Mon Carnet de Voyage

Today, being the one day of the month when Paris museums offer free entry (1st Sunday of the month) I thought I’d throw my hat in the ring with the 10,000 other people with the same idea, and go to the Louvre.

I survived, but I might say, I had to put my iPod up really loud.

The sheer size of the Louvre rules out any possibility of ever appreciating its entire contents – it has 35,000 works of art, and over 60,000 square meters of exhibition space. I think that to visit the Louvre, I would recommend choosing the five items that you desperately want to see, and then wind your way patiently around the three wings of the building looking for them. Along the way you’ll see some nice art.

For me, each time that I visit the Louvre (I am lucky to say that this was my fourth visit), one artwork in particular speaks to me. It’s like I walk away having only been able to actually see one painting or sculpture, and everything else is forgotten. So it was with the aim of revisiting each one of them, that I tread a cautious path amongst the many visitors this afternoon.

At the young age of sixteen, it was Eugene Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People that stopped me in my tracks, on my first time around the Louvre (you might ask, what can stop any sixteen year old in their tracks in a gallery or museum?). It brought to life for me the fight within the people, as they surged forward into the French Revolution.
My favourite French teacher Madame Kotai-Ewers had, in my early years of high school, stirred in me an inkling of that passion that is the edifice of French culture. Rebellion perhaps, was most likely the appetizer at this age.

When I was twenty-one years of age, travelling alone for the first time in my life, it was of course the Winged Victory of Samothrace (below) that caught my eye.

A greek statue commemorating victory … she towers over the stairwell of the Denon wing, free to fly off into the rooftops, albeit blind and naive of the trouble she could possibly bump into.

At twenty-six years of age, it was The Raft of the Medusa (below) that spoke to me. I suppose shipwrecks have always interested me, and this painting portraying the only survivors of 149 men of the Medusa, a ship that truly did perish in 1816.

Théodore Géricault has captured the tension of the men waving at a far off ship in the distance. It conveys for me, utter human desperation. Perhaps at a time in my life, when I found that the true path to happiness was to start paddling.

And so today, a new painting stopped me. It was this, The Young Martyr, by Paul Delaroche:

A Christian virgin martyred in the Tiber River floats in the water. Her hands are tied, and yet her soul, depicted by the striking golden ring of aura above her head, is certain to go to heaven. In the darkness behind her, she is observed by a man, perhaps her lover.

Although not a Christian virgin (!)nor a martyr, for the past three years I have been studying the concept of heaven, whilst doing my masters degree in creative writing. And for the past five years, I have been working on a novel about a girl trying to find her way to heaven. Perhaps though, it was simply the serenity and spiritual contentment that the woman seems to convey, that triggered a response in me.

So, should you reading this and be thinking of the artwork that spoke to you in the Louvre, feel free to add your two cents worth below…