Highlights of the Louvre, Notre Dame and the Ile de la Cite

Friday, July 24, 2009
Paris

We awoke refreshed from our long slumber in a city that slept, it seemed, quietly with us. Sheltered in the serene cocoon of our airy bedroom, we were clueless to the life that teemed around us just a street away on the Champs Elysses. With everyone else away for the day already, we showered and dressed and decided to spend the day at perhaps the most challenging museum in the world—the legendary Louvre.

We grabbed breakfast to go (croissants and pain au chocolat) from the Monoprix that was so conveniently located just around the corner from our building. Then, we were in the tubes that take commuters around the city in a jiffy and before long found ourselves at the Louvre entering I.M. Pei’s glass Pyramid that has added its distinctive profile to the city’s skyline.

In the metro, both Llew and I noticed separately how much Paris has changed since we were last tourists in this city. The demographics have altered considerably and white people are now most decidedly in the minority in the public transport systems that skirt the city. We were struck by the large numbers of South Asians now in Paris—most obviously Punjabis as was evident from the language they spoke—as also the vast numbers of Maghrebain (North African immigres) who have made the city their home. There is also none of the style and glamor we once associated with the word ‘Parisian’. I can remember, not too long ago, gazing with envy upon women in the metro each of whom seemed to have stepped out of Vogue—each was so impeccably made up and put together (those famous French foulards (scarves) wrapped a dozen different ways around their elegant shoulders. I can recall men with a shock of hair falling stylishly over their broad foreheads as they exuded chic suavity with every carefree stride they took. Where have all these Parisians gone? I lamented their passing and felt sorry that the city, indeed the country, seemed to have lost an essential aspect of its distinguished character. Llew reminded me that this phenomenon is called ‘Globalization’ and he was right. The downside of globalization is that while it has made us far more homogeneous than we ever used to be, it has, alas, robbed us of the distinctive merits that gave each of us a national and cultural identity that was uniquely our own.

As for the B.O. it was just unbearable. Neither London or Paris have yet air conditioned the cars of their underground systems and in summer, the ride is most uncomfortable. While I did not hotice B.O. anywhere in London, the stench in Paris is just awful, not to mention the discomfort of riding in jampacked cars with a motley lot of people, so many of whom seem to have forgotten what a shower is! I think this was one of the most unappealing parts of our visit to Paris. Clearly, there is a huge market for deodorant in France and if there is an entrepreneur out there who is reading this, believe me, this is an opportunity waiting to be grabbed.!

On arriving at the Louvre, I was gratified to see that my Met Museum ID card stood me in good stead and got me free entry. Llew bought his ticket and after grabbing the floor plan, we began our daunting exploration of the museum, skipping the hour-long Highlights tour in English which we had taken the last time we were here and deciding to follow instead the Highlights marked out by the Museum’s curators. Despite the fact that both of us are accustomed to expansive museums, this one certainly astounded even us as we tried to negotiate our way through the Richelieu, Sully and Denton wings. Though we did manage to complete all the highlights detailed by the floor plan, it took us several hours and but for a light café luncheon (roast chicken for Llew, a quiche lorraine for me), we soldiered on moving from one item to the next without needing to spend too much time and energy getting from one to the other. We began our exploration at 10. 45 am and were only done at 4. 45 pm.

Among the Highlights I recall as being especially notable were:
1. The Winged Victory of Samotrace—an ancient Greek carved stone statue that stood on the hull of a ship, a very early sort of figurehead. Excavated sometime in the middle of the last century but with its arms still missing. Marvelous draping of a gauzy fabric around the thighs of the woman that seems to render stone transparent.
2. The Venus de Milo: Another armless and topless marble female sculpture of a woman who stands today in two pieces that are riveted together with marble struts.
3. La Giaconda, better known as the Mona Lisa: The woman with the Mystic Smile upon whom volumes have been written. Always surprises first-time viewers by its small size. The cordoned area around it grows more distant with every visit I make here. Still the museum’s largest attraction.
4. The Wedding Feast at Cana by Paolo Veronese: Perhaps one of the largest paintings in the world, this canvas stuns by its sheer size. It happens to be in the same room as the Mona Lisa and, therefore, gets as many visitors. This room is also full of magnificent works by Titian and Tintoretto among other great Renaissance masters—(the Ghirlandaios are the best I’ve seen outside Florence) but so few of the visitors actually looked at these. Most just did the cursory walk around the Mona Lisa and left.
5. The Seated Scribe: A terracotta cast from ancient Greece that shows a scholar seated in the lotus position. Brilliant use of glass inserts for his eyes that make them look amazingly real.
6. Edouard Manet’s Le Dejeuner Sur L’Herbe (Luncheon Picnic on the Grass): Considered extremely scandalous when it was first exhibited at the Salon des Beaux Arts because it presents a female nude who gazes directly at the viewer while seated in the company of two fully clothed men.
7. Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa: This is a representation of a real event in history in which several survivors of a shipwreck attempted to save themselves by constructing a raft that left them afloat for weeks on end.
8. Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People: This quintessential French image was the inspiration for the French Revolution of 1789 which led to the storming of the Bastille and toppled the monarchy. It presents Liberty in the guise of a determined woman leading gun-totting revolutionaries towards a distant goal. It always reminds me of Victor Hugo’s novel Les Miserables.
9. Leonardo da Vinci’s Virgin of the Rocks. There is a version of this painting in the National Gallery in London and they are both extremely lyrical and, therefore, extremely moving.
10. The Marly Horses in the Cour Carre: These horses once graced the four pillars that support the bridge that leads from the Tour Effiel to the Palais de Chaillot. They present men and horses in varied poses in abundant realistic detail. They have been replaced on the bridge by plaster cast replicas.
11. The Code of Hamurabi: This ancient Babylonian Code of law is perhaps the world’s first known legal system. Despite being harsh and ruthless (“an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”), it laid down a system of government that prevented anarchy and became the model for every other legal code ever constructed. It is written in cuneiform script on a black basalt column which is carved at the top with the motifs of a judge dispensing his verdict and sentence.
12. The Imprisoned Slave by Michelangelo: So called because these studies in marble show the progress of the master’s technique and creativity. The slaves (there are two of them standing side by side) emerge from the block of Carrara marble with which Michelangelo worked so as to cause them to rise out of them as the sculpture was completed.
13. Odalisque by Ingres: This stylized portrayal of the back of a nude woman became the prototype for so many paintings of this nature—Manet’s Olympia, in the Musee d’Orsay is inspired by this work.
14. Napoleon’s State Apartments: Since I had never been to this part of the Louvre before, it was quite a revelation to come upon this series of magnificent rooms that glowed and glittered under the blaze of colossal crystal chandeliers, gilded candleabra and other objects d’art that fill it. These rooms beggar description and the best way to do them justice would be to say that if one has no time to visit the Palace of Versailles, this is the best alternative, being right in the city of Paris. Having visited Versailles twice, I can say that they come close if indeed they do not surpass the grand chateau in its wealth of decorative detail. Definitely eye candy of the most exotic kind.

Well, needless to say, we were exhausted after our perusal of the Louvre and dropping with fatigue could barely find the energy to make our way out. It was imperative that we sit somewhere for a long time and what nicer place than the banks of the Seine on a really warm and cheerful afternoon? Well, we walked past the many bridges of Paris (I was saddened to see that Samaritaine, that great institution of French conspicuous consumption, has closed indefinitely) and arrived at the Ile de la Cite where we thought we’d visit the Church of Notre Dame on its own little island. The square outside the church was bustling and as we moved through the throngs and as we arrived at the superbly carved portals of the church, I pulled out my DK Eye Witness Guide to Paris. We spent the next half hour examining this church that has become so famous in literature (domain of poor old Quasimodo in Hugo’s great novel) and film. Inside, the church’s vast dimensions, built in classic Gothic style with towering columns in the nave and flying buttresses on the outside, made for some marvelous viewing as did the Rose Window and other stained glass ornamentation within.

Walking along the Ile de la Cite, we passed by the Palais Royal and saw the entrance to the Church of Sainte Chapelle (which is also on my list of things to do in Paris on this trip) but it was close to closing time and visitors were no longer allowed to enter.

It was time to think of returning home to another one of Julia’s excellent dinners—she had used the internet to create another wonderful vegetarian dish using aubergines, mozarella cheese, red peppers and a tomato coulis that was all stacked up like the pastry known as the ‘Napoleon’. I put my own shoulder to the wheel and produced Chicken Parmesan using strips of chicken breast and breading them generously before coating with Parmesan shavings and shallow frying them. Indeed, it was a wonderful dinner, launched upon by glasses of wonderful Bordeaux that we shared with the Andersons. Jack kept converstion both stimulating and entertaining by telling about his day and the folks with whom he liases as part of his work.

Because our rambles had rendered us exhausted, we did go to bed rather early once again and tried to catch up on our lost sleep of the previous couple of days.