Paris - Inverted Pyramid - 1er

Plate XV - Inverted Pyramide...

Beneath the forecourt of the Louvre’s Place du Carrousel, also accessed from the Rue de Rivoli, is an exclusive small shopping arcade known as the Carrousel du Louvre. It is here that one can see the Inverse or Upside Down Pyramid, part of Pei’s architectural themed use of the form. The centre houses many fine shops, some dealing in a vast and multilingual selection of Louvre related books and souvenirs. I bought a magnificent 5,000 piece jigsaw puzzle of David’s painting of Napoleon Crowning Josephine - Le Sacre de Napoléon (the Louvre version – if, as mentioned in an earlier post, I couldn’t get to see the traveling original at least I could piece it together when I got home.) I also believe Apple, in 2009, opened its flagship Paris store in the arcade. 

Beneath the inverted transparent chalice lies a second stone pyramid form, the two almost, but not quite, meeting apex to apex. Readers of Dan Brown’s novel ‘The Da Vinci Code’ will recognise this as a significant climactic location of the plot of the story, for this stone form is the artifact he describes in his novel as “...the tiny structure”. Reading this book some years after my initial visit to the city I was amazed at how many of the locations used in Brown’s story of the Rose Line I had visited. 

If I’d only had Brown’s imagination ……

Paris - Louvre Denon - 1er

Plate XII - Louvre - Denon Wing and Grande Pyramide ...

Visiting the Louvre is a little like eating the proverbial elephant – it is best taken in small pieces at one time. Of course those with limited time in Paris will try to (sadly even need to) fit it all into a single visit. I pity them for the art indigestion they will suffer. Even with my having taken several trips to the Louvre in the course of my first stay, I found myself at times numbly walking through an area thinking, “Wow! - more great paintings.” I consider myself to be an art lover, and when I realised one such occasion was after an almost cursory glance into the salon containing the (Peter Paul) Rubens’ Médicis Cycle – one of the major achievements of his career – I knew it was time to quit for yet another day.

On this, my first trip to Paris, I had one major disappointment with the Louvre – the grand French master-works of the 19th century were out of the museum on a touring exhibition. I mention this, not so much in anger, but more as a cautionary – it can happen. Recently, in 2009 even the Mona Lisa had the day off, as she was repositioned in the gallery. Amongst the must see works I had hoped to view were Jacques-Louis David’s Madame Récamier (a personal favourite), Napoléon on Horseback, and Napoléon Crowning Josephine (an identical work by David on view in Versailles, and which I did see, has an enigmatic but notable difference in that one of the ladies-in-waiting wears a pink gown in Versailles, but wears white in the Louvre version). Then, there were the works of Géricault, Ingres and above all Delacroix’ iconic Liberty Leading The People. All out. I rationalised that it is good to know that the Louvre shares its treasures by doing such loan exhibitions, and of course if any reason were needed to revisit this city, this would be it. There was still so much else to see here and my first day in the Louvre was spent trying to complete the works within the Denon wing - the French sculpture in the Cours Marly and Puget, the Oriental Antiquities, the Chambers of Napoleon III and the German, Flemish and Dutch paintings. Not to mention the Decorative Arts displays. Still quite a sizable jumbo.

I could not take it all in!!