences and made it a national museum. In 1793 the Museum of Arts (Central de Arts) was opened in the Salon Carree ( a hall in the shape of a quadrangle) and the Grand Galerie with 537 paintings on display. Later the Museum of Arts spread over to the Anne of Austria's apartments. Further more rooms were opened during the time of Charles X. This museum was re-named as Musee' Napoleon in 1803 after Napoleon brought paintings from Venice and Vatican in 1798. After the fall of the empire in 1815 this museum was disbanded and each nation reclaimed its treasures and artifacts.
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2nd May, 2016 Somaseshu Gutala
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