A provincial goes to Paris...un séjour à Paris
| Friday, August 7, 2020
Dear Friend,
When a provincial comes into Paris, no moment goes unmeasured and unspent. The tenderness of the morning’s light on the creamy buildings…the rosy fingers of dawn upon the grey rooftops… the summery breeze stirring the leaves of the plants on the terrace…and the band of pale gold beneath the faint blue of the August sky, promising another hot day in Paris.
The brisk hustle and bustle of regular Parisian life has abated, for les grandes vacances began in earnest last week. Tout Paris, the humble épicier on the corner selling fruit and vegetables…the fancy bankers…the government fonctionnaires…cobblers, dry cleaners, workmen, mères de famille and schoolchildren have shaken the dust of Paris streets from their city shoes and are strapping on sandals and dabbing on sunscreen somewhere else.
Remaining Parisians have taken a vow of silence.
Instead of lively chatter in the sidewalk café, there is the discreet rustle of a newspaper page as it turns. Perhaps a telephone conversation in muted tones. Or the scratch of a pen jotting down thoughts and un kiss de Paris. The mere hint of an exclamation point? The mild but silent rebuke of raised eyebrows. The regulars know the waiter and the waiter knows what to bring before the order is placed. Let remarks on the weather and comments on the government remain unsaid. A vague smile and a wry glance will suffice.
And what to do next, once postcards are written and the last crispy layer of croissant has been crumbled between lazy fingers?
Not far from where I sit on an August morning, the family at Chateau de Courtomer kept their apartments in town. They rented part of the hôtel d’Avaray in what is still the very chic faubourg Saint Germain. This hôtel particulier, or mansion, is today the residence of the Dutch ambassador -- a little twist of fate, because in 1629, Jean-Antoine de Saint-Simon, Marquis of Courtomer, lost his life fighting for the Dutch Republic.
That is a story for another time…we’ve got other places to go today.
Jean-Antoine’s descendants came to Paris from Courtomer for all the reasons we do – to shop, to transact official business, and to be amused. The winter season back then offered, as it still does, a diverting round of private parties and public outings. Plays at the Comédie française, ballets and operas at the Opéra. Lectures at the Académie des sciences were held at the Louvre. Also at the Louvre was the annual Salon of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. Here, tout Paris went to see the latest works of French painters and sculptors.
The Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, founded in 1648, brought prestige and patronage to member artists.
Right now, the Opera and the Comedie francaise are closed, but the Louvre is open…and these days, the galleries are as quiet as a café in August and as apt for reflection as a terrace overlooking rooftops in the stillness of dawn.
The Louvre started out as a fortress in 1199. King Philippe-Auguste was departing for the Holy Land on a Crusade, and feared l’ennemi héréditaire – the English – would take advantage of his absence. Into the Grosse Tour of the Louvre went his treasury and valuable archives.
Four hundred years later, the great François 1er transformed the Louvre into a sumptuous royal palace filled with artworks. The king brought back many trophies from his wars in Italy – Leonardo da Vinci and his Mona Lisa. Rival of Italian princes like the Medici, the king was like them a patron of the arts and a collector.
Over the centuries, France’s finest architects continued to build and embellish the Louvre for French kings. And French kings continued to add to the royal art collections.
By the end of the Ancien Régime, the Louvre hadn’t been used as a royal residence for years. Instead, it was occupied by the famous Academies of arts and sciences created during the reigns of Louis XIV and his father, Louis XIII. Artists, artisans, and courtiers receiving royal grace and favor had apartments here. The 17th and 18th centuries were perhaps the greatest period of French creativity in the arts and sciences, and the Louvre became its cosmopolitan center.
Elisabeth Vigée-LeBrun's portrait of her young brother, Louis. Vigée-LeBrun (1755 – 1842) was one of a surprising number -- for the period -- of women painters accepted into the Academie.
Louis XV, the Sun King's great-grandson, is generally remembered as the king who said, “Aprés moi, le déluge” (“After me, the catastrophe!”), but he was also an important patron of the arts. He was the first king to present exhibitions of works from the royal collections to the public, in 1750. His great-grandson Louis XVI took up the idea of creating a museum in the Louvre. It would be open to artists and scholars during the week, and open to the public on the weekends. Pictures were hung, a new staircase built, flooring reinforced, lighting problems resolved. The museum was ready to open its doors in 1787, with major new acquisitions. But that was also the beginning of the “déluge” predicted by Louis XV. Poor Louis XVI died under the guillotine during the French Revolution, leaving this project, like so many other enlightened improvements intended by the monarch, to be realized by his successors.
The stroll over the river Seine toward the handsome palace is a pleasant distraction from gloomy thoughts about the vicissitudes of history. Writing about the view from the wooden Pont des Artistes, on the way to the Louvre, the art historian Kenneth Clark wrote :
“What is civilisation? I do not know. I can’t define it in abstract terms - yet. But I think I can recognise it when I see it, and I am looking at it now.”
Contributing to our understanding of civilization, the Louvre is offering exhibitions devoted to the “les génies de la Renaissance”: last year, we were treated to Leonardo da Vinci. This year, and continuing into 2021, it’s Italian sculpture from Donatello to Michelangelo, and the works of Dürer.
The French novelist Émile Zola memorably depicted a wedding party traipsing through the Louvre, in the 1870s. In the novel, it is raining and the group has opted for a cultural expedition instead of a picnic in the country. Here they are in the Italian and Flemish galleries:
"More pictures, always more pictures, of saints, of men and women with incomprehensible expressions, of landscapes that were all black, with animals that had turned yellow, a confusion of people and objects…the violent clash of colors was starting to give them all a terrible head-ache."
The king's project to create a museum at the Louvre was realised during the French Revolution. The Musée Centrale des arts continued the tradition of a Salon where artists showed their newest works. Marie-Guillemine Benoist (1768-1826) displayed her "Portrait of Madeleine" at the Salon of 1800. Although born a slave in the French Caribbean, Madeleine was free at the time of the painting. Slavery on French soil had been outlawed since 1315 by Louis X.
To alleviate that “gros mal de tête,” the big head-ache, the curators of the Louvre have thoughtfully installed the Petite Galerie, the “little gallery.” Here hang a limited number of works aimed at understanding the Renaissance exhibitions. If you have just a bit of time, “Figure d’Artiste” is the place to be. The show explains what being a “génie,” an artistic genius, meant during the Renaissance.
The concept of genius wasn’t new then; it just hadn’t been applied to sculpture and painting. These were considered mere decorative techniques; the arts were mathematics, music, poetry. But during the Renaissance in Italy and a little later in France, sculptors and painters came into their own as highly sought-after artists, not just talented artisans. Their individualism was mirrored in the wider society. Once, patrons ordered holy pictures with themselves praying in a corner. But from the Renaissance onward, full-scale portraits were in vogue. “Figure d’Artiste” takes us from the origins of the artist in ancient Greece to the 19th -century French Romantics.
Also hanging in the Louvre's Petite Galerie, Albrecht Dürer's "Self-Portrait," age 22, was painted in 1493.
Here are wonders to behold! But thoroughly visiting the Louvre is not to be undertaken lightly, nor in one day. Let the characters in Zola’s novel, who finally get lost, serve as a warning:
"And so, despair seized them, they wandered from one gallery to the next, still two by two, following Monsieur Madrinier who was mopping his forehead, beside himself, furious with the administration, which he accused of switching around the doors…They would never get out…
“Closing time! Closing time! cried the powerful voices of the guards.”
The Louvre closes at 6 p.m. Outside, the evening light playing on the glass panes of I.M. Pei’s once-controversial pyramid refreshes tired eyes and minds. The gardens of the Tuileries, with splashing fountain and tall walls of coppiced plane trees dividing the gravel into neat rectangles, are a pleasant place to stroll…as twilight begins to fall and the almost full moon gleams faintly in the pale blue sky.And tomorrow brings another day in Paris!
A très bientôt,
