Art, RIP (Russian, Italian, Polynesian)

A recurrent feature of Paris that I find most memorable is the overlay of surprises among and within the daily routines of being a visitor. It seemed as though every day, something unexpected and extraordinary has happened, far beyond either expectations or the regimen of carefully planned activities.

This afternoon, riding the Metro from Place Pigalle to the Louvre required a change of trains at the Place de la Concorde.  As we made our way along the tunnels between platforms, sonorous tones began emanating from the surrounding walls, getting louder as we approached a tunnel junction.  Rounding a corner, we came upon a large group of men vigorously singing and playing ensemble.  The impromptu concert was captivating, at least to us.  Many jaded Parisians seemed to take it in stride, literally, hurrying by as if nothing was happening.  But the music, echoing in the corridors, with multiple voices in resonating harmonies, elicited smiles from occasional passers by, and enticed more than one couple like us to pause long enough to absorb the spirit of the music.  The melody, like the venue, was foreign, and it took several moments to recognize that it was a Russian folk tune, and the nine musicians, with accordions, guitars, a violin, two clarinets, and a double bass , sang fearlessly into the cavernous concert hall of the metro station. Again, an unforgettable Paris moment.

Emerging again to sunlight, we strolled through the arched passageway of the Pavillion Richelieu into the grand courtyard of the Louvre and saw  to our left the connecting wing of the museum. 

 

Pictures inadequately convey the grandeur of this monument, originally a royal palace, and now the home of some of the world’s greatest artistic treasures.  This view from within the courtyard, combined with next perspective looking across the expanse between the main edifices, begins to do it justice, particularly
when you realize that this latter view only encompasses the western end of half of the U-shaped palace complex.

 
Lines for the main entrance were very long, but we came prepared with a Museum Pass, allowing us access to a much less crowded entrance.   Soon we were mounting the steps to the grand gallery of Renaissance Italian art.  At the head of the stairs stood the iconic Winged Victory of Samothrace, and we became at once transfixed and transported to antiquity. 

 

OK, there’s no way I’m going to be able to convey any sense of the extent and continuity of even this small section of the Louvre, so I’m only going to go through a tiny selection of representations of the Virgin and Child over a transitional period.  I haven't done any research on any of this, and most of you know that art books didn't figure prominently (or at all) in my natural and physical science curriculum. That said, for a non-art history observer, works in this particular gallery generally seemed to fall into three categories:  an early phase, entirely given over to images of Christian devotional works; a somewhat later period in which representations of New Testament icons share the canvas with figures from Greek and Roman mythology, mostly comprised of female nudes and often with moralistic overtones, and finally early hagiographic representations of royal and noble figures of the later era, signaling a beginning of non ecclesiastic artistic patronage of the arts. 

As this shot indicates, this is one very long gallery, with a lot of paintings and sculptures, and there are three ways to approach the experience: go with an expert and plan to spend a fascinating and largely overwhelming day being confronted with your miserably pitiful understanding of the technology, history and significance of the artwork; go back to grad school in art history and commit yourself to a lifetime of art appreciation, to the exclusion of most everything else; or take whatever you’ve gleaned from books, TV, magazines, the internet, or much more well-informed relatives and friends and let it wash over you in a blur, punctuated with moments of jaw-dropping epiphany.  We chose the latter option.

Passing the Winged Victory, we went up
the stairs past frescoes of Botticelli and Fra Angelico, and to the right, we found the start of the Gallery, almost immediately coming upon one of the oldest of the Italian art masterpieces, a Madonna and Child rendered in 1280 by Cimabue.  To my uneducated eye, everything about this composition seems linear and painfully symmetrical, and added to the vertical alignment, the stylized homogeneity of the facial expressions seems a dead giveaway as to the indisputable antiquity of the work.  By comparison, the fluid grace of the Winged Victory,  fragmented as it is, seemed to me substantially more sophisticated than what appears here, all of which underscores the historical, cultural and developmental reality of the Renaissance.


Next, we came upon a Madonna and Child painted in 1465 by Botticelli.  Granted, almost 200 years passed between these two works, but  a lot of

progress towards more stylistic realism is evident in both the use of perspective in the background and with the beginning  transition away from portrayal of children as scaled down adults and towards more realistically child-like facial features.






For a while thereafter, the representations of the Virgin Mother and Child in the gallery seem stylistically steady, expressing the continuing development of the realist  perspective, as in this 1507 di Bartolo  work,




 
  









and a similar portrayal of the same subject by Luini in 1510.
 




A few decades later, (~1535) da Oggiono offers an additional interpretation, this time drawing the gaze of the Child to the world outside of the maternal bond. 

Throughout this series, executed over a period of around 250 years, the subject is unchanged, but the sophistication, backdrop, technique, and connection with realism all show the directions that seemed, at least to me, to be consistent with what was happening in the other artwork on display.

And then we met Mme Mona.

I’m not even going to start with any commentary here.  Nothing I could say would reveal anything but my own ignorance, but in fact, this was our prime directive for the visit, and thus served as the vehicle for opening my mind to the other art in this subsection of the Louvre, and maybe, at the end of the day, that’s as good a reason as any for its elevation to mythic status: as a portal to new levels of understanding.

The other major piece of appreciation we enjoyed was the Louvre itself, from the realms of statuary adorning its facades








to vaulting, ornate interiors

 

whose details were unbelievably exquisite.

But the wandering time through that extent of galleries took a definite toll,

especially after a morning hiking up Montmartre, and we soon found ourselves, like these folks, needing a break.

 

One thing they don’t tell you is that to get back to where you entered, you have to pretty much retrace your steps.  I tried using sense of direction to get us back to the entry, and I only succeeded in stumbling into the small but comforting display of Pacific Island art.  Pieces of art are timeless and ageless, and reveal the instantaneous frame of an artist’s perception.  At the same time that the evolving expression of religious realism as viewed by Italian painters offered here was just beginning, here’s what artists viewing their religious perspectives were doing on the other side of the planet:

By now, both our souls and our soles were worn down, and it was time to jump on the Metro for the return to our flat, where we had a couple of hours to put up feet and close eyes, before meeting Clas and Ann-Catrine for dinner, and stumbling back to an early bed, because our plans for the next day (Tuesday) called for an early start!