BY BEN ANTAO

A visit to the Louvre in France is enriching… art connoisseur or not.

I MUST confess that I was disappointed when I saw the famous painting of the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci in the Louvre. It is not the iconic image, but its size that disappointed me. The oil on wood painting measures just 77 x 53 cm, which is less than a metre long and wide. Viewing this portrait after being mesmerised by the huge canvases of The Wedding Feast at Cana by Paolo Caliari Veronese (6.77 x 9.94 m) or The Raft of the Medusa by Theodore Gericault (4.91 x 7.16 m) was a letdown. Yet upon admission to the Louvre, the very first image drawing the attention of the visitor is that of the Mona Lisa whose print is posted at every staircase and corner with arrows directing to the ultimate work of art, celebrated in song and books the world over in as many languages as there are artists and writers enraptured with Da Vinci’s painting. One has to pass through several galleries of high Renaissance and Romantic art before arriving at the Mona Lisa gallery.

Still, the Mona Lisa is a magnet to the Louvre. According to art critics, the woman smiling is Lisa Gherardini, the wife of the Florentine notable Francesco di Bartolomeo di Zanoli del Giacondo. Some commentators have speculated that the picture may be an androgynous self-portrait as, apparently, Da Vinci took five years to paint this picture that he considered not finished. This may explain why he took it to France where he died in 1519 at the age of 67.

By contrast, Veronese’s Wedding Feast is a greater masterpiece of Renaissance art, one that dazzles the viewer with its sheer scale, perspective, depth and breadth. As many as 130 figures are crowded into this ten-metre high composition peopled not only by Christ and his disciples but also by some of the princes of the Renaissance period. The painter from Verona expands his imagination to create a wedding scene with a balustrade terrace that looks like a theatre stage.

“For this kind of large-format painting,” wrote Veronese, “the painter needs, after the fashion of the poet, 3the freedom to add figures supplementary to those strictly required by the story.”

WEDDING FEAST

I don’t know about the poet, but even a good writer would be challenged to describe a scene with such detail and so many characters as are present in this painting, rich in colours, light and shade. The cliché, a good picture is worth a thousand words, in this case begs to be revised to say a million words. Still, perhaps a poet of Milton’s fecund imagination could measure up to Veronese in evoking such a grand wedding feast. Commissioned by the Benedictine monks of San Giorgio Maggiore for the refectory of the abbey, the painting completed in 1562-63 was one of the works that Napoleon’s army brought back in 1798. Perhaps it was the multi-faceted talent of the artist that attracted Louis XIV, who greatly admired this master painter whose works also grace the salons of Versailles.

The Raft of the Medusa (1819) focuses on brutal realism that ushered in the Romantic movement in the 19th century, a romanticism that affirmed the right of individuals to exist as they are and to express their personal emotions, doubts and hopes. Gericault lived a short life (1791-1824), but his vision of painting horses and madmen with powerful realism embraced the romantic urges sweeping across Europe at the time.

The story behind this painting recalls a harrowing event that happened three years earlier, namely, the fate of 149 passengers of the French frigate Medusa that floundered off the coast of Senegal. Cast on the open sea on a makeshift raft, the passengers drifted for 12 days and only 15 survived to tell the terrifying tale of their ordeal. Gericault is said to have prepared for this painting by studying the bodies of torture victims and the dying. The pictorial result is impressively frightening, intensely moving, realistic and dramatic. One has to see this painting of exceptional intensity to experience vicariously the terror endured by the passengers on the raging sea.

STARK FIGURES

GERICAULT lived for a year in Italy and discovered Michelangelo. And critics point to the stark figures in the painting as evidence of the Florentine master’s influence. Still, the artist was wounded by the less than enthusiastic reception to his painting at the 1819 Salon. A pity!

Another striking but sad picture in the Romantic tradition is that of The Young Martyr (1855) by Paul Delaroche (1797-1856). The oil on canvas (1.70 x 1.48 m) shows a female martyr floating dead in the Tiber River, with a ring of halo above her face, evoking much pity and tenderness. The martyr is supposed to represent Christians persecuted during the reign of Diocletian (284-305 AD) in the Roman Empire.

There is much to see in the Louvre and write about, but I’ll confine my comments only to a few paintings and sculptures.

Twenty years ago in 1989, we’d seen Michelangelo’s marble statue of the Biblical king David standing 5.17 metres in the nude in the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence, and his fresco The Last Judgement behind the high altar and his other inspired frescoes on the famous ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (40 m long x 13 m wide) in Rome.

In the Louvre, however, there is a Michelangelo gallery housing only his marble sculptures of the slaves. According to critics, the slaves were executed for the huge tomb of Pope Julius II, a project that occupied Michelangelo (1475-1564) a couple of years (1513-1515) but was unfinished perhaps because of defects in the marble. Still, the two chained Slaves (2 m in height) looked impressive.

Speaking of King David, there is a portrait of Bathsheba by Rembrandt (1606-1669) in the Louvre. The episode in the Bible states that King David, having seen Bathsheba bathing, invites her to join him in his palace while he’s sent her husband away to war. In the oil on canvas portrait (1.42 x 1.42 m), the Dutch master suggests the king’s presence merely by the crumpled letter in the young woman’s hand. The golden light on her nude but beautiful body intimates why the king was attracted to her.

RAPHAEL

ANOTHER artist of high Renaissance who studied Da Vinci and Michelangelo is Raffaello Santi, known simply as Raphael (1483-1520). Pope Julius II also commissioned him to paint frescoes for the Vatican palace. His The Virgin and Child with Saint John the Baptist, known as ‘La Belle Jardinère’, oil on wood (1.22 x 0.80 m) is a pyramidal composition of delicate colour and sentiment. Critics say that in this painting done in 1507, “The young painter is asserting his personality, notably in the importance he accords to the representation of emotions, expressed here by the exchange of looks and the gentleness of the Virgin’s maternal gestures.”

Another Renaissance painter who succeeded in assimilating Raphael’s power and Da Vinci’s subtlety is Andrea Del Sarto (1486-1530), of whom I’d first read in the poetry of Robert Browning, the Victorian master of the dramatic monologue. A native of Florence, Del Sarto, so named because his father was a tailor, painted Charity (1518) while he was in France at the court of Francis I. The oil on canvas (1.85 x 1.37 m), also a triangular composition, represents the theological virtues of charity (faith, hope and love the burning jar at her feet, the pomegranate in the foreground, children to whom she offers protection.

According to critics, the painting is an allegory of the royal family it celebrates, in particular the birth of the Dauphin, the long-awaited successor to the throne. The nursing baby is an allusion to the recent maternity of Claude of France, while the face of Charity bears certain similarities to that of the queen. The infant who presents a cluster of hazelnuts is meant to be a girl, one of the daughters of the royal couple, probably Charlotte. The figure in the foreground is a symbol of “joyous France reposing in peace.”

The pyramidal structure, the plasticity of the figures inspired by Michelangelo, and the style of the landscape are typical of early 16th century Florentine culture.

DELACROIX

YET another famous painting that graces the galleries of Louvre is called Liberty Guiding the People, an oil on canvas (2.60 x 3.25 m) by Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), an admirer of Gericault, also inspired by contemporary political events. This 1830 picture celebrates the July uprising that overthrew Charles X that year.

“If I did not fight for my country, at least I will paint it,” the painter said to his brother. It took him three months to paint this exalted tribute to Liberty, symbolised by a woman leading her people forward over the rubble. The widely acclaimed canvas was acquired by the French government but was not shown publicly for the next 25 years, apparently because of its subversive message.

A painting that celebrates lust and sensual delight caught my eye in one of the galleries. This oil on canvas titled The Bolt (73 x 93 cm), the work of Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806), is a passionate evocation of amorous desire done in soft golden hues, with red drapes and an apple on the table, soft light streaming from the left. It shows a woman half-heartedly fending off her lover’s advances, posing this question: Why is the man bolting the door if the room is already in disarray indicating what is to come? Certain objects unmask their erotic symbolism, namely, the knocked-over chair (legs in the air), the vase and roses (allusions to female genitals), the bolt (male genitals), and especially the bed taking up most of the left of the composition. The painting (1778) suggests an extravagant French dream, the disorder exposing the male protagonist’s sexual urges.

In the same salon wherein lies the Mona Lisa we were drawn to the attractive The Love of Paris and Helen (1788), an oil on canvas (1.47 x 1.80 m) by Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825), an influential French painter of the early 19th century. The painting in warm, golden Venetian colours takes its subject from Greek mythology involving Paris, the son of Priam, king of Troy, and his seduction of Helen, the wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta, which led to the Trojan war. Helen looks seductively coy with an eager, semi-nude Paris holding his lyre. David, the painter, captures the evanescent moment of truth as if he were a witness. Invited to watch the coronation ceremony of Napoleon I as Emperor in the Cathedral of Notre Dame in 1804, David painted the scene of this coronation in 1806.

SCULPTURES

THE view of the famous marble staircase leading to the statue of the Winged Victory of Samothrace is stunning in its depth and scale. The Victory-”Nike” in Greek-is shown as if she were just alighting on the prow of the ship to bring divine favour. Staged in spectacular fashion in keeping with Hellenistic taste, she could be seen from afar by ships approaching the island. The proportions, the rendering of the bodily forms, the manner in which the drapery flapping in the wind is handled, and the expansiveness of the highly theatrical gesture all bear witness to the search for realism in this sculpture dating from 190 BC.

An original Greek statue probably destroyed by an earthquake, this work was reportedly found in countless pieces in 1863 on the island of Samothrace, northeast of the Aegean Sea. The right wing is a plaster copy of the left wing, the only one to have survived. The cement base beneath her feet is also modern; the statue initially stood on the sculpted prow of the ship. The figure loomed out of a hilltop sanctuary at an angle, and her spray-sodden drapery clinging to her body seems to be facing the full force of a tempest.

André Malraux, novelist and writer who became the Minister of Culture during the regime of Charles de Gaulle, was reportedly delighted with the accidental mutilation of this statue and called it “a masterpiece of destiny,” today a timeless icon of Western art.

One of the jewels in the Louvre’s Greek collections is Aphrodite, known as the Venus de Milo (130-100 BC). Discovered in 1820, her nude torso led to be identified as Aphrodite, the Roman Venus, goddess of love and beauty, born out of the foam of the sea. The marble statue with the left arm severed at the shoulder stands 2.02 m high. Her slender silhouette and sensual, realistic nudity link this work to the Hellenistic period (323-31 BC), the last great era in Greek history. And her impassive face suggests a quest for timeless beauty in the Platonic tradition.

Another sculpture that peaked my interest is that of Mary Magdalen sculpted by Gregor Erhart (1460-1540), a leading German sculptor of the 16th century. According to legend, Mary Magdalen lived in seclusion in a cave at Sainte-Baume in Provence, clad only in her hair and without food or water. The nude statue done in polychromed limewood (1.77 x 0.44 m) in Augsburg, Germany around 1515-1520, is said to depict Magdalen in ecstasy. Her feminine curves, scarcely hidden by the rippling mane of golden hair flowing over her shoulders and down to her pubis, enhance the beauty of her face. The work’s spiritual content blended with a quest for physical beauty is enhanced by the polychromy, pale and refined in the Gothic tradition.

MASTERPIECE

FINALLY, to round out this tour of the Louvre, I’d like to include another famous painting titled The Cheat with the Ace of Diamonds (1635), an oil on canvas (1.07 x 1.46 m) by Georges de La Tour (1593-1652). Here’s the curator’s take on this masterpiece:

“If this painting is one of the most famous works in the Louvre, it is because its absolute formal perfection is coupled with a highly unusual atmosphere. Who are the elegant protagonists in this scene? There can be no doubt as to the intentions of the man after whom the picture was named - on the left, cards hidden behind his back. The wealthily dressed young man on the right is too engrossed in his hand to notice the looks exchanged by the two women plying him with drink and clearly intent on divesting him of the gold on the table. The painter has frozen the scene’s actors in a pregnant moment of silence, magnificently suggested, before the game takes its dramatic turn. Georges de La Tour’s psychological subtlety is at its apogee here, in the language of the players’ hands and distribution of light and shade emphasising their inter-relationships. The three accomplices are shown against a black ground of deceit, infinitely broader than the light ground of innocence behind their young victim.” A must-see if you ever get a chance to visit Paris.

The Louvre is a combination of palace and museum. Its physical dimensions appeared staggering when viewing its 700 metre south façade from the Seine during our cruise on the first night. It is an almost rectangular structure, composed of the square Cour Carrée and two wings which wrap the Cour Napoléon to the north and south. In the heart of the complex is the Louvre Pyramid, above the visitor’s centre. The museum is divided into three wings: the Sully Wing to the east, which contains the Cour Carrée and the oldest parts of the Louvre; the Richelieu Wing to the north; and the Denon Wing that borders the Seine to the south.

The impressive glass pyramid, 20.6 m high with a base of 35 m, serves as the main entrance to the Louvre museum. It was commissioned by President François Mitterrand in 1984, designed by architect I M Pei and completed in 1989. Visitors descend from the pyramid into a spacious lobby lined with cafes and gift shops and then ascend to the main Louvre buildings.

Today the Musée du Louvre contains more than 380,000 objects and displays 35,000 works of art in eight curatorial departments with more than 60,600 square metres (652,000 sq ft) dedicated to the permanent collections. The Louvre exhibits sculptures, objets d’art, paintings, drawings, and archaeological finds. It is the world’s most visited museum, averaging 15,000 visitors per day, 65 percent of whom are tourists.

As we emerged out of the museum after nearly four hours, the sun was out and the glass pyramid was glittering. We climbed up the pyramid for photos, then leisurely walked out from the vast courtyard, tired but enriched, our senses saturated with art.

The above essay is from the author’s forthcoming travelogue Tour de France, which he visited in September 2009. Ben Antao, a Canadian Goan living in Toronto, is a journalist and novelist who has published five novels and several short stories and non-fiction. Blood & Nemesis, Penance, The Tailor’s Daughter, Living on the Market and The Priest and His Karma are his novels. His non-fiction includes the memoir, Images of the USA (2009) and travelogues Goa A Rediscovery and The Lands of Sicily. His email: ben.antao@rgoers.com.