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Louvre

August 04, 2023

This article is about the museum. For the building, see Louvre Palace. For other uses, see Louvre (disambiguation).

The Louvre (English: /ˈluːv(rə)/ LOOV(-rə)),[4] or the Louvre Museum (French: Musée du Louvre [myze dy luvʁ] (listen)) is a national art museum in Paris, France. A central landmark of the city, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the city's 1st arrondissement (district or ward) and home to some of the most canonical works of Western art, including the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo. The museum is housed in the Louvre Palace, originally built in the late 12th to 13th century under Philip II. Remnants of the Medieval Louvre fortress are visible in the basement of the museum. Due to urban expansion, the fortress eventually lost its defensive function, and in 1546 Francis I converted it into the primary residence of the French Kings.[5]

Musée du Louvre
The Louvre Museum
Established10 August 1793; 229 years ago (1793-08-10)
LocationMusée du Louvre, 75001, Paris, France
TypeArt museum and historic site
Collection size615,797 in 2019[1] (35,000 on display)[2]
Visitors7.8 million (2022)[3]
DirectorLaurence des Cars
CuratorMarie-Laure de Rochebrune
Public transit access
Websitelouvre.fr

The building was extended many times to form the present Louvre Palace. In 1682, Louis XIV chose the Palace of Versailles for his household, leaving the Louvre primarily as a place to display the royal collection, including, from 1692, a collection of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture.[6] In 1692, the building was occupied by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres and the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, which in 1699 held the first of a series of salons. The Académie remained at the Louvre for 100 years.[7] During the French Revolution, the National Assembly decreed that the Louvre should be used as a museum to display the nation's masterpieces.

The museum opened on 10 August 1793 with an exhibition of 537 paintings, the majority of the works being royal and confiscated church property. Because of structural problems with the building, the museum was closed in 1796 until 1801. The collection was increased under Napoleon and the museum was renamed Musée Napoléon, but after Napoleon's abdication, many works seized by his armies were returned to their original owners. The collection was further increased during the reigns of Louis XVIII and Charles X, and during the Second French Empire the museum gained 20,000 pieces. Holdings have grown steadily through donations and bequests since the Third Republic. The collection is divided among eight curatorial departments: Egyptian Antiquities; Near Eastern Antiquities; Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities; Islamic Art; Sculpture; Decorative Arts; Paintings; Prints and Drawings.

The Musée du Louvre contains more than 380,000 objects and displays 35,000 works of art in eight curatorial departments with more than 60,600 square metres (652,000 sq ft) dedicated to the permanent collection.[2] The Louvre exhibits sculptures, objets d'art, paintings, drawings, and archaeological finds. At any given point in time, approximately 38,000 objects from prehistory to the 21st century are being exhibited over an area of 72,735 square metres (782,910 sq ft). With over 7.8 million visitors in 2022, the Louvre is the world's most-visited museum.[8]

Location and visiting

 
Aerial view of the Louvre Palace and Tuileries Park

The Louvre museum is located inside the Louvre Palace, in the center of Paris, adjacent to the Tuileries Gardens. The two nearest Métro stations are Louvre-Rivoli and Palais Royal-Musée du Louvre, the latter having a direct underground access to the Carrousel du Louvre commercial mall.[9]

Before the Grand Louvre overhaul of the late 1980s and 1990s, the Louvre had several street-level entrances, most of which are now permanently closed. Since 1993, the museum's main entrance has been the underground space under the Louvre Pyramid, or Hall Napoléon, which can be accessed from the Pyramid itself, from the underground Carrousel du Louvre, or (for authorized visitors) from the passage Richelieu connecting to the nearby rue de Rivoli. A secondary entrance at the Porte des Lions, near the western end of the Denon Wing, was created in 1999 but is not permanently open.[10]

The museum's entrance conditions have varied over time. Initially, artists and foreign visitors had privileged access, a feature that only disappeared in the 1850s. At the time of initial opening in 1793, the French Republican calendar had imposed ten-day "weeks" (French: décades), the first six days of which were reserved for visits by artists and foreigners and the last three for visits by the general public.[11]: 37  In the early 1800s, after the seven-day week had been reinstated, the general public had only four hours of museum access per weeks, between 2pm and 4pm on Saturdays and Sundays.[12]: 8  In 1824, a new regulation allowed public access only on Sundays and holidays; the other days the museum was open only to artists and foreigners, except for closure on Mondays.[11]: 39  That changed in 1855 when the museum became open to the public all days except Mondays.[11]: 40  It was free until 1922, when an entrance fee was introduced except on Sundays.[11]: 42  Since its post-World War II reopening in 1946,[11]: 43  the Louvre has been closed on Tuesdays, and habitually open to the public the rest of the week except for some holidays.

The use of cameras and video recorders is permitted inside, but flash photography is forbidden.[13]

Beginning in 2012, Nintendo 3DS portable video game systems were used as the official museum audio guides. In November 2013, Nintendo announced an upgraded audio guide that also included floor maps with the user's location marked to help visitors navigate the museum, over 600 photographs of artwork including high-resolution images and 3D models. The upgraded audio guide was also announced in a special Nintendo Direct, regularly used by the company to announce new game titles, hardware or other content, featuring a demonstration of the guide at the museum by Satoru Iwata, Nintendo's president and CEO, and Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Nintendo franchises including Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Donkey Kong, Star Fox and Pikmin.[14] Before the Nintendo eShop for the Nintendo DS was discontinued in 2023, the guide was also available there for users to download onto their own systems for live or virtual tours.[15]

History

Before the museum

 
Below-ground portions of the medieval Louvre are still visible.[16]: 32 
Main article: Louvre Palace

The Louvre Palace, which houses the museum, was begun by King Philip II in the late 12th century to protect the city from the attack from the West, as the Kingdom of England still held Normandy at the time. Remnants of the Medieval Louvre are still visible in the crypt.[16]: 32  Whether this was the first building on that spot is not known, and it is possible that Philip modified an existing tower.[17]

The origins of the name "Louvre" are somewhat disputed. According to the authoritative Grand Larousse encyclopédique, the name derives from an association with a wolf hunting den (via Latin: lupus, lower Empire: lupara).[17][18] In the 7th century, Burgundofara (also known as Saint Fare), abbess in Meaux, is said to have gifted part of her "Villa called Luvra situated in the region of Paris" to a monastery,[19] even though it is doubtful that this land corresponded exactly to the present site of the Louvre.

The Louvre Palace has been subject to numerous renovations since its construction. In the 14th century, Charles V converted the building from its military role into a residence. In 1546, Francis I started its rebuilding in French Renaissance style.[20] After Louis XIV chose Versailles as his residence in 1682, construction works slowed to a halt. The royal move away from Paris resulted in the Louvre being used as a residence for artists, under Royal patronage.[20][16]: 42 [21] For example, four generations of craftsmen-artists from the Boulle family were granted Royal patronage and resided in the Louvre.[22][23][24]

Meanwhile, the collections of the Louvre originated in the acquisitions of paintings and other artworks by the monarchs of the House of France. At the Palace of Fontainebleau, Francis collected art that would later be part of the Louvre's art collections, including Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa.[25]

The Cabinet du Roi consisted of seven rooms west of the Galerie d'Apollon on the upper floor of the remodeled Petite Galerie. Many of the king's paintings were placed in these rooms in 1673, when it became an art gallery, accessible to certain art lovers as a kind of museum. In 1681, after the court moved to Versailles, 26 of the paintings were transferred there, somewhat diminishing the collection, but it is mentioned in Paris guide books from 1684 on, and was shown to ambassadors from Siam in 1686.[26]

By the mid-18th century there were an increasing number of proposals to create a public gallery in the Louvre. Art critic Étienne La Font de Saint-Yenne in 1747 published a call for a display of the royal collection. On 14 October 1750, Louis XV decided on a display of 96 pieces from the royal collection, mounted in the Galerie royale de peinture of the Luxembourg Palace. A hall was opened by Le Normant de Tournehem and the Marquis de Marigny for public viewing of the "king's paintings" (Tableaux du Roy) on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The Luxembourg gallery included Andrea del Sarto's Charity and works by Raphael; Titian; Veronese; Rembrandt; Poussin or Van Dyck. It closed in 1780 as a result of the royal gift of the Luxembourg palace to the Count of Provence (the future king, Louis XVIII) by the king in 1778.[27] Under Louis XVI, the idea of a royal museum in the Louvre came closer to fruition.[28] The comte d'Angiviller broadened the collection and in 1776 proposed to convert the Grande Galerie of the Louvre – which at that time contained the plans-reliefs or 3D models of key fortified sites in and around France – into the "French Museum". Many design proposals were offered for the Louvre's renovation into a museum, without a final decision being made on them. Hence the museum remained incomplete until the French Revolution.[27]

Revolutionary opening

The Louvre finally became a public museum during the French Revolution. In May 1791, the National Constituent Assembly declared that the Louvre would be "a place for bringing together monuments of all the sciences and arts".[27] On 10 August 1792, Louis  XVI was imprisoned and the royal collection in the Louvre became national property. Because of fear of vandalism or theft, on 19 August, the National Assembly pronounced the museum's preparation urgent. In October, a committee to "preserve the national memory" began assembling the collection for display.[29]

 
Antonio Canova's Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss was commissioned in 1787 and donated in 1824.[30]

The museum opened on 10 August 1793, the first anniversary of the monarchy's demise, as Muséum central des Arts de la République. The public was given free accessibility on three days per week, which was "perceived as a major accomplishment and was generally appreciated".[31] The collection showcased 537 paintings and 184 objects of art. Three-quarters were derived from the royal collections, the remainder from confiscated émigrés and Church property (biens nationaux).[32][16]: 68-69  To expand and organize the collection, the Republic dedicated 100,000 livres per year.[27] In 1794, France's revolutionary armies began bringing pieces from Northern Europe, augmented after the Treaty of Tolentino (1797) by works from the Vatican, such as the Laocoön and Apollo Belvedere, to establish the Louvre as a museum and as a "sign of popular sovereignty".[32][33]

The early days were hectic. Privileged artists continued to live in residence, and the unlabeled paintings hung "frame to frame from floor to ceiling".[32] The structure itself closed in May 1796 due to structural deficiencies. It reopened on 14 July 1801, arranged chronologically and with new lighting and columns.[32] On 15 August 1797, the Galerie d'Apollon was opened with an exhibition of drawings. Meanwhile, the Louvre's Gallery of Antiquity sculpture (musée des Antiques), with artefacts brought from Florence and the Vatican, had opened in November 1800 in Anne of Austria's former summer apartment, located on the ground floor just below the Galerie d'Apollon.

Napoleonic era

See also: Napoleonic looting of art

On 19 November 1802, Napoleon appointed Dominique Vivant Denon, a scholar and polymath who had participated in the Egyptian campaign of 1798–1801, as the museum's first director, in preference to alternative contenders such as antiquarian Ennio Quirino Visconti, painter Jacques-Louis David, sculptor Antonio Canova and architects Léon Dufourny or Pierre Fontaine.[34] On Denon's suggestion in July 1803, the museum itself was renamed Musée Napoléon.[35]: 79 

The collection grew through successful military campaigns.[16]: 52  Acquisitions were made of Spanish, Austrian, Dutch, and Italian works, either as the result of war looting or formalized by treaties such as the Treaty of Tolentino.[36] At the end of Napoleon's First Italian Campaign in 1797, the Treaty of Campo Formio was signed with Count Philipp von Cobenzl of the Austrian Monarchy. This treaty marked the completion of Napoleon's conquest of Italy and the end of the first phase of the French Revolutionary Wars. It compelled Italian cities to contribute pieces of art and heritage to Napoleon's "parades of spoils" through Paris before being put into the Louvre Museum.[37] The Horses of Saint Mark, which had adorned the basilica of San Marco in Venice after the sack of Constantinople in 1204, were brought to Paris where they were placed atop Napoleon's Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel in 1797.[37] Under the Treaty of Tolentino, the two statues of the Nile and Tiber were taken to Paris from the Vatican in 1797, and were both kept in the Louvre until 1815. (The Nile was later returned to Rome,[38] whereas the Tiber has remained in the Louvre to this day.) The despoilment of Italian churches and palaces outraged the Italians and their artistic and cultural sensibilities.[39]

After the French defeat at Waterloo, the looted works' former owners sought their return. The Louvre's administrator, Denon, was loath to comply in absence of a treaty of restitution. In response, foreign states sent emissaries to London to seek help, and many pieces were returned, though far from all.[36][16]: 69 [40] In 1815 Louis XVIII finally concluded agreements with the Austrian government[41][42] for the keeping of works such as Veronese's Wedding at Cana which was exchanged for a large Le Brun or the repurchase of the Albani collection.

From 1815 to 1852

 
The Venus de Milo was added to the Louvre's collection during the reign of Louis XVIII.

For most of the 19th century, from Napoleon's time to the Second Empire, the Louvre and other national museums were managed under the monarch's civil list and thus depended much on the ruler's personal involvement. Whereas the most iconic collection remained that of paintings in the Grande Galerie, a number of other initiatives mushroomed in the vast building, named as if they were separate museums even though they were generally managed under the same administrative umbrella. Correspondingly, the museum complex was often referred to in the plural ("les musées du Louvre") rather than singular.[citation needed]

During the Bourbon Restoration (1814–1830), Louis XVIII and Charles X added to the collections. The Greek and Roman sculpture gallery on the ground floor of the southwestern side of the Cour Carrée was completed on designs by Percier and Fontaine. In 1819 an exhibition of manufactured products was opened in the first floor of the Cour Carrée's southern wing and would stay there until the mid-1820s.[35]: 87  Charles X in 1826 created the Musée Égyptien and in 1827 included it in his broader Musée Charles X, a new section of the museum complex located in a suite of lavishly decorated rooms on the first floor of the South Wing of the Cour Carrée. The Egyptian collection, initially curated by Jean-François Champollion, formed the basis for what is now the Louvre's Department of Egyptian Antiquities. It was formed from the purchased collections of Edmé-Antoine Durand, Henry Salt and the second collection of Bernardino Drovetti (the first one having been purchased by Victor Emmanuel I of Sardinia to form the core of the present Museo Egizio in Turin). The Restoration period also saw the opening in 1824 of the Galerie d'Angoulême, a section of largely French sculptures on the ground floor of the Northwestern side of the Cour Carrée, many of whose artefacts came from the Palace of Versailles and from Alexandre Lenoir's Musée des Monuments Français following its closure in 1816. Meanwhile, the French Navy created an exhibition of ship models in the Louvre in December 1827, initially named musée dauphin in honor of Dauphin Louis Antoine,[43] building on an 18th-century initiative of Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau. This collection, renamed musée naval in 1833 and later to develop into the Musée national de la Marine, was initially located on the first floor of the Cour Carrée's North Wing, and in 1838 moved up one level to the 2nd-floor attic, where it remained for more than a century.[44]

  • Rooms of the Musée Charles X
  •  

    First room

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    Room 27

  •  

    Room 29

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    Salle des Colonnes

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    Room 35

  •  

    Room 36

  •  

    Room 38

 
 
Ceiling decorations designed by Félix Duban in the Salon Carré (left) and Salle des Sept-Cheminées (right), late 1840s
 
The display in the Salon Carré, painted by Giuseppe Castiglione in 1861 following its repurposing of the late 1840s Veronese's Wedding at Cana is visible on the left, and his Supper in the House of Simon (now at the Palace of Versailles) is on the right.

Following the July Revolution, King Louis Philippe focused his interest on the repurposing of the Palace of Versailles into a Museum of French History conceived as a project of national reconciliation, and the Louvre was kept in comparative neglect. Louis-Philippe did, however, sponsor the creation of the musée assyrien to host the monumental Assyrian sculpture works brought to Paris by Paul-Émile Botta, in the ground-floor gallery north of the eastern entrance of the Cour Carrée. The Assyrian Museum opened on 1 May 1847.[45] Separately, Louis-Philippe had his Spanish gallery displayed in the Louvre from 7 January 1838, in five rooms on the first floor of the Cour Carrée's East (Colonnade) Wing,[46] but the collection remained his personal property. As a consequence, the works were removed after Louis-Philippe was deposed in 1848, and were eventually auctioned away in 1853.

The short-lived Second Republic had more ambitions for the Louvre. It initiated repair work, the completion of the Galerie d'Apollon and of the salle des sept-cheminées, and the overhaul of the Salon Carré (former site of the iconic yearly Salon) and of the Grande Galerie.[16]: 52  In 1848, the Naval Museum in the Cour Carrée's attic was brought under the common Louvre Museum management,[44] a change which was again reversed in 1920. In 1850 under the leadership of curator Adrien de Longpérier, the musée mexicain opened within the Louvre as the first European museum dedicated to pre-Columbian art.[citation needed]

Second Empire

Main article: Napoleon III's Louvre expansion

The rule of Napoleon III was transformational for the Louvre, both the building and the museum. In 1852, he created the Musée des Souverains in the Colonnade Wing, an ideological project aimed at buttressing his personal legitimacy. In 1861, he bought 11,835 artworks including 641 paintings, Greek gold and other antiquities of the Campana collection. For its display, he created another new section within the Louvre named Musée Napoléon III, occupying a number of rooms in various parts of the building. Between 1852 and 1870, the museum added 20,000 new artefacts to its collections.[47]

The main change of that period was to the building itself. In the 1850s architects Louis Visconti and Hector Lefuel created massive new spaces around what is now called the Cour Napoléon, some of which (in the South Wing, now Aile Denon) went to the museum.[16]: 52-54  In the 1860s, Lefuel also led the creation of the pavillon des Sessions with a new Salle des Etats closer to Napoleon III's residence in the Tuileries Palace, with the effect of shortening the Grande Galerie by about a third of its previous length. A smaller but significant Second Empire project was the decoration of the salle des Empereurs below the Salon carré.[citation needed]

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    Entrance to a section of the Musée Napoléon III from the salle des séances, then a double-height space

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    Galerie Daru, part of the New Louvre building program under Napoleon III

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    Salle Daru above the galerie Daru, also created under Napoleon III

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    Escalier Mollien in the New Louvre

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    Salle des Empereurs

From 1870 to 1981

 
Memorial plaques honoring the Louvre's defenders in May 1871

The Louvre narrowly escaped serious damage during the suppression of the Paris Commune. On 23 May 1871, as the French Army advanced into Paris, a force of Communards led by Jules Bergeret [fr] set fire to the adjoining Tuileries Palace. The fire burned for forty-eight hours, entirely destroying the interior of the Tuileries and spreading to the north west wing of the museum next to it. The emperor's Louvre library (Bibliothèque du Louvre) and some of the adjoining halls, in what is now the Richelieu Wing, were separately destroyed. But the museum was saved by the efforts of Paris firemen and museum employees led by curator Henry Barbet de Jouy.[48]

Following the end of the monarchy, several spaces in the Louvre's South Wing went to the museum. The Salle du Manège was transferred to the museum in 1879, and in 1928 became its main entrance lobby.[49] The large Salle des Etats that had been created by Lefuel between the Grande Galerie and Pavillon Denon was redecorated in 1886 by Edmond Guillaume [fr], Lefuel's successor as architect of the Louvre, and opened as a spacious exhibition room.[50][51] Edomond Guillaume also decorated the first-floor room at the northwest corner of the Cour Carrée, on the ceiling of which he placed in 1890 a monumental painting by Carolus-Duran, The Triumph of Marie de' Medici originally created in 1879 for the Luxembourg Palace.[51]

 
The Louvre's monumental Escalier Daru, topped by the Winged Victory of Samothrace, took its current appearance in the early 1930s.

Meanwhile, during the Third Republic (1870–1940) the Louvre acquired new artefacts mainly via donations, gifts, and sharing arrangements on excavations abroad. The 583-item Collection La Caze, donated in 1869 by Louis La Caze, included works by Chardin; Fragonard, Rembrandt and Watteau.[16]: 70-71  In 1883, the Winged Victory of Samothrace, which had been found in the Aegean Sea in 1863, was prominently displayed as the focal point of the Escalier Daru.[16]: 70-71  Major artifacts excavated at Susa in Iran, including the massive Apadana capital and glazed brick decoration from the Palace of Darius there, accrued to the Oriental (Near Eastern) Antiquities Department in the 1880s. The Société des amis du Louvre was established in 1897 and donated prominent works, such as the Pietà of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon. The expansion of the museum and its collections slowed after World War I, however, despite some prominent acquisitions such as Georges de La Tour's Saint Thomas and Baron Edmond de Rothschild's 1935 donation of 4,000 prints, 3,000 drawings, and 500 illustrated books.

From the late 19th century, the Louvre gradually veered away from its mid-century ambition of universality to become a more focused museum of French, Western and Near Eastern art, covering a space ranging from Iran to the Atlantic. The collections of the Louvre's musée mexicain were transferred to the Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro in 1887. As the Musée de Marine was increasingly constrained to display its core naval-themed collections in the limited space it had in the second-floor attic of the northern half of the Cour Carrée, many of its significant holdings of non-Western artefacts were transferred in 1905 to the Trocadéro ethnography museum, the National Antiquities Museum in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and the Chinese Museum in the Palace of Fontainebleau.[52] The Musée de Marine itself was relocated to the Palais de Chaillot in 1943. The Louvre's extensive collections of Asian art were moved to the Guimet Museum in 1945. Nevertheless, the Louvre's first gallery of Islamic art opened in 1922.[citation needed]

 
Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt is seen with a plaster model of the Venus de Milo,[53] while visiting the Louvre with the curator Alfred Merlin on 7 October 1940.
 
Seating designed by Pierre Paulin in the late 1960s, Grande Galerie
 
Marc Saltet [fr]'s 1972 museography for the Salon Carré, with "dos-à-dos" seat designed in 1967 by Pierre Paulin

In the late 1920s, Louvre Director Henri Verne devised a master plan for the rationalization of the museum's exhibitions, which was partly implemented in the following decade. In 1932–1934, Louvre architects Camille Lefèvre and Albert Ferran redesigned the Escalier Daru to its current appearance. The Cour du Sphinx in the South Wing was covered by a glass roof in 1934. Decorative arts exhibits were expanded in the first floor of the North Wing of the Cour Carrée, including some of France's first period room displays. In the late 1930s, The La Caze donation was moved to a remodeled Salle La Caze above the salle des Caryatides, with reduced height to create more rooms on the second floor and a sober interior design by Albert Ferran.[citation needed]

During World War II, the Louvre conducted an elaborate plan of evacuation of its art collection. When Germany occupied the Sudetenland, many important artworks such as the Mona Lisa were temporarily moved to the Château de Chambord. When war was formally declared a year later, most of the museum's paintings were sent there as well. Select sculptures such as Winged Victory of Samothrace and the Venus de Milo were sent to the Château de Valençay.[54] On 27 August 1939, after two days of packing, truck convoys began to leave Paris. By 28 December, the museum was cleared of most works, except those that were too heavy and "unimportant paintings [that] were left in the basement".[55] In early 1945, after the liberation of France, art began returning to the Louvre.[56]

New arrangements after the war revealed the further evolution of taste away from the lavish decorative practices of the late 19th century. In 1947, Edmond Guillaume's ceiling ornaments were removed from the Salle des Etats,[51] where the Mona Lisa was first displayed in 1966.[57] Around 1950, Louvre architect Jean-Jacques Haffner [fr] streamlined the interior decoration of the Grande Galerie.[51] In 1953, a new ceiling by Georges Braque was inaugurated in the Salle Henri II, next to the Salle La Caze.[58] In the late 1960s, seats designed by Pierre Paulin were installed in the Grande Galerie.[59] In 1972, the Salon Carré's museography was remade with lighting from a hung tubular case, designed by Louvre architect Marc Saltet [fr] with assistance from designers André Monpoix [fr], Joseph-André Motte and Paulin.[60]

In 1961, the Finance Ministry accepted to leave the Pavillon de Flore at the southwestern end of the Louvre building, as Verne had recommended in his 1920s plan. New exhibition spaces of sculptures (ground floor) and paintings (first floor) opened there later in the 1960s, on a design by government architect Olivier Lahalle.[61]

Grand Louvre

Main article: Grand Louvre

In 1981, French President François Mitterrand proposed, as one of his Grands Projets, the Grand Louvre plan to relocate the Finance Ministry, until then housed in the North Wing of the Louvre, and thus devote almost the entire Louvre building (except its northwestern tip, which houses the separate Musée des Arts Décoratifs) to the museum which would be correspondingly restructured. In 1984 I. M. Pei, the architect personally selected by Mitterrand, proposed a master plan including an underground entrance space accessed through a glass pyramid in the Louvre's central Cour Napoléon.[16]: 66 

The open spaces surrounding the pyramid were inaugurated on 15 October 1988, and its underground lobby was opened on 30 March 1989. New galleries of early modern French paintings on the 2nd floor of the Cour Carrée, for which the planning had started before the Grand Louvre, also opened in 1989. Further rooms in the same sequence, designed by Italo Rota, opened on 15 December 1992.[citation needed]

On 18 November 1993, Mitterrand inaugurated the next major phase of the Grand Louvre plan: the renovated North (Richelieu) Wing in the former Finance Ministry site, the museum's largest single expansion in its entire history, designed by Pei, his French associate Michel Macary, and Jean-Michel Wilmotte. Further underground spaces known as the Carrousel du Louvre, centered on the Inverted Pyramid and designed by Pei and Macary, had opened in October 1993. Other refurbished galleries, of Italian sculptures and Egyptian antiquities, opened in 1994. The third and last main phase of the plan unfolded mainly in 1997, with new renovated rooms in the Sully and Denon wings. A new entrance at the porte des Lions opened in 1998, leading on the first floor to new rooms of Spanish paintings.[citation needed]

As of 2002, the Louvre's visitor count had doubled from its pre-Grand-Louvre levels.[62]

21st century

 
Ceiling by Cy Twombly installed in 2010 in the Salle des Bronzes, before the room's redesign in 2021

President Jacques Chirac, who had succeeded Mitterrand in 1995, insisted on the return of non-Western art to the Louvre, upon a recommendation from his friend the art collector and dealer Jacques Kerchache [fr]. On his initiative, a selection of highlights from the collections of what would become the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac was installed on the ground floor of the Pavillon des Sessions and opened in 2000, six years ahead of the Musée du Quai Branly itself.

The main other initiative in the aftermath of the Grand Louvre project was Chirac's decision to create a new department of Islamic Art, by executive order of 1 August 2003, and to move the corresponding collections from their prior underground location in the Richelieu Wing to a more prominent site in the Denon Wing. That new section opened on 22 September 2012, together with collections from the Roman-era Eastern Mediterranean, with financial support from the Al Waleed bin Talal Foundation and on a design by Mario Bellini and Rudy Ricciotti.[63][64][65]

In 2007, German painter Anselm Kiefer was invited to create a work for the North stairs of the Perrault Colonnade, Athanor. This decision announces the museum's reengagement with contemporary art under the direction of Henri Loyrette, fifty years after the institution's last order to a contemporary artists, George Braque.[66]

In 2010, American painter Cy Twombly completed a new ceiling for the Salle des Bronzes (the former Salle La Caze), a counterpoint to that of Braque installed in 1953 in the adjacent Salle Henri II. The room's floor and walls were redesigned in 2021 by Louvre architect Michel Goutal to revert the changes made by his predecessor Albert Ferran in the late 1930s, triggering protests from the Cy Twombly Foundation on grounds that the then-deceased painter's work had been created to fit with the room's prior decoration.[67]

That same year, the Louvre commissioned French artist François Morellet to create a work for the Lefuel stairs, on the first floor. For L'esprit d'escalier Morellet redesigned the stairscase's windows, echoing their original structures but distorting them to create a disturbing optical effect.[68]

On 6 June 2014, the Decorative Arts section on the first floor of the Cour Carrée's northern wing opened after comprehensive refurbishment.[69]

In January 2020, under the direction of Jean-Luc Martinez, the museum inaugurated a new contemporary art commission, L'Onde du Midi by Venezuelan kinetic artist Elias Crespin. The sculpture hovers under the Escalier du Midi, the staircase on the South of the Perrault Colonnade.[70]

The Louvre, like many other museums and galleries, felt the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the arts and cultural heritage. It was closed for six months during French coronavirus lockdowns and saw visitor numbers plunge to 2.7 million in 2020, from 9.6 million in 2019 and 10.2 million in 2018, which was a record year.[71][72]

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    The Pavillon des Sessions's display of non-Western art from the Musée du Quai Branly, opened in 2000

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    The Cour Visconti's ground floor covered to host the new Islamic Art Department in 2012

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    Islamic art display in the covered Cour Visconti, 2012

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    Underground display of the Islamic Art Department, 2012

Collections

The Musée du Louvre owns 615,797 objects[1] of which 482,943 are accessible online since 24 March 2021[73] and displays 35,000 works of art in eight curatorial departments.[2]

Egyptian antiquities

Main article: Department of Egyptian Antiquities of the Louvre

The Louvre is home to one of the world's most extensive collections of art, including works from diverse cultures and time periods. Visitors can view iconic works like the Mona Lisa and the Winged Victory of Samothrace, as well as pieces from ancient civilizations such as Egypt, Greece, and Rome. The museum also features collections of decorative arts, Islamic art, and sculptures.[74]

The department, comprising over 50,000 pieces,[16]: 74  includes artifacts from the Nile civilizations which date from 4,000 BC to the 4th century AD.[75] The collection, among the world's largest, overviews Egyptian life spanning Ancient Egypt, the Middle Kingdom, the New Kingdom, Coptic art, and the Roman, Ptolemaic, and Byzantine periods.[75]

The department's origins lie in the royal collection, but it was augmented by Napoleon's 1798 expeditionary trip with Dominique Vivant, the future director of the Louvre.[16]: 76-77  After Jean-François Champollion translated the Rosetta Stone, Charles X decreed that an Egyptian Antiquities department be created. Champollion advised the purchase of three collections, formed by Edmé-Antoine Durand, Henry Salt, and Bernardino Drovet; these additions added 7,000 works. Growth continued via acquisitions by Auguste Mariette, founder of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Mariette, after excavations at Memphis, sent back crates of archaeological finds including The Seated Scribe.[16]: 76-77 [76]

Guarded by the Great Sphinx of Tanis, the collection is housed in more than 20 rooms. Holdings include art, papyrus scrolls, mummies, tools, clothing, jewelry, games, musical instruments, and weapons.[16]: 76-77 [75] Pieces from the ancient period include the Gebel el-Arak Knife from 3400 BC, The Seated Scribe, and the Head of King Djedefre. Middle Kingdom art, "known for its gold work and statues", moved from realism to idealization; this is exemplified by the schist statue of Amenemhatankh and the wooden Offering Bearer. The New Kingdom and Coptic Egyptian sections are deep, but the statue of the goddess Nephthys and the limestone depiction of the goddess Hathor demonstrate New Kingdom sentiment and wealth.[75][76]

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    The Gebel el-Arak Knife; 3300-3200 BC; handle: elephant ivory, blade: flint; length: 25.8 cm

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    The Seated Scribe; 2613–2494 BC; painted limestone and inlaid quartz; height: 53.7 cm

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    The Great Sphinx of Tanis; circa 2600 BC; rose granite; height: 183 cm, width: 154 cm, thickness: 480 cm

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    Akhenaten and Nefertiti; 1345 BC; painted limestone; height: 22.2 cm, width: 12.3 cm, thickness: 9.8 cm

Near Eastern antiquities

Near Eastern antiquities, the second newest department, dates from 1881 and presents an overview of early Near Eastern civilization and "first settlements", before the arrival of Islam. The department is divided into three geographic areas: the Levant, Mesopotamia (Iraq), and Persia (Iran). The collection's development corresponds to archaeological work such as Paul-Émile Botta's 1843 expedition to Khorsabad and the discovery of Sargon II's palace.[75][16]: 119  These finds formed the basis of the Assyrian museum, the precursor to today's department.[75]

The museum contains exhibits from Sumer and the city of Akkad, with monuments such as the Prince of Lagash's Stele of the Vultures from 2450 BC and the stele erected by Naram-Sin, King of Akkad, to celebrate a victory over barbarians in the Zagros Mountains. The 2.25-metre (7.38 ft) Code of Hammurabi, discovered in 1901, displays Babylonian Laws prominently, so that no man could plead their ignorance. The 18th-century BC mural of the Investiture of Zimrilim and the 25th-century BC Statue of Ebih-Il found in the ancient city-state of Mari are also on display at the museum.[77]

A significant portion of the department covers the ancient Levant, including the Sarcophagus of Eshmunazar II discovered in 1855, which catalyzed Ernest Renan's 1860 Mission de Phénicie. It contains one of the world's largest and most comprehensive collections of Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions. The section also covers North African Punic antiquities (Punic = Western Phoenician), given the significant French presence in the region in the 19th century, with early finds including the 1843 discovery of the Ain Nechma inscriptions.

The Persian portion of Louvre contains work from the archaic period, like the Funerary Head and the Persian Archers of Darius I.[75][78] This section also contains rare objects from Persepolis which were also lent to the British Museum for its Ancient Persia exhibition in 2005.[79]

Greek, Etruscan, and Roman

 
Greek antiquities in Room 11

The Greek, Etruscan, and Roman department displays pieces from the Mediterranean Basin dating from the Neolithic to the 6th century.[80] The collection spans from the Cycladic period to the decline of the Roman Empire. This department is one of the museum's oldest; it began with appropriated royal art, some of which was acquired under Francis I.[75][16]: 155-58  Initially, the collection focused on marble sculptures, such as the Venus de Milo'. Works such as the Apollo Belvedere arrived during the Napoleonic Wars, but these pieces were returned after Napoleon I's fall in 1815. In the 19th century, the Louvre acquired works including vases from the Durand collection, bronzes such as the Borghese Vase from the Bibliothèque nationale.[16]: 92 [80]

The archaic is demonstrated by jewellery and pieces such as the limestone Lady of Auxerre, from 640 BC; and the cylindrical Hera of Samos, c. 570–560 BC.[75][81] After the 4th century BC, focus on the human form increased, exemplified by the Borghese Gladiator. The Louvre holds masterpieces from the Hellenistic era, including The Winged Victory of Samothrace (190 BC) and the Venus de Milo, symbolic of classical art.[16]: 155  The long Galerie Campana displays an outstanding collection of more than one thousand Greek potteries. In the galleries paralleling the Seine, much of the museum's Roman sculpture is displayed.[80] The Roman portraiture is representative of that genre; examples include the portraits of Agrippa and Annius Verus; among the bronzes is the Greek Apollo of Piombino.

Islamic art

The Islamic art collection, the museum's newest, spans "thirteen centuries and three continents".[82] These exhibits, of ceramics, glass, metalware, wood, ivory, carpet, textiles, and miniatures, include more than 5,000 works and 1,000 shards.[83] Originally part of the decorative arts department, the holdings became separate in 2003. Among the works are the Pyxide d'al-Mughira, a 10th century ivory box from Andalusia; the Baptistery of Saint-Louis, an engraved brass basin from the 13th or 14th century Mamluk period; and the 10th century Shroud of Saint-Josse from Iran.[16]: 119-121 [82] The collection contains three pages of the Shahnameh, an epic book of poems by Ferdowsi in Persian, and a Syrian metalwork named the Barberini Vase.[83] In September 2019, a new and improved Islamic art department was opened by Princess Lamia bint Majed Al Saud. The new department exhibits 3,000 pieces were collected from Spain to India via the Arabian peninsula dating from the 7th to the 19th centuries.[84]

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    The Pyxis of al-Mughira; 10th century (maybe 968); ivory; 15 x 8 cm

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    Iranian tile with bismillah; turn of the 13th-14th century; molded ceramic, luster glaze and glaze

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    The Baptistère de Saint Louis; by Muhammad ibn al-Zayn; 1320–1340; hammering, engraving, inlay in brass, gold, and silver; 50.2 x 22.2 cm

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    Door; 15th-16th century; sculpted, painted and gilded walnut wood

Sculptures

See also: List of works in the Louvre
 
The Cour Marly of the Louvre, where many French sculptures are exhibited

The sculpture department consists of works created before 1850 not belonging in the Etruscan, Greek, and Roman department.[85] The Louvre has been a repository of sculpted material since its time as a palace; however, only ancient architecture was displayed until 1824, except for Michelangelo's Dying Slave and Rebellious Slave.[16]: 397-401  Initially the collection included only 100 pieces, the rest of the royal sculpture collection being at Versailles. It remained small until 1847, when Léon Laborde was given control of the department. Laborde developed the medieval section and purchased the first such statues and sculptures in the collection, King Childebert and stanga door, respectively.[16]: 397-401  The collection was part of the Department of Antiquities but was given autonomy in 1871 under Louis Courajod, a director who organized a wider representation of French works.[85][16]: 397-401  In 1986, all post-1850 works were relocated to the new Musée d'Orsay. The Grand Louvre project separated the department into two exhibition spaces; the French collection is displayed in the Richelieu Wing, and foreign works in the Denon Wing.[85]

The collection's overview of French sculpture contains Romanesque works such as the 11th-century Daniel in the Lions' Den and the 12th-century Virgin of Auvergne. In the 16th century, Renaissance influence caused French sculpture to become more restrained, as seen in Jean Goujon's bas-reliefs, and Germain Pilon's Descent from the Cross and Resurrection of Christ. The 17th and 18th centuries are represented by Gian Lorenzo Bernini's 1640–1 Bust of Cardinal Richelieu, Étienne Maurice Falconet's Woman Bathing and Amour menaçant, and François Anguier's obelisks. Neoclassical works includes Antonio Canova's Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss (1787).[16]: 397-401  The 18th and 19th centuries are represented by the French sculptors like Alfred Barye and Émile Guillemin.

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    The Tomb of Philippe Pot; 1477 and 1483; limestone, paint, gold and lead; height: 181 cm, width: 260 cm, depth: 167 cm

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    The King's Fame Riding Pegasus; by Antoine Coysevox; 1701–1702; Carrara marble; height: 3.15 m, width: 2.91 m, depth: 1.28 m

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    Group sculpture; by Nicolas Coustou; 1701–1712; marble; height: 2.44 m

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    Louis XV as Jupiter; 1731; probably marble; height: 1.95 m, width: 1.20 m, depth: 68 cm

Decorative arts

 
 
 
 
Some of the Second Empire style rooms of the apartments of Napoleon III

The Objets d'art collection spans the time from the Middle Ages to the mid-19th century. The department began as a subset of the sculpture department, based on royal property and the transfer of work from the Basilique Saint-Denis, the burial ground of French monarchs that held the Coronation Sword of the Kings of France.[86][16]: 451-454  Among the budding collection's most prized works were pietre dure vases and bronzes. The Durand collection's 1825 acquisition added "ceramics, enamels, and stained glass", and 800 pieces were given by Pierre Révoil. The onset of Romanticism rekindled interest in Renaissance and Medieval artwork, and the Sauvageot donation expanded the department with 1,500 middle-age and faïence works. In 1862, the Campana collection added gold jewelry and maiolicas, mainly from the 15th and 16th centuries.[16]: 451-454 [87]

The works are displayed on the Richelieu Wing's first floor and in the Apollo Gallery, named by the painter Charles Le Brun, who was commissioned by Louis XIV (the Sun King) to decorate the space in a solar theme. The medieval collection contains the coronation crown of Louis XIV, Charles V's sceptre, and the 12th century porphyry vase.[88] The Renaissance art holdings include Giambologna's bronze Nessus and Deianira and the tapestry Maximillian's Hunt.[86] From later periods, highlights include Madame de Pompadour's Sèvres vase collection and Napoleon III's apartments.[86]

In September 2000, the Louvre Museum dedicated the Gilbert Chagoury and Rose-Marie Chagoury Gallery to display tapestries donated by the Chagourys, including a 16th-century six-part tapestry suite, sewn with gold and silver threads representing sea divinities, which was commissioned in Paris for Colbert de Seignelay, Secretary of State for the Navy.

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    Henry II style wardrobe; c. 1580; walnut and oak, partially gilded and painted; height: 2.06 m, width: 1.50 m, depth: 0.60 m[89]

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    Louis XIV style cabinet on stand; by André Charles Boulle; c. 1690–1710; oak frame, resinous wood and walnut, ebony veneer, tortoiseshell, brass and pewter marquetry, and ormolu

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    Louis XVI style commode of Madame du Barry; 1772; oak frame, veneer of pearwood, rosewood and kingwood, soft-paste Sèvres porcelain, gilded bronze, white marble, and glass; height: 0.87 m, width: 1.19 m, depth: 0.48 m[90]

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    Louis XVI style barometer-thermometer; c. 1776; soft-paste Sèvres porcelain, enamel, and ormolu; height: 1 m, width: 0.27 m[91]

Painting

Further information: Catalog of paintings in the Louvre Museum
 
Mona Lisa; by Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1503–1506, perhaps continuing until c. 1517; oil on poplar panel; 77 cm × 53 cm

The painting collection has more than 7,500 works[11]: 229  from the 13th century to 1848 and is managed by 12 curators who oversee the collection's display. Nearly two-thirds are by French artists, and more than 1,200 are Northern European. The Italian paintings compose most of the remnants of Francis I and Louis XIV's collections, others are unreturned artwork from the Napoleon era, and some were bought.[92][16]: 199-201, 272–273, 333–335  The collection began with Francis, who acquired works from Italian masters such as Raphael and Michelangelo[93] and brought Leonardo da Vinci to his court.[94][95] After the French Revolution, the Royal Collection formed the nucleus of the Louvre. When the d'Orsay train station was converted into the Musée d'Orsay in 1986, the collection was split, and pieces completed after the 1848 Revolution were moved to the new museum. French and Northern European works are in the Richelieu Wing and Cour Carrée; Spanish and Italian paintings are on the first floor of the Denon Wing.[16]: 199 

Exemplifying the French School are the early Avignon Pietà of Enguerrand Quarton; the anonymous painting of King Jean le Bon (c. 1360), possibly the oldest independent portrait in Western painting to survive from the postclassical era;[16]: 201  Hyacinthe Rigaud's Louis XIV; Jacques-Louis David's The Coronation of Napoleon; Théodore Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa; and Eugène Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People. Nicolas Poussin, the Le Nain brothers, Philippe de Champaigne, Le Brun, La Tour, Watteau, Fragonard, Ingres, Corot, and Delacroix are well represented.[96]

Northern European works include Johannes Vermeer's The Lacemaker and The Astronomer; Caspar David Friedrich's The Tree of Crows; Rembrandt's The Supper at Emmaus, Bathsheba at Her Bath, and The Slaughtered Ox.

The Italian holdings are notable, particularly the Renaissance collection.[97] The works include Andrea Mantegna and Giovanni Bellini's Calvarys, which reflect realism and detail "meant to depict the significant events of a greater spiritual world".[98] The High Renaissance collection includes Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, Virgin and Child with St. Anne, St. John the Baptist, and Madonna of the Rocks. The Baroque collection includes Giambattista Pittoni's The Continence of Scipio, Susanna and the Elders, Bacchus and Ariadne, Mars and Venus, and others Caravaggio is represented by The Fortune Teller and Death of the Virgin. From 16th century Venice, the Louvre displays Titian's Le Concert Champetre, The Entombment, and The Crowning with Thorns.[16]: 378 [99]

The La Caze Collection, a bequest to the Musée du Louvre in 1869 by Louis La Caze, was the largest contribution of a person in the history of the Louvre. La Caze gave 584 paintings of his personal collection to the museum. The bequest included Antoine Watteau's Commedia dell'arte player of Pierrot ("Gilles"). In 2007, this bequest was the topic of the exhibition "1869: Watteau, Chardin... entrent au Louvre. La collection La Caze".[100]

Some of the best known paintings of the museum have been digitized by the French Center for Research and Restoration of the Museums of France.[101]

Prints and drawings

The prints and drawings department encompasses works on paper.[16]: 496  The origins of the collection were the 8,600 works in the Royal Collection (Cabinet du Roi), which were increased via state appropriation, purchases such as the 1,200 works from Fillipo Baldinucci's collection in 1806, and donations.[16]: 92 [102] The department opened on 5 August 1797, with 415 pieces displayed in the Galerie d'Apollon. The collection is organized into three sections: the core Cabinet du Roi, 14,000 royal copper printing-plates, and the donations of Edmond de Rothschild,[103] which include 40,000 prints, 3,000 drawings, and 5,000 illustrated books. The holdings are displayed in the Pavillon de Flore; due to the fragility of the paper medium, only a portion are displayed at one time.[16]: 496 

Management, administration, partnerships

 
Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa is the Louvre's most popular attraction.
 
Restoration workshops in the Louvre

The Louvre is owned by the French government. Since the 1990s, its management and governance have been made more independent.[104][105][106][107] Since 2003, the museum has been required to generate funds for projects.[106] By 2006, government funds had dipped from 75 percent of the total budget to 62 percent. Every year, the Louvre now raises as much as it gets from the state, about €122 million. The government pays for operating costs (salaries, safety, and maintenance), while the rest – new wings, refurbishments, acquisitions – is up to the museum to finance.[108] A further €3 million to €5 million a year is raised by the Louvre from exhibitions that it curates for other museums, while the host museum keeps the ticket money.[108] As the Louvre became a point of interest in the book The Da Vinci Code and the 2006 film based on the book, the museum earned $2.5 million by allowing filming in its galleries.[109][110] In 2008, the French government provided $180 million of the Louvre's yearly $350 million budget; the remainder came from private contributions and ticket sales.[105]

The Louvre employs a staff of 2,000 led by Director Jean-Luc Martinez,[111] who reports to the French Ministry of Culture and Communications. Martinez replaced Henri Loyrette in April 2013. Under Loyrette, who replaced Pierre Rosenberg in 2001, the Louvre has undergone policy changes that allow it to lend and borrow more works than before.[104][106] In 2006, it loaned 1,300 works, which enabled it to borrow more foreign works. From 2006 to 2009, the Louvre lent artwork to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, and received a $6.9 million payment to be used for renovations.[106]

In 2009, Minister of culture Frédéric Mitterrand approved a plan that would have created a storage facility 30 km (19 mi) northwest of Paris to hold objects from the Louvre and two other national museums in Paris's flood zone, the Musée du Quai Branly and the Musée d'Orsay; the plan was later scrapped. In 2013, his successor Aurélie Filippetti announced that the Louvre would move more than 250,000 works of art[112] held in a 20,000 square metres (220,000 sq ft) basement storage area in Liévin; the cost of the project, estimated at €60 million, will be split between the region (49%) and the Louvre (51%).[113] The Louvre will be the sole owner and manager of the store.[112] In July 2015, a team led by British firm Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners was selected to design the complex, which will have light-filled work spaces under one vast, green roof.[112][114]

In 2012, the Louvre and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco announced a five-year collaboration on exhibitions, publications, art conservation and educational programming.[115][116] The €98.5 million expansion of the Islamic Art galleries in 2012 received state funding of €31 million, as well as €17 million from the Alwaleed Bin Talal Foundation founded by the eponymous Saudi prince. The Republic of Azerbaijan, the Emir of Kuwait, the Sultan of Oman and King Mohammed VI of Morocco donated in total €26 million. In addition, the opening of the Louvre Abu Dhabi is supposed to provide €400 million over the course of 30 years for its use of the museum's brand.[63] Loyrette has tried to improve weak parts of the collection through income generated from loans of art and by guaranteeing that "20% of admissions receipts will be taken annually for acquisitions".[106] He has more administrative independence for the museum and achieved 90 percent of galleries to be open daily, as opposed to 80 percent previously. He oversaw the creation of extended hours and free admission on Friday nights and an increase in the acquisition budget to $36 million from $4.5 million.[105][106]

In March 2018, an exhibition of dozens of artworks and relics belonging to France's Louvre Museum was opened to visitors in Tehran, as a result of an agreement between Iranian and French presidents in 2016.[117] In the Louvre, two departments were allocated to the antiquities of the Iranian civilization, and the managers of the two departments visited Tehran. Relics belonging to Ancient Egypt, Rome and Mesopotamia as well as French royal items were showcased at the Tehran exhibition.[118][119][120]

Iran's National Museum building was designed and constructed by French architect André Godard.[121] Following its time in Tehran, the exhibition is set to be held in the Khorasan Grand Museum in Mashhad, northeastern Iran in June 2018.[122]

On the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci's death, the Louvre held the largest ever single exhibit of his work, from 24 October 2019 to 24 February 2020.[123][124] The event included over a hundred items: paintings, drawings and notebooks. A full 11 of the fewer than 20 paintings that Da Vinci completed in his lifetime were displayed.[125] Five of them are owned by the Louvre, but the Mona Lisa was not included because it is in such great demand among visitors to the Louvre museum; the work remained on display in its gallery. Salvator Mundi was also not included since the Saudi owner did not agree to move the work from its hiding place. Vitruvian Man, however, was on display, after a successful legal battle with its owner, the Galleria dell'Accademia in Venice.[126][127]

In 2021, a Renaissance era ceremonial helmet and breastplate stolen from the museum in 1983 were recovered. The museum noted that the 1983 theft had "deeply troubled all the staff at the time." There are few publicly accessible details on the theft itself.[128][129]

In May 2021, it was announced that Laurence des Cars has been picked by French president Emmanuel Macron as the next leader of the Louvre.[130][131] For the first time in its 228-year history, the Louvre will be directed by a woman.[132] During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Louvre has launched a platform where most of its works, including those that are not on display, can be seen. The new platform, collections.louvre.fr, already has more than 482,000 illustrated records – representing 75% of its rich and varied collections.[133] The museum was visited by over 7.6 million visitors in 2022, up 170 percent from 2021, but still below the 10.8 million visitors in 2018 before the COVID-19 pandemic.[134]

Archaeological research

 
List of excavations that benefited the Louvre (Rotonde d'Apollon)

The Louvre's ancient art collections are to a significant extent the product of excavations, some of which the museum sponsored under various legal regimes over time, often as a companion to France's diplomacy and/or colonial enterprises. In the Rotonde d'Apollon, a carved marble panel lists a number of such campaigns, led by:

The rest of the plaque combines donors of archaeological items, many of whom were archaeologists themselves, and other archaeologists whose excavations contributed to the Louvre's collections:

Satellites and offshoots

Several museums in and outside France have been or are placed under the Louvre's administrative authority or linked to it through exclusive partnerships, while not being located in the Louvre Palace. Since 2019, the Louvre has also maintained a large art storage and research facility in the Northern French town of Liévin, the Centre de conservation du Louvre [fr], which is not open to the public.[135]

Musée de Cluny (1926–1977)

Main article: Musée de Cluny

In February 1926, the Musée de Cluny, whose creation dates back to the 19th century, was brought under the aegis of the Louvre's department of decorative arts (Objets d'Art).[136] That affiliation was terminated in 1977.[137]

Musée du Jeu de Paume (1947–1986)

Main article: Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume

The Jeu de Paume building in the Tuileries Garden, initially intended as a sports venue, was repurposed from 1909 as an art gallery. In 1947, it became the exhibition space for the Louvre's collections of late 19th and early 20th paintings, most prominently Impressionism, as the Louvre Palace was lacking space to display them, and was consequently brought under direct management by the Louvre's Département des Peintures. In 1986, these collections were transferred to the newly created Musée d'Orsay.[138]

Gypsothèque du Louvre (since 2001)

The gypsothèque (plaster cast gallery) of the Louvre is a collection of plaster casts that was formed in 1970 by the reunion of the corresponding inventories of the Louvre, the Beaux-Arts de Paris and the Art and Archaeology Institute of the Sorbonne University, the latter two following depredations during the May 68 student unrest. Initially called the Musée des Monuments Antiques from 1970 to 1978, the project was subsequently left unfinished and only came to fruition after being brought under the Louvre's management by ministerial decision in 2001.[139] It is located in the Petite Écurie [fr], a dependency of Versailles Palace, and has been open to the public since 2012.[140]

Musée Delacroix (since 2004)

Main article: Musée national Eugène Delacroix

The small museum located in Eugène Delacroix's former workshop in central Paris, created in the 1930s, has been placed under management by the Louvre since 2004.[141]

Louvre-Lens (since 2012)

Main article: Louvre-Lens

The Louvre-Lens follows a May 2003 initiative by then culture minister Jean-Jacques Aillagon to promote cultural projects outside of Paris that would make the riches of major Parisian institutions available to a broader French public, including a satellite (antenne) of the Louvre.[142] After several rounds of competition, a former mining site in the town of Lens was selected for its location and announced by Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin on 2004-11-29. Japanese architects SANAA and landscape architect Catherine Mosbach were respectively selected in September 2005 to design the museum building and garden. Inaugurated by President François Hollande on 2012-12-04, the Louvre-Lens is run by the Hauts-de-France region under a contract (convention scientifique et culturelle) with the Louvre for art loans and brand use. Its main attraction is an exhibition of roughly 200 artworks from the Louvre on a rotating basis, presented chronologically in a single large room (the Galerie du Temps or "gallery of time") that transcends the geographical and object-type divisions along which the Parisian Louvre's displays are organized. The Louvre-Lens has been successful at attracting around 500,000 visitors per year until the COVID-19 pandemic.[143]

Louvre Abu Dhabi (since 2017)

Main article: Louvre Abu Dhabi

The Louvre Abu Dhabi is a separate entity from the Louvre, but the two entities have a multifaceted contractual relationship that allows the Emirati museum to use the Louvre name until 2037, and to exhibit artworks from the Louvre until 2027.[144] It was inaugurated on 2017-11-08 and opened to the public three days later. A 30-year agreement, signed in early 2007 by French Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres and Sheik Sultan bin Tahnoon Al Nahyan, establishes that Abu Dhabi shall pay €832,000,000 (US$1.3 billion) in exchange for the Louvre name use, managerial advice, art loans, and special exhibitions.[145] The Louvre Abu Dhabi is located on Saadiyat Island and was designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel and engineering firm of Buro Happold.[146] It occupies 24,000 square metres (260,000 sq ft) and is covered by an iconic metallic dome designed to cast rays of light mimicking sunlight passing through date palm fronds in an oasis. The French art loans, expected to total between 200 and 300 artworks during a 10-year period, come from multiple museums, including the Louvre, the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Musée d'Orsay, Versailles, the Guimet Museum, the Musée Rodin, and the Musée du quai Branly.[147]

Controversy

The Louvre is involved in controversies that surround cultural property seized under Napoleon I, as well as during World War II by the Nazis. During Nazi occupation, thousands of artworks were stolen.[148] But after the war, 61,233 articles on more than 150,000 seized artworks returned to France and were assigned to the Office des Biens Privés.[149] In 1949, it entrusted 2,130 unclaimed pieces (including 1,001 paintings) to the Direction des Musées de France in order to keep them under appropriate conditions of conservation until their restitution and meanwhile classified them as MNRs (Musées Nationaux Recuperation or, in English, the National Museums of Recovered Artwork). Some 10% to 35% of the pieces are believed to come from Jewish spoliations[150] and until the identification of their rightful owners, which declined at the end of the 1960s, they are registered indefinitely on separate inventories from the museum's collections.[151]

They were exhibited in 1946 and shown all together to the public during four years (1950–1954) in order to allow rightful claimants to identify their properties, then stored or displayed, according to their interest, in several French museums including the Louvre. From 1951 to 1965, about 37 pieces were restituted. Since November 1996, the partly illustrated catalogue of 1947–1949 has been accessible online and completed. In 1997, Prime Minister Alain Juppé initiated the Mattéoli Commission, headed by Jean Mattéoli, to investigate the matter and according to the government, the Louvre is in charge of 678 pieces of artwork still unclaimed by their rightful owners.[152] During the late 1990s, the comparison of the American war archives, which had not been done before, with the French and German ones as well as two court cases which finally settled some of the heirs' rights (Gentili di Giuseppe and Rosenberg families) allowed more accurate investigations. Since 1996, the restitutions, according sometimes to less formal criteria, concerned 47 more pieces (26 paintings, with 6 from the Louvre including a then displayed Tiepolo), until the last claims of French owners and their heirs ended again in 2006.[citation needed]

According to Serge Klarsfeld, since the now complete and constant publicity which the artworks got in 1996, the majority of the French Jewish community is nevertheless in favour of the return to the normal French civil rule of prescription acquisitive of any unclaimed good after another long period of time and consequently to their ultimate integration into the common French heritage instead of their transfer to foreign institutions like during World War II.[citation needed]

Napoleon's campaigns acquired Italian pieces by treaties, as war reparations, and Northern European pieces as spoils as well as some antiquities excavated in Egypt, though the vast majority of the latter were seized as war reparations by the British army and are now part of collections of the British Museum. On the other hand, the Dendera zodiac is, like the Rosetta Stone, claimed by Egypt even though it was acquired in 1821, before the Egyptian Anti-export legislation of 1835. The Louvre administration has thus argued in favor of retaining this item despite requests by Egypt for its return. The museum participates too in arbitration sessions held via UNESCO's Committee for Promoting the Return of Cultural Property to Its Countries of Origin.[153] The museum consequently returned in 2009 five Egyptian fragments of frescoes (30 cm x 15 cm each) whose existence of the tomb of origin had only been brought to the authorities attention in 2008, eight to five years after their good-faith acquisition by the museum from two private collections and after the necessary respect of the procedure of déclassement from French public collections before the Commission scientifique nationale des collections des musées de France.[154]

In 2011, over 130 international artists urged a boycott of the new Guggenheim museum as well as Louvre Abu Dhabi, citing reports, since 2009, of abuses of foreign construction workers on Saadiyat Island, including the arbitrary withholding of wages, unsafe working conditions, and failure of companies to pay or reimburse the steep recruitment fees being charged to laborers.[155][156] According to Architectural Record, Abu Dhabi has comprehensive labor laws to protect the workers, but they are not conscientiously implemented or enforced.[157] In 2010, the Guggenheim Foundation placed on its website a joint statement with Abu Dhabi's Tourism Development and Investment Company (TDIC) recognizing the following workers' rights issues, among others: health and safety of the workers; their access to their passports and other documents that the employers have been retaining to guaranty that they stay on the job; using a general contractor that agrees to obey the labor laws; maintaining an independent site monitor; and ending the system that has been generally used in the Persian Gulf region of requiring workers to reimburse recruitment fees.[158]

In 2013, The Observer reported that conditions for the workers at the Louvre and New York University construction sites on Saadiyat amounted to "modern-day slavery".[159][160] In 2014, the Guggenheim's Director, Richard Armstrong, said that he believed that living conditions for the workers at the Louvre project were now good and that "many fewer" of them were having their passports confiscated. He stated that the main issue then remaining was the recruitment fees charged to workers by agents who recruit them.[161][162] Later in 2014, the Guggenheim's architect, Gehry, commented that working with the Abu Dhabi officials to implement the law to improve the labor conditions at the museum's site is "a moral responsibility."[157] He encouraged the TDIC to build additional worker housing and proposed that the contractor cover the cost of the recruitment fees. In 2012, TDIC engaged PricewaterhouseCoopers as an independent monitor required to issue reports every quarter. Labor lawyer Scott Horton told Architectural Record that he hoped the Guggenheim project will influence the treatment of workers on other Saadiyat sites and will "serve as a model for doing things right."[157][163]

See also

References

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August 04, 2023
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This article is about the museum For the building see Louvre Palace For other uses see Louvre disambiguation The Louvre English ˈ l uː v r e LOOV re 4 or the Louvre Museum French Musee du Louvre myze dy luvʁ listen is a national art museum in Paris France A central landmark of the city it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the city s 1st arrondissement district or ward and home to some of the most canonical works of Western art including the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo The museum is housed in the Louvre Palace originally built in the late 12th to 13th century under Philip II Remnants of the Medieval Louvre fortress are visible in the basement of the museum Due to urban expansion the fortress eventually lost its defensive function and in 1546 Francis I converted it into the primary residence of the French Kings 5 Musee du LouvreThe Louvre MuseumEstablished10 August 1793 229 years ago 1793 08 10 LocationMusee du Louvre 75001 Paris FranceTypeArt museum and historic siteCollection size615 797 in 2019 1 35 000 on display 2 Visitors7 8 million 2022 3 Ranked 1st nationally Ranked 1st globally in 2022DirectorLaurence des CarsCuratorMarie Laure de RochebrunePublic transit accessPalais Royal Musee du Louvre Louvre RivoliWebsitelouvre frThe building was extended many times to form the present Louvre Palace In 1682 Louis XIV chose the Palace of Versailles for his household leaving the Louvre primarily as a place to display the royal collection including from 1692 a collection of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture 6 In 1692 the building was occupied by the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres and the Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture which in 1699 held the first of a series of salons The Academie remained at the Louvre for 100 years 7 During the French Revolution the National Assembly decreed that the Louvre should be used as a museum to display the nation s masterpieces The museum opened on 10 August 1793 with an exhibition of 537 paintings the majority of the works being royal and confiscated church property Because of structural problems with the building the museum was closed in 1796 until 1801 The collection was increased under Napoleon and the museum was renamed Musee Napoleon but after Napoleon s abdication many works seized by his armies were returned to their original owners The collection was further increased during the reigns of Louis XVIII and Charles X and during the Second French Empire the museum gained 20 000 pieces Holdings have grown steadily through donations and bequests since the Third Republic The collection is divided among eight curatorial departments Egyptian Antiquities Near Eastern Antiquities Greek Etruscan and Roman Antiquities Islamic Art Sculpture Decorative Arts Paintings Prints and Drawings The Musee du Louvre contains more than 380 000 objects and displays 35 000 works of art in eight curatorial departments with more than 60 600 square metres 652 000 sq ft dedicated to the permanent collection 2 The Louvre exhibits sculptures objets d art paintings drawings and archaeological finds At any given point in time approximately 38 000 objects from prehistory to the 21st century are being exhibited over an area of 72 735 square metres 782 910 sq ft With over 7 8 million visitors in 2022 the Louvre is the world s most visited museum 8 Contents 1 Location and visiting 2 History 2 1 Before the museum 2 2 Revolutionary opening 2 3 Napoleonic era 2 4 From 1815 to 1852 2 5 Second Empire 2 6 From 1870 to 1981 2 7 Grand Louvre 2 8 21st century 3 Collections 3 1 Egyptian antiquities 3 2 Near Eastern antiquities 3 3 Greek Etruscan and Roman 3 4 Islamic art 3 5 Sculptures 3 6 Decorative arts 3 7 Painting 3 8 Prints and drawings 4 Management administration partnerships 5 Archaeological research 6 Satellites and offshoots 6 1 Musee de Cluny 1926 1977 6 2 Musee du Jeu de Paume 1947 1986 6 3 Gypsotheque du Louvre since 2001 6 4 Musee Delacroix since 2004 6 5 Louvre Lens since 2012 6 6 Louvre Abu Dhabi since 2017 7 Controversy 8 See also 9 References 9 1 Works cited 10 External linksLocation and visiting Edit Aerial view of the Louvre Palace and Tuileries ParkThe Louvre museum is located inside the Louvre Palace in the center of Paris adjacent to the Tuileries Gardens The two nearest Metro stations are Louvre Rivoli and Palais Royal Musee du Louvre the latter having a direct underground access to the Carrousel du Louvre commercial mall 9 Before the Grand Louvre overhaul of the late 1980s and 1990s the Louvre had several street level entrances most of which are now permanently closed Since 1993 the museum s main entrance has been the underground space under the Louvre Pyramid or Hall Napoleon which can be accessed from the Pyramid itself from the underground Carrousel du Louvre or for authorized visitors from the passage Richelieu connecting to the nearby rue de Rivoli A secondary entrance at the Porte des Lions near the western end of the Denon Wing was created in 1999 but is not permanently open 10 The museum s entrance conditions have varied over time Initially artists and foreign visitors had privileged access a feature that only disappeared in the 1850s At the time of initial opening in 1793 the French Republican calendar had imposed ten day weeks French decades the first six days of which were reserved for visits by artists and foreigners and the last three for visits by the general public 11 37 In the early 1800s after the seven day week had been reinstated the general public had only four hours of museum access per weeks between 2pm and 4pm on Saturdays and Sundays 12 8 In 1824 a new regulation allowed public access only on Sundays and holidays the other days the museum was open only to artists and foreigners except for closure on Mondays 11 39 That changed in 1855 when the museum became open to the public all days except Mondays 11 40 It was free until 1922 when an entrance fee was introduced except on Sundays 11 42 Since its post World War II reopening in 1946 11 43 the Louvre has been closed on Tuesdays and habitually open to the public the rest of the week except for some holidays The use of cameras and video recorders is permitted inside but flash photography is forbidden 13 Beginning in 2012 Nintendo 3DS portable video game systems were used as the official museum audio guides In November 2013 Nintendo announced an upgraded audio guide that also included floor maps with the user s location marked to help visitors navigate the museum over 600 photographs of artwork including high resolution images and 3D models The upgraded audio guide was also announced in a special Nintendo Direct regularly used by the company to announce new game titles hardware or other content featuring a demonstration of the guide at the museum by Satoru Iwata Nintendo s president and CEO and Shigeru Miyamoto the creator of Nintendo franchises including Mario The Legend of Zelda Donkey Kong Star Fox and Pikmin 14 Before the Nintendo eShop for the Nintendo DS was discontinued in 2023 the guide was also available there for users to download onto their own systems for live or virtual tours 15 History EditBefore the museum Edit Below ground portions of the medieval Louvre are still visible 16 32 Main article Louvre Palace The Louvre Palace which houses the museum was begun by King Philip II in the late 12th century to protect the city from the attack from the West as the Kingdom of England still held Normandy at the time Remnants of the Medieval Louvre are still visible in the crypt 16 32 Whether this was the first building on that spot is not known and it is possible that Philip modified an existing tower 17 The origins of the name Louvre are somewhat disputed According to the authoritative Grand Larousse encyclopedique the name derives from an association with a wolf hunting den via Latin lupus lower Empire lupara 17 18 In the 7th century Burgundofara also known as Saint Fare abbess in Meaux is said to have gifted part of her Villa called Luvra situated in the region of Paris to a monastery 19 even though it is doubtful that this land corresponded exactly to the present site of the Louvre The Louvre Palace has been subject to numerous renovations since its construction In the 14th century Charles V converted the building from its military role into a residence In 1546 Francis I started its rebuilding in French Renaissance style 20 After Louis XIV chose Versailles as his residence in 1682 construction works slowed to a halt The royal move away from Paris resulted in the Louvre being used as a residence for artists under Royal patronage 20 16 42 21 For example four generations of craftsmen artists from the Boulle family were granted Royal patronage and resided in the Louvre 22 23 24 Meanwhile the collections of the Louvre originated in the acquisitions of paintings and other artworks by the monarchs of the House of France At the Palace of Fontainebleau Francis collected art that would later be part of the Louvre s art collections including Leonardo da Vinci s Mona Lisa 25 The Cabinet du Roi consisted of seven rooms west of the Galerie d Apollon on the upper floor of the remodeled Petite Galerie Many of the king s paintings were placed in these rooms in 1673 when it became an art gallery accessible to certain art lovers as a kind of museum In 1681 after the court moved to Versailles 26 of the paintings were transferred there somewhat diminishing the collection but it is mentioned in Paris guide books from 1684 on and was shown to ambassadors from Siam in 1686 26 By the mid 18th century there were an increasing number of proposals to create a public gallery in the Louvre Art critic Etienne La Font de Saint Yenne in 1747 published a call for a display of the royal collection On 14 October 1750 Louis XV decided on a display of 96 pieces from the royal collection mounted in the Galerie royale de peinture of the Luxembourg Palace A hall was opened by Le Normant de Tournehem and the Marquis de Marigny for public viewing of the king s paintings Tableaux du Roy on Wednesdays and Saturdays The Luxembourg gallery included Andrea del Sarto s Charity and works by Raphael Titian Veronese Rembrandt Poussin or Van Dyck It closed in 1780 as a result of the royal gift of the Luxembourg palace to the Count of Provence the future king Louis XVIII by the king in 1778 27 Under Louis XVI the idea of a royal museum in the Louvre came closer to fruition 28 The comte d Angiviller broadened the collection and in 1776 proposed to convert the Grande Galerie of the Louvre which at that time contained the plans reliefs or 3D models of key fortified sites in and around France into the French Museum Many design proposals were offered for the Louvre s renovation into a museum without a final decision being made on them Hence the museum remained incomplete until the French Revolution 27 Revolutionary opening Edit The Louvre finally became a public museum during the French Revolution In May 1791 the National Constituent Assembly declared that the Louvre would be a place for bringing together monuments of all the sciences and arts 27 On 10 August 1792 Louis XVI was imprisoned and the royal collection in the Louvre became national property Because of fear of vandalism or theft on 19 August the National Assembly pronounced the museum s preparation urgent In October a committee to preserve the national memory began assembling the collection for display 29 Antonio Canova s Psyche Revived by Cupid s Kiss was commissioned in 1787 and donated in 1824 30 The museum opened on 10 August 1793 the first anniversary of the monarchy s demise as Museum central des Arts de la Republique The public was given free accessibility on three days per week which was perceived as a major accomplishment and was generally appreciated 31 The collection showcased 537 paintings and 184 objects of art Three quarters were derived from the royal collections the remainder from confiscated emigres and Church property biens nationaux 32 16 68 69 To expand and organize the collection the Republic dedicated 100 000 livres per year 27 In 1794 France s revolutionary armies began bringing pieces from Northern Europe augmented after the Treaty of Tolentino 1797 by works from the Vatican such as the Laocoon and Apollo Belvedere to establish the Louvre as a museum and as a sign of popular sovereignty 32 33 The early days were hectic Privileged artists continued to live in residence and the unlabeled paintings hung frame to frame from floor to ceiling 32 The structure itself closed in May 1796 due to structural deficiencies It reopened on 14 July 1801 arranged chronologically and with new lighting and columns 32 On 15 August 1797 the Galerie d Apollon was opened with an exhibition of drawings Meanwhile the Louvre s Gallery of Antiquity sculpture musee des Antiques with artefacts brought from Florence and the Vatican had opened in November 1800 in Anne of Austria s former summer apartment located on the ground floor just below the Galerie d Apollon Napoleonic era Edit See also Napoleonic looting of art On 19 November 1802 Napoleon appointed Dominique Vivant Denon a scholar and polymath who had participated in the Egyptian campaign of 1798 1801 as the museum s first director in preference to alternative contenders such as antiquarian Ennio Quirino Visconti painter Jacques Louis David sculptor Antonio Canova and architects Leon Dufourny or Pierre Fontaine 34 On Denon s suggestion in July 1803 the museum itself was renamed Musee Napoleon 35 79 The collection grew through successful military campaigns 16 52 Acquisitions were made of Spanish Austrian Dutch and Italian works either as the result of war looting or formalized by treaties such as the Treaty of Tolentino 36 At the end of Napoleon s First Italian Campaign in 1797 the Treaty of Campo Formio was signed with Count Philipp von Cobenzl of the Austrian Monarchy This treaty marked the completion of Napoleon s conquest of Italy and the end of the first phase of the French Revolutionary Wars It compelled Italian cities to contribute pieces of art and heritage to Napoleon s parades of spoils through Paris before being put into the Louvre Museum 37 The Horses of Saint Mark which had adorned the basilica of San Marco in Venice after the sack of Constantinople in 1204 were brought to Paris where they were placed atop Napoleon s Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel in 1797 37 Under the Treaty of Tolentino the two statues of the Nile and Tiber were taken to Paris from the Vatican in 1797 and were both kept in the Louvre until 1815 The Nile was later returned to Rome 38 whereas the Tiber has remained in the Louvre to this day The despoilment of Italian churches and palaces outraged the Italians and their artistic and cultural sensibilities 39 After the French defeat at Waterloo the looted works former owners sought their return The Louvre s administrator Denon was loath to comply in absence of a treaty of restitution In response foreign states sent emissaries to London to seek help and many pieces were returned though far from all 36 16 69 40 In 1815 Louis XVIII finally concluded agreements with the Austrian government 41 42 for the keeping of works such as Veronese s Wedding at Cana which was exchanged for a large Le Brun or the repurchase of the Albani collection From 1815 to 1852 Edit The Venus de Milo was added to the Louvre s collection during the reign of Louis XVIII For most of the 19th century from Napoleon s time to the Second Empire the Louvre and other national museums were managed under the monarch s civil list and thus depended much on the ruler s personal involvement Whereas the most iconic collection remained that of paintings in the Grande Galerie a number of other initiatives mushroomed in the vast building named as if they were separate museums even though they were generally managed under the same administrative umbrella Correspondingly the museum complex was often referred to in the plural les musees du Louvre rather than singular citation needed During the Bourbon Restoration 1814 1830 Louis XVIII and Charles X added to the collections The Greek and Roman sculpture gallery on the ground floor of the southwestern side of the Cour Carree was completed on designs by Percier and Fontaine In 1819 an exhibition of manufactured products was opened in the first floor of the Cour Carree s southern wing and would stay there until the mid 1820s 35 87 Charles X in 1826 created the Musee Egyptien and in 1827 included it in his broader Musee Charles X a new section of the museum complex located in a suite of lavishly decorated rooms on the first floor of the South Wing of the Cour Carree The Egyptian collection initially curated by Jean Francois Champollion formed the basis for what is now the Louvre s Department of Egyptian Antiquities It was formed from the purchased collections of Edme Antoine Durand Henry Salt and the second collection of Bernardino Drovetti the first one having been purchased by Victor Emmanuel I of Sardinia to form the core of the present Museo Egizio in Turin The Restoration period also saw the opening in 1824 of the Galerie d Angouleme a section of largely French sculptures on the ground floor of the Northwestern side of the Cour Carree many of whose artefacts came from the Palace of Versailles and from Alexandre Lenoir s Musee des Monuments Francais following its closure in 1816 Meanwhile the French Navy created an exhibition of ship models in the Louvre in December 1827 initially named musee dauphin in honor of Dauphin Louis Antoine 43 building on an 18th century initiative of Henri Louis Duhamel du Monceau This collection renamed musee naval in 1833 and later to develop into the Musee national de la Marine was initially located on the first floor of the Cour Carree s North Wing and in 1838 moved up one level to the 2nd floor attic where it remained for more than a century 44 Rooms of the Musee Charles X First room Room 27 Room 29 Salle des Colonnes Room 35 Room 36 Room 38 Ceiling decorations designed by Felix Duban in the Salon Carre left and Salle des Sept Cheminees right late 1840s The display in the Salon Carre painted by Giuseppe Castiglione in 1861 following its repurposing of the late 1840s Veronese s Wedding at Cana is visible on the left and his Supper in the House of Simon now at the Palace of Versailles is on the right Following the July Revolution King Louis Philippe focused his interest on the repurposing of the Palace of Versailles into a Museum of French History conceived as a project of national reconciliation and the Louvre was kept in comparative neglect Louis Philippe did however sponsor the creation of the musee assyrien to host the monumental Assyrian sculpture works brought to Paris by Paul Emile Botta in the ground floor gallery north of the eastern entrance of the Cour Carree The Assyrian Museum opened on 1 May 1847 45 Separately Louis Philippe had his Spanish gallery displayed in the Louvre from 7 January 1838 in five rooms on the first floor of the Cour Carree s East Colonnade Wing 46 but the collection remained his personal property As a consequence the works were removed after Louis Philippe was deposed in 1848 and were eventually auctioned away in 1853 The short lived Second Republic had more ambitions for the Louvre It initiated repair work the completion of the Galerie d Apollon and of the salle des sept cheminees and the overhaul of the Salon Carre former site of the iconic yearly Salon and of the Grande Galerie 16 52 In 1848 the Naval Museum in the Cour Carree s attic was brought under the common Louvre Museum management 44 a change which was again reversed in 1920 In 1850 under the leadership of curator Adrien de Longperier the musee mexicain opened within the Louvre as the first European museum dedicated to pre Columbian art citation needed Second Empire Edit Main article Napoleon III s Louvre expansion The rule of Napoleon III was transformational for the Louvre both the building and the museum In 1852 he created the Musee des Souverains in the Colonnade Wing an ideological project aimed at buttressing his personal legitimacy In 1861 he bought 11 835 artworks including 641 paintings Greek gold and other antiquities of the Campana collection For its display he created another new section within the Louvre named Musee Napoleon III occupying a number of rooms in various parts of the building Between 1852 and 1870 the museum added 20 000 new artefacts to its collections 47 The main change of that period was to the building itself In the 1850s architects Louis Visconti and Hector Lefuel created massive new spaces around what is now called the Cour Napoleon some of which in the South Wing now Aile Denon went to the museum 16 52 54 In the 1860s Lefuel also led the creation of the pavillon des Sessions with a new Salle des Etats closer to Napoleon III s residence in the Tuileries Palace with the effect of shortening the Grande Galerie by about a third of its previous length A smaller but significant Second Empire project was the decoration of the salle des Empereurs below the Salon carre citation needed Entrance to a section of the Musee Napoleon III from the salle des seances then a double height space Galerie Daru part of the New Louvre building program under Napoleon III Salle Daru above the galerie Daru also created under Napoleon III Escalier Mollien in the New Louvre Salle des Empereurs From 1870 to 1981 Edit Memorial plaques honoring the Louvre s defenders in May 1871The Louvre narrowly escaped serious damage during the suppression of the Paris Commune On 23 May 1871 as the French Army advanced into Paris a force of Communards led by Jules Bergeret fr set fire to the adjoining Tuileries Palace The fire burned for forty eight hours entirely destroying the interior of the Tuileries and spreading to the north west wing of the museum next to it The emperor s Louvre library Bibliotheque du Louvre and some of the adjoining halls in what is now the Richelieu Wing were separately destroyed But the museum was saved by the efforts of Paris firemen and museum employees led by curator Henry Barbet de Jouy 48 Following the end of the monarchy several spaces in the Louvre s South Wing went to the museum The Salle du Manege was transferred to the museum in 1879 and in 1928 became its main entrance lobby 49 The large Salle des Etats that had been created by Lefuel between the Grande Galerie and Pavillon Denon was redecorated in 1886 by Edmond Guillaume fr Lefuel s successor as architect of the Louvre and opened as a spacious exhibition room 50 51 Edomond Guillaume also decorated the first floor room at the northwest corner of the Cour Carree on the ceiling of which he placed in 1890 a monumental painting by Carolus Duran The Triumph of Marie de Medici originally created in 1879 for the Luxembourg Palace 51 The Louvre s monumental Escalier Daru topped by the Winged Victory of Samothrace took its current appearance in the early 1930s Meanwhile during the Third Republic 1870 1940 the Louvre acquired new artefacts mainly via donations gifts and sharing arrangements on excavations abroad The 583 item Collection La Caze donated in 1869 by Louis La Caze included works by Chardin Fragonard Rembrandt and Watteau 16 70 71 In 1883 the Winged Victory of Samothrace which had been found in the Aegean Sea in 1863 was prominently displayed as the focal point of the Escalier Daru 16 70 71 Major artifacts excavated at Susa in Iran including the massive Apadana capital and glazed brick decoration from the Palace of Darius there accrued to the Oriental Near Eastern Antiquities Department in the 1880s The Societe des amis du Louvre was established in 1897 and donated prominent works such as the Pieta of Villeneuve les Avignon The expansion of the museum and its collections slowed after World War I however despite some prominent acquisitions such as Georges de La Tour s Saint Thomas and Baron Edmond de Rothschild s 1935 donation of 4 000 prints 3 000 drawings and 500 illustrated books From the late 19th century the Louvre gradually veered away from its mid century ambition of universality to become a more focused museum of French Western and Near Eastern art covering a space ranging from Iran to the Atlantic The collections of the Louvre s musee mexicain were transferred to the Musee d Ethnographie du Trocadero in 1887 As the Musee de Marine was increasingly constrained to display its core naval themed collections in the limited space it had in the second floor attic of the northern half of the Cour Carree many of its significant holdings of non Western artefacts were transferred in 1905 to the Trocadero ethnography museum the National Antiquities Museum in Saint Germain en Laye and the Chinese Museum in the Palace of Fontainebleau 52 The Musee de Marine itself was relocated to the Palais de Chaillot in 1943 The Louvre s extensive collections of Asian art were moved to the Guimet Museum in 1945 Nevertheless the Louvre s first gallery of Islamic art opened in 1922 citation needed Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt is seen with a plaster model of the Venus de Milo 53 while visiting the Louvre with the curator Alfred Merlin on 7 October 1940 Seating designed by Pierre Paulin in the late 1960s Grande Galerie Marc Saltet fr s 1972 museography for the Salon Carre with dos a dos seat designed in 1967 by Pierre PaulinIn the late 1920s Louvre Director Henri Verne devised a master plan for the rationalization of the museum s exhibitions which was partly implemented in the following decade In 1932 1934 Louvre architects Camille Lefevre and Albert Ferran redesigned the Escalier Daru to its current appearance The Cour du Sphinx in the South Wing was covered by a glass roof in 1934 Decorative arts exhibits were expanded in the first floor of the North Wing of the Cour Carree including some of France s first period room displays In the late 1930s The La Caze donation was moved to a remodeled Salle La Caze above the salle des Caryatides with reduced height to create more rooms on the second floor and a sober interior design by Albert Ferran citation needed During World War II the Louvre conducted an elaborate plan of evacuation of its art collection When Germany occupied the Sudetenland many important artworks such as the Mona Lisa were temporarily moved to the Chateau de Chambord When war was formally declared a year later most of the museum s paintings were sent there as well Select sculptures such as Winged Victory of Samothrace and the Venus de Milo were sent to the Chateau de Valencay 54 On 27 August 1939 after two days of packing truck convoys began to leave Paris By 28 December the museum was cleared of most works except those that were too heavy and unimportant paintings that were left in the basement 55 In early 1945 after the liberation of France art began returning to the Louvre 56 New arrangements after the war revealed the further evolution of taste away from the lavish decorative practices of the late 19th century In 1947 Edmond Guillaume s ceiling ornaments were removed from the Salle des Etats 51 where the Mona Lisa was first displayed in 1966 57 Around 1950 Louvre architect Jean Jacques Haffner fr streamlined the interior decoration of the Grande Galerie 51 In 1953 a new ceiling by Georges Braque was inaugurated in the Salle Henri II next to the Salle La Caze 58 In the late 1960s seats designed by Pierre Paulin were installed in the Grande Galerie 59 In 1972 the Salon Carre s museography was remade with lighting from a hung tubular case designed by Louvre architect Marc Saltet fr with assistance from designers Andre Monpoix fr Joseph Andre Motte and Paulin 60 In 1961 the Finance Ministry accepted to leave the Pavillon de Flore at the southwestern end of the Louvre building as Verne had recommended in his 1920s plan New exhibition spaces of sculptures ground floor and paintings first floor opened there later in the 1960s on a design by government architect Olivier Lahalle 61 Grand Louvre Edit Main article Grand Louvre In 1981 French President Francois Mitterrand proposed as one of his Grands Projets the Grand Louvre plan to relocate the Finance Ministry until then housed in the North Wing of the Louvre and thus devote almost the entire Louvre building except its northwestern tip which houses the separate Musee des Arts Decoratifs to the museum which would be correspondingly restructured In 1984 I M Pei the architect personally selected by Mitterrand proposed a master plan including an underground entrance space accessed through a glass pyramid in the Louvre s central Cour Napoleon 16 66 The open spaces surrounding the pyramid were inaugurated on 15 October 1988 and its underground lobby was opened on 30 March 1989 New galleries of early modern French paintings on the 2nd floor of the Cour Carree for which the planning had started before the Grand Louvre also opened in 1989 Further rooms in the same sequence designed by Italo Rota opened on 15 December 1992 citation needed On 18 November 1993 Mitterrand inaugurated the next major phase of the Grand Louvre plan the renovated North Richelieu Wing in the former Finance Ministry site the museum s largest single expansion in its entire history designed by Pei his French associate Michel Macary and Jean Michel Wilmotte Further underground spaces known as the Carrousel du Louvre centered on the Inverted Pyramid and designed by Pei and Macary had opened in October 1993 Other refurbished galleries of Italian sculptures and Egyptian antiquities opened in 1994 The third and last main phase of the plan unfolded mainly in 1997 with new renovated rooms in the Sully and Denon wings A new entrance at the porte des Lions opened in 1998 leading on the first floor to new rooms of Spanish paintings citation needed As of 2002 the Louvre s visitor count had doubled from its pre Grand Louvre levels 62 The Napoleon Courtyard and I M Pei s pyramid in its center at dusk 21st century Edit Ceiling by Cy Twombly installed in 2010 in the Salle des Bronzes before the room s redesign in 2021President Jacques Chirac who had succeeded Mitterrand in 1995 insisted on the return of non Western art to the Louvre upon a recommendation from his friend the art collector and dealer Jacques Kerchache fr On his initiative a selection of highlights from the collections of what would become the Musee du Quai Branly Jacques Chirac was installed on the ground floor of the Pavillon des Sessions and opened in 2000 six years ahead of the Musee du Quai Branly itself The main other initiative in the aftermath of the Grand Louvre project was Chirac s decision to create a new department of Islamic Art by executive order of 1 August 2003 and to move the corresponding collections from their prior underground location in the Richelieu Wing to a more prominent site in the Denon Wing That new section opened on 22 September 2012 together with collections from the Roman era Eastern Mediterranean with financial support from the Al Waleed bin Talal Foundation and on a design by Mario Bellini and Rudy Ricciotti 63 64 65 In 2007 German painter Anselm Kiefer was invited to create a work for the North stairs of the Perrault Colonnade Athanor This decision announces the museum s reengagement with contemporary art under the direction of Henri Loyrette fifty years after the institution s last order to a contemporary artists George Braque 66 In 2010 American painter Cy Twombly completed a new ceiling for the Salle des Bronzes the former Salle La Caze a counterpoint to that of Braque installed in 1953 in the adjacent Salle Henri II The room s floor and walls were redesigned in 2021 by Louvre architect Michel Goutal to revert the changes made by his predecessor Albert Ferran in the late 1930s triggering protests from the Cy Twombly Foundation on grounds that the then deceased painter s work had been created to fit with the room s prior decoration 67 That same year the Louvre commissioned French artist Francois Morellet to create a work for the Lefuel stairs on the first floor For L esprit d escalier Morellet redesigned the stairscase s windows echoing their original structures but distorting them to create a disturbing optical effect 68 On 6 June 2014 the Decorative Arts section on the first floor of the Cour Carree s northern wing opened after comprehensive refurbishment 69 In January 2020 under the direction of Jean Luc Martinez the museum inaugurated a new contemporary art commission L Onde du Midi by Venezuelan kinetic artist Elias Crespin The sculpture hovers under the Escalier du Midi the staircase on the South of the Perrault Colonnade 70 The Louvre like many other museums and galleries felt the impact of the COVID 19 pandemic on the arts and cultural heritage It was closed for six months during French coronavirus lockdowns and saw visitor numbers plunge to 2 7 million in 2020 from 9 6 million in 2019 and 10 2 million in 2018 which was a record year 71 72 The Pavillon des Sessions s display of non Western art from the Musee du Quai Branly opened in 2000 The Cour Visconti s ground floor covered to host the new Islamic Art Department in 2012 Islamic art display in the covered Cour Visconti 2012 Underground display of the Islamic Art Department 2012Collections EditThe Musee du Louvre owns 615 797 objects 1 of which 482 943 are accessible online since 24 March 2021 73 and displays 35 000 works of art in eight curatorial departments 2 Egyptian antiquities Edit Main article Department of Egyptian Antiquities of the Louvre The Louvre is home to one of the world s most extensive collections of art including works from diverse cultures and time periods Visitors can view iconic works like the Mona Lisa and the Winged Victory of Samothrace as well as pieces from ancient civilizations such as Egypt Greece and Rome The museum also features collections of decorative arts Islamic art and sculptures 74 The department comprising over 50 000 pieces 16 74 includes artifacts from the Nile civilizations which date from 4 000 BC to the 4th century AD 75 The collection among the world s largest overviews Egyptian life spanning Ancient Egypt the Middle Kingdom the New Kingdom Coptic art and the Roman Ptolemaic and Byzantine periods 75 The department s origins lie in the royal collection but it was augmented by Napoleon s 1798 expeditionary trip with Dominique Vivant the future director of the Louvre 16 76 77 After Jean Francois Champollion translated the Rosetta Stone Charles X decreed that an Egyptian Antiquities department be created Champollion advised the purchase of three collections formed by Edme Antoine Durand Henry Salt and Bernardino Drovet these additions added 7 000 works Growth continued via acquisitions by Auguste Mariette founder of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo Mariette after excavations at Memphis sent back crates of archaeological finds including The Seated Scribe 16 76 77 76 Guarded by the Great Sphinx of Tanis the collection is housed in more than 20 rooms Holdings include art papyrus scrolls mummies tools clothing jewelry games musical instruments and weapons 16 76 77 75 Pieces from the ancient period include the Gebel el Arak Knife from 3400 BC The Seated Scribe and the Head of King Djedefre Middle Kingdom art known for its gold work and statues moved from realism to idealization this is exemplified by the schist statue of Amenemhatankh and the wooden Offering Bearer The New Kingdom and Coptic Egyptian sections are deep but the statue of the goddess Nephthys and the limestone depiction of the goddess Hathor demonstrate New Kingdom sentiment and wealth 75 76 The Gebel el Arak Knife 3300 3200 BC handle elephant ivory blade flint length 25 8 cm The Seated Scribe 2613 2494 BC painted limestone and inlaid quartz height 53 7 cm The Great Sphinx of Tanis circa 2600 BC rose granite height 183 cm width 154 cm thickness 480 cm Akhenaten and Nefertiti 1345 BC painted limestone height 22 2 cm width 12 3 cm thickness 9 8 cmNear Eastern antiquities Edit Near Eastern antiquities the second newest department dates from 1881 and presents an overview of early Near Eastern civilization and first settlements before the arrival of Islam The department is divided into three geographic areas the Levant Mesopotamia Iraq and Persia Iran The collection s development corresponds to archaeological work such as Paul Emile Botta s 1843 expedition to Khorsabad and the discovery of Sargon II s palace 75 16 119 These finds formed the basis of the Assyrian museum the precursor to today s department 75 The museum contains exhibits from Sumer and the city of Akkad with monuments such as the Prince of Lagash s Stele of the Vultures from 2450 BC and the stele erected by Naram Sin King of Akkad to celebrate a victory over barbarians in the Zagros Mountains The 2 25 metre 7 38 ft Code of Hammurabi discovered in 1901 displays Babylonian Laws prominently so that no man could plead their ignorance The 18th century BC mural of the Investiture of Zimrilim and the 25th century BC Statue of Ebih Il found in the ancient city state of Mari are also on display at the museum 77 A significant portion of the department covers the ancient Levant including the Sarcophagus of Eshmunazar II discovered in 1855 which catalyzed Ernest Renan s 1860 Mission de Phenicie It contains one of the world s largest and most comprehensive collections of Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions The section also covers North African Punic antiquities Punic Western Phoenician given the significant French presence in the region in the 19th century with early finds including the 1843 discovery of the Ain Nechma inscriptions The Persian portion of Louvre contains work from the archaic period like the Funerary Head and the Persian Archers of Darius I 75 78 This section also contains rare objects from Persepolis which were also lent to the British Museum for its Ancient Persia exhibition in 2005 79 Phoenician metal bowls from Cyprus The Statue of Ebih Il circa 2400 BC gypsum schist shells and lapis lazuli height 52 5 cm The Code of Hammurabi 1755 1750 BC basalt height 225 cm width 79 cm thickness 47 cm Assyrian lamassu Human headed winged bull circa 713 716 BC 4 2 x 4 4 x 1 m Frieze of archers from the Palace of Darius at Susa circa 510 BC bricks Statues from the Sidon MithraeumGreek Etruscan and Roman Edit Greek antiquities in Room 11The Greek Etruscan and Roman department displays pieces from the Mediterranean Basin dating from the Neolithic to the 6th century 80 The collection spans from the Cycladic period to the decline of the Roman Empire This department is one of the museum s oldest it began with appropriated royal art some of which was acquired under Francis I 75 16 155 58 Initially the collection focused on marble sculptures such as the Venus de Milo Works such as the Apollo Belvedere arrived during the Napoleonic Wars but these pieces were returned after Napoleon I s fall in 1815 In the 19th century the Louvre acquired works including vases from the Durand collection bronzes such as the Borghese Vase from the Bibliotheque nationale 16 92 80 The archaic is demonstrated by jewellery and pieces such as the limestone Lady of Auxerre from 640 BC and the cylindrical Hera of Samos c 570 560 BC 75 81 After the 4th century BC focus on the human form increased exemplified by the Borghese Gladiator The Louvre holds masterpieces from the Hellenistic era including The Winged Victory of Samothrace 190 BC and the Venus de Milo symbolic of classical art 16 155 The long Galerie Campana displays an outstanding collection of more than one thousand Greek potteries In the galleries paralleling the Seine much of the museum s Roman sculpture is displayed 80 The Roman portraiture is representative of that genre examples include the portraits of Agrippa and Annius Verus among the bronzes is the Greek Apollo of Piombino Cycladic head of a woman 27th century BC marble height 27 cm Volute krater that depicts Actaeon s death circa 450 440 BC ceramic height 51 cm diameter 33 1 cm The Winged Victory of Samothrace 200 190 BC Parian marble 244 cm Venus de Milo 130 100 BC marble height 203 cmIslamic art Edit The Islamic art collection the museum s newest spans thirteen centuries and three continents 82 These exhibits of ceramics glass metalware wood ivory carpet textiles and miniatures include more than 5 000 works and 1 000 shards 83 Originally part of the decorative arts department the holdings became separate in 2003 Among the works are the Pyxide d al Mughira a 10th century ivory box from Andalusia the Baptistery of Saint Louis an engraved brass basin from the 13th or 14th century Mamluk period and the 10th century Shroud of Saint Josse from Iran 16 119 121 82 The collection contains three pages of the Shahnameh an epic book of poems by Ferdowsi in Persian and a Syrian metalwork named the Barberini Vase 83 In September 2019 a new and improved Islamic art department was opened by Princess Lamia bint Majed Al Saud The new department exhibits 3 000 pieces were collected from Spain to India via the Arabian peninsula dating from the 7th to the 19th centuries 84 The Pyxis of al Mughira 10th century maybe 968 ivory 15 x 8 cm Iranian tile with bismillah turn of the 13th 14th century molded ceramic luster glaze and glaze The Baptistere de Saint Louis by Muhammad ibn al Zayn 1320 1340 hammering engraving inlay in brass gold and silver 50 2 x 22 2 cm Door 15th 16th century sculpted painted and gilded walnut woodSculptures Edit See also List of works in the Louvre The Cour Marly of the Louvre where many French sculptures are exhibitedThe sculpture department consists of works created before 1850 not belonging in the Etruscan Greek and Roman department 85 The Louvre has been a repository of sculpted material since its time as a palace however only ancient architecture was displayed until 1824 except for Michelangelo s Dying Slave and Rebellious Slave 16 397 401 Initially the collection included only 100 pieces the rest of the royal sculpture collection being at Versailles It remained small until 1847 when Leon Laborde was given control of the department Laborde developed the medieval section and purchased the first such statues and sculptures in the collection King Childebert and stanga door respectively 16 397 401 The collection was part of the Department of Antiquities but was given autonomy in 1871 under Louis Courajod a director who organized a wider representation of French works 85 16 397 401 In 1986 all post 1850 works were relocated to the new Musee d Orsay The Grand Louvre project separated the department into two exhibition spaces the French collection is displayed in the Richelieu Wing and foreign works in the Denon Wing 85 The collection s overview of French sculpture contains Romanesque works such as the 11th century Daniel in the Lions Den and the 12th century Virgin of Auvergne In the 16th century Renaissance influence caused French sculpture to become more restrained as seen in Jean Goujon s bas reliefs and Germain Pilon s Descent from the Cross and Resurrection of Christ The 17th and 18th centuries are represented by Gian Lorenzo Bernini s 1640 1 Bust of Cardinal Richelieu Etienne Maurice Falconet s Woman Bathing and Amour menacant and Francois Anguier s obelisks Neoclassical works includes Antonio Canova s Psyche Revived by Cupid s Kiss 1787 16 397 401 The 18th and 19th centuries are represented by the French sculptors like Alfred Barye and Emile Guillemin The Tomb of Philippe Pot 1477 and 1483 limestone paint gold and lead height 181 cm width 260 cm depth 167 cm The King s Fame Riding Pegasus by Antoine Coysevox 1701 1702 Carrara marble height 3 15 m width 2 91 m depth 1 28 m Group sculpture by Nicolas Coustou 1701 1712 marble height 2 44 m Louis XV as Jupiter 1731 probably marble height 1 95 m width 1 20 m depth 68 cmDecorative arts Edit Some of the Second Empire style rooms of the apartments of Napoleon III The Objets d art collection spans the time from the Middle Ages to the mid 19th century The department began as a subset of the sculpture department based on royal property and the transfer of work from the Basilique Saint Denis the burial ground of French monarchs that held the Coronation Sword of the Kings of France 86 16 451 454 Among the budding collection s most prized works were pietre dure vases and bronzes The Durand collection s 1825 acquisition added ceramics enamels and stained glass and 800 pieces were given by Pierre Revoil The onset of Romanticism rekindled interest in Renaissance and Medieval artwork and the Sauvageot donation expanded the department with 1 500 middle age and faience works In 1862 the Campana collection added gold jewelry and maiolicas mainly from the 15th and 16th centuries 16 451 454 87 The works are displayed on the Richelieu Wing s first floor and in the Apollo Gallery named by the painter Charles Le Brun who was commissioned by Louis XIV the Sun King to decorate the space in a solar theme The medieval collection contains the coronation crown of Louis XIV Charles V s sceptre and the 12th century porphyry vase 88 The Renaissance art holdings include Giambologna s bronze Nessus and Deianira and the tapestry Maximillian s Hunt 86 From later periods highlights include Madame de Pompadour s Sevres vase collection and Napoleon III s apartments 86 In September 2000 the Louvre Museum dedicated the Gilbert Chagoury and Rose Marie Chagoury Gallery to display tapestries donated by the Chagourys including a 16th century six part tapestry suite sewn with gold and silver threads representing sea divinities which was commissioned in Paris for Colbert de Seignelay Secretary of State for the Navy Henry II style wardrobe c 1580 walnut and oak partially gilded and painted height 2 06 m width 1 50 m depth 0 60 m 89 Louis XIV style cabinet on stand by Andre Charles Boulle c 1690 1710 oak frame resinous wood and walnut ebony veneer tortoiseshell brass and pewter marquetry and ormolu Louis XVI style commode of Madame du Barry 1772 oak frame veneer of pearwood rosewood and kingwood soft paste Sevres porcelain gilded bronze white marble and glass height 0 87 m width 1 19 m depth 0 48 m 90 Louis XVI style barometer thermometer c 1776 soft paste Sevres porcelain enamel and ormolu height 1 m width 0 27 m 91 Painting Edit Further information Catalog of paintings in the Louvre Museum Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci c 1503 1506 perhaps continuing until c 1517 oil on poplar panel 77 cm 53 cmThe painting collection has more than 7 500 works 11 229 from the 13th century to 1848 and is managed by 12 curators who oversee the collection s display Nearly two thirds are by French artists and more than 1 200 are Northern European The Italian paintings compose most of the remnants of Francis I and Louis XIV s collections others are unreturned artwork from the Napoleon era and some were bought 92 16 199 201 272 273 333 335 The collection began with Francis who acquired works from Italian masters such as Raphael and Michelangelo 93 and brought Leonardo da Vinci to his court 94 95 After the French Revolution the Royal Collection formed the nucleus of the Louvre When the d Orsay train station was converted into the Musee d Orsay in 1986 the collection was split and pieces completed after the 1848 Revolution were moved to the new museum French and Northern European works are in the Richelieu Wing and Cour Carree Spanish and Italian paintings are on the first floor of the Denon Wing 16 199 Exemplifying the French School are the early Avignon Pieta of Enguerrand Quarton the anonymous painting of King Jean le Bon c 1360 possibly the oldest independent portrait in Western painting to survive from the postclassical era 16 201 Hyacinthe Rigaud s Louis XIV Jacques Louis David s The Coronation of Napoleon Theodore Gericault s The Raft of the Medusa and Eugene Delacroix s Liberty Leading the People Nicolas Poussin the Le Nain brothers Philippe de Champaigne Le Brun La Tour Watteau Fragonard Ingres Corot and Delacroix are well represented 96 Northern European works include Johannes Vermeer s The Lacemaker and The Astronomer Caspar David Friedrich s The Tree of Crows Rembrandt s The Supper at Emmaus Bathsheba at Her Bath and The Slaughtered Ox The Italian holdings are notable particularly the Renaissance collection 97 The works include Andrea Mantegna and Giovanni Bellini s Calvarys which reflect realism and detail meant to depict the significant events of a greater spiritual world 98 The High Renaissance collection includes Leonardo da Vinci s Mona Lisa Virgin and Child with St Anne St John the Baptist and Madonna of the Rocks The Baroque collection includes Giambattista Pittoni s The Continence of Scipio Susanna and the Elders Bacchus and Ariadne Mars and Venus and others Caravaggio is represented by The Fortune Teller and Death of the Virgin From 16th century Venice the Louvre displays Titian s Le Concert Champetre The Entombment and The Crowning with Thorns 16 378 99 The La Caze Collection a bequest to the Musee du Louvre in 1869 by Louis La Caze was the largest contribution of a person in the history of the Louvre La Caze gave 584 paintings of his personal collection to the museum The bequest included Antoine Watteau s Commedia dell arte player of Pierrot Gilles In 2007 this bequest was the topic of the exhibition 1869 Watteau Chardin entrent au Louvre La collection La Caze 100 Some of the best known paintings of the museum have been digitized by the French Center for Research and Restoration of the Museums of France 101 The Money Changer and His Wife by Quentin Massys 1514 oil on panel 70 5 67 cm Spring by Giuseppe Arcimboldo 1573 oil on canvas 76 64 cm Susanna and the Elders by Giambattista Pittoni 1720 oil on panel 37 46 cm The Continence of Scipio by Giambattista Pittoni 1733 oil on panel 96 56 cm Diana after the Bath by Francois Boucher 1742 oil on canvas 73 56 cm Oath of the Horatii by Jacques Louis David 1784 oil on canvas height 330 cm width 425 cm The Coronation of Napoleon by Jacques Louis DavidPaintings by Leonardo da Vinci purchased by Francois I Virgin of the Rocks The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne Leonardo Prints and drawings Edit The prints and drawings department encompasses works on paper 16 496 The origins of the collection were the 8 600 works in the Royal Collection Cabinet du Roi which were increased via state appropriation purchases such as the 1 200 works from Fillipo Baldinucci s collection in 1806 and donations 16 92 102 The department opened on 5 August 1797 with 415 pieces displayed in the Galerie d Apollon The collection is organized into three sections the core Cabinet du Roi 14 000 royal copper printing plates and the donations of Edmond de Rothschild 103 which include 40 000 prints 3 000 drawings and 5 000 illustrated books The holdings are displayed in the Pavillon de Flore due to the fragility of the paper medium only a portion are displayed at one time 16 496 Three lion like heads by Charles Le Brun c 1671 black chalk pen and ink brush and gray wash white gouache on paper 21 7 32 7 cm Bacchus by Antoine Coypel black chalk white highlights and sanguine 42 7 37 7 cm Studies of Women s Heads and a Man s Head by Antoine Watteau first half of the 18th century sanguine black chalk and white chalk on gray paper 28 38 1 cm Danseuse sur la scene by Edgar Degas pastel 58 42 cm Portrait of elderly woman by Matthias Grunewald Portrait of a young woman by Hans Holbein Head of a man by Andrea del Sarto Virgin and Child by Biagio PupiniManagement administration partnerships Edit Leonardo da Vinci s Mona Lisa is the Louvre s most popular attraction Restoration workshops in the LouvreThe Louvre is owned by the French government Since the 1990s its management and governance have been made more independent 104 105 106 107 Since 2003 the museum has been required to generate funds for projects 106 By 2006 government funds had dipped from 75 percent of the total budget to 62 percent Every year the Louvre now raises as much as it gets from the state about 122 million The government pays for operating costs salaries safety and maintenance while the rest new wings refurbishments acquisitions is up to the museum to finance 108 A further 3 million to 5 million a year is raised by the Louvre from exhibitions that it curates for other museums while the host museum keeps the ticket money 108 As the Louvre became a point of interest in the book The Da Vinci Code and the 2006 film based on the book the museum earned 2 5 million by allowing filming in its galleries 109 110 In 2008 the French government provided 180 million of the Louvre s yearly 350 million budget the remainder came from private contributions and ticket sales 105 The Louvre employs a staff of 2 000 led by Director Jean Luc Martinez 111 who reports to the French Ministry of Culture and Communications Martinez replaced Henri Loyrette in April 2013 Under Loyrette who replaced Pierre Rosenberg in 2001 the Louvre has undergone policy changes that allow it to lend and borrow more works than before 104 106 In 2006 it loaned 1 300 works which enabled it to borrow more foreign works From 2006 to 2009 the Louvre lent artwork to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta Georgia and received a 6 9 million payment to be used for renovations 106 In 2009 Minister of culture Frederic Mitterrand approved a plan that would have created a storage facility 30 km 19 mi northwest of Paris to hold objects from the Louvre and two other national museums in Paris s flood zone the Musee du Quai Branly and the Musee d Orsay the plan was later scrapped In 2013 his successor Aurelie Filippetti announced that the Louvre would move more than 250 000 works of art 112 held in a 20 000 square metres 220 000 sq ft basement storage area in Lievin the cost of the project estimated at 60 million will be split between the region 49 and the Louvre 51 113 The Louvre will be the sole owner and manager of the store 112 In July 2015 a team led by British firm Rogers Stirk Harbour Partners was selected to design the complex which will have light filled work spaces under one vast green roof 112 114 In 2012 the Louvre and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco announced a five year collaboration on exhibitions publications art conservation and educational programming 115 116 The 98 5 million expansion of the Islamic Art galleries in 2012 received state funding of 31 million as well as 17 million from the Alwaleed Bin Talal Foundation founded by the eponymous Saudi prince The Republic of Azerbaijan the Emir of Kuwait the Sultan of Oman and King Mohammed VI of Morocco donated in total 26 million In addition the opening of the Louvre Abu Dhabi is supposed to provide 400 million over the course of 30 years for its use of the museum s brand 63 Loyrette has tried to improve weak parts of the collection through income generated from loans of art and by guaranteeing that 20 of admissions receipts will be taken annually for acquisitions 106 He has more administrative independence for the museum and achieved 90 percent of galleries to be open daily as opposed to 80 percent previously He oversaw the creation of extended hours and free admission on Friday nights and an increase in the acquisition budget to 36 million from 4 5 million 105 106 In March 2018 an exhibition of dozens of artworks and relics belonging to France s Louvre Museum was opened to visitors in Tehran as a result of an agreement between Iranian and French presidents in 2016 117 In the Louvre two departments were allocated to the antiquities of the Iranian civilization and the managers of the two departments visited Tehran Relics belonging to Ancient Egypt Rome and Mesopotamia as well as French royal items were showcased at the Tehran exhibition 118 119 120 Iran s National Museum building was designed and constructed by French architect Andre Godard 121 Following its time in Tehran the exhibition is set to be held in the Khorasan Grand Museum in Mashhad northeastern Iran in June 2018 122 On the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci s death the Louvre held the largest ever single exhibit of his work from 24 October 2019 to 24 February 2020 123 124 The event included over a hundred items paintings drawings and notebooks A full 11 of the fewer than 20 paintings that Da Vinci completed in his lifetime were displayed 125 Five of them are owned by the Louvre but the Mona Lisa was not included because it is in such great demand among visitors to the Louvre museum the work remained on display in its gallery Salvator Mundi was also not included since the Saudi owner did not agree to move the work from its hiding place Vitruvian Man however was on display after a successful legal battle with its owner the Galleria dell Accademia in Venice 126 127 In 2021 a Renaissance era ceremonial helmet and breastplate stolen from the museum in 1983 were recovered The museum noted that the 1983 theft had deeply troubled all the staff at the time There are few publicly accessible details on the theft itself 128 129 In May 2021 it was announced that Laurence des Cars has been picked by French president Emmanuel Macron as the next leader of the Louvre 130 131 For the first time in its 228 year history the Louvre will be directed by a woman 132 During the COVID 19 pandemic the Louvre has launched a platform where most of its works including those that are not on display can be seen The new platform collections louvre fr already has more than 482 000 illustrated records representing 75 of its rich and varied collections 133 The museum was visited by over 7 6 million visitors in 2022 up 170 percent from 2021 but still below the 10 8 million visitors in 2018 before the COVID 19 pandemic 134 Archaeological research Edit List of excavations that benefited the Louvre Rotonde d Apollon The Louvre s ancient art collections are to a significant extent the product of excavations some of which the museum sponsored under various legal regimes over time often as a companion to France s diplomacy and or colonial enterprises In the Rotonde d Apollon a carved marble panel lists a number of such campaigns led by Louis Francois Sebastien Fauvel in Greece 1818 Jean Francois Champollion in Egypt 1828 1829 Guillaume Abel Blouet and Leon Jean Joseph Dubois with the Morea expedition in Greece 1829 Adolphe Delamare fr in Algeria 1842 1845 Paul Emile Botta in the Nineveh Plains 1845 Joseph Vattier de Bourville fr in Cyrenaica 1850 Auguste Mariette in Egypt 1850 1854 Victor Langlois in Cilicia 1852 Ernest Renan with the Mission de Phenicie following the 1860 civil conflict in Mount Lebanon and Damascus 1860 1861 Leon Heuzey and Honore Daumet in Macedonia 1861 Eugene Melchior de Vogue and Edmond Duthoit in Cyprus 1863 1866 Charles Champoiseau in Samothrace 1863 Emmanuel Miller de in Thessaloniki and Thasos 1864 1865 Olivier Rayet and Albert Felix Theophile Thomas in Ionia 1872 1873 Charles Simon Clermont Ganneau in Palestine 1873 Antoine Heron de Villefosse fr in Algeria and Tunisia 1874 Ernest de Sarzec in Tello ancient Girsu Mesopotamia 1877 1900 Paul Girard in Greece 1881 Edmond Pottier Salomon Reinach and Alphonse Veyries in Myrina Aeolis 1872 1873 Marcel Auguste Dieulafoy and Jane Dieulafoy in Susa Persia 1884 1886 Charles Huber in Tayma Arabia 1885 Alfred Charles Auguste Foucher in India and present day Pakistan 1895 1897 Arthur Engel and Pierre Paris in Spain 1897 Jacques de Morgan in Susa 1897 Gaston Cros in Tello ancient Girsu 1902 Paul Pelliot in Chinese Turkestan 1907 1909 Maurice Pezard in Northern Palestine 1923 Georges Aaron Benedite in Egypt 1926 Francois Thureau Dangin in Northern Syria 1929 Henri de Genouillac in Mesopotamia 1912 1929 the Institut Francais d Archeologie Orientale in Cairo created in 1880The rest of the plaque combines donors of archaeological items many of whom were archaeologists themselves and other archaeologists whose excavations contributed to the Louvre s collections Frederic Moreau fr in France 1899 Edouard Piette in France 1902 Joseph de Baye fr in France 1899 1906 Henri and Jacques de Morgan in Susa 1909 1910 Leon Henri Martin fr 1906 1920 and his daughter Germaine in France 1976 Louis Capitan fr in France 1929 Rene de Saint Perier fr and his wife Suzanne in France 1935 Fernand Bisson de la Roque in Egypt 1922 1950 Bernard Bruyere in Egypt 1920 1951 Raymond Weill in Egypt 1952 Pierre Montet in Egypt 1921 1956 Jean Marie Casal de in the Indus Valley and Afghanistan 1950 1973 Suzanne de Saint Mathurin fr in France 1973 Andre Parrot in Mari Syria 1931 1974 Claude Frederic Armand Schaeffer in Ugarit Syria 1929 1970 Roman Ghirshman in Iraq and Iran 1931 1972 Satellites and offshoots EditSeveral museums in and outside France have been or are placed under the Louvre s administrative authority or linked to it through exclusive partnerships while not being located in the Louvre Palace Since 2019 the Louvre has also maintained a large art storage and research facility in the Northern French town of Lievin the Centre de conservation du Louvre fr which is not open to the public 135 Musee de Cluny 1926 1977 Edit Main article Musee de Cluny In February 1926 the Musee de Cluny whose creation dates back to the 19th century was brought under the aegis of the Louvre s department of decorative arts Objets d Art 136 That affiliation was terminated in 1977 137 Musee du Jeu de Paume 1947 1986 Edit Main article Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume The Jeu de Paume building in the Tuileries Garden initially intended as a sports venue was repurposed from 1909 as an art gallery In 1947 it became the exhibition space for the Louvre s collections of late 19th and early 20th paintings most prominently Impressionism as the Louvre Palace was lacking space to display them and was consequently brought under direct management by the Louvre s Departement des Peintures In 1986 these collections were transferred to the newly created Musee d Orsay 138 Gypsotheque du Louvre since 2001 Edit The gypsotheque plaster cast gallery of the Louvre is a collection of plaster casts that was formed in 1970 by the reunion of the corresponding inventories of the Louvre the Beaux Arts de Paris and the Art and Archaeology Institute of the Sorbonne University the latter two following depredations during the May 68 student unrest Initially called the Musee des Monuments Antiques from 1970 to 1978 the project was subsequently left unfinished and only came to fruition after being brought under the Louvre s management by ministerial decision in 2001 139 It is located in the Petite Ecurie fr a dependency of Versailles Palace and has been open to the public since 2012 140 Musee Delacroix since 2004 Edit Main article Musee national Eugene Delacroix The small museum located in Eugene Delacroix s former workshop in central Paris created in the 1930s has been placed under management by the Louvre since 2004 141 Louvre Lens since 2012 Edit Main article Louvre Lens The Louvre Lens follows a May 2003 initiative by then culture minister Jean Jacques Aillagon to promote cultural projects outside of Paris that would make the riches of major Parisian institutions available to a broader French public including a satellite antenne of the Louvre 142 After several rounds of competition a former mining site in the town of Lens was selected for its location and announced by Prime Minister Jean Pierre Raffarin on 2004 11 29 Japanese architects SANAA and landscape architect Catherine Mosbach were respectively selected in September 2005 to design the museum building and garden Inaugurated by President Francois Hollande on 2012 12 04 the Louvre Lens is run by the Hauts de France region under a contract convention scientifique et culturelle with the Louvre for art loans and brand use Its main attraction is an exhibition of roughly 200 artworks from the Louvre on a rotating basis presented chronologically in a single large room the Galerie du Temps or gallery of time that transcends the geographical and object type divisions along which the Parisian Louvre s displays are organized The Louvre Lens has been successful at attracting around 500 000 visitors per year until the COVID 19 pandemic 143 Louvre Abu Dhabi since 2017 Edit Main article Louvre Abu Dhabi The Louvre Abu Dhabi is a separate entity from the Louvre but the two entities have a multifaceted contractual relationship that allows the Emirati museum to use the Louvre name until 2037 and to exhibit artworks from the Louvre until 2027 144 It was inaugurated on 2017 11 08 and opened to the public three days later A 30 year agreement signed in early 2007 by French Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres and Sheik Sultan bin Tahnoon Al Nahyan establishes that Abu Dhabi shall pay 832 000 000 US 1 3 billion in exchange for the Louvre name use managerial advice art loans and special exhibitions 145 The Louvre Abu Dhabi is located on Saadiyat Island and was designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel and engineering firm of Buro Happold 146 It occupies 24 000 square metres 260 000 sq ft and is covered by an iconic metallic dome designed to cast rays of light mimicking sunlight passing through date palm fronds in an oasis The French art loans expected to total between 200 and 300 artworks during a 10 year period come from multiple museums including the Louvre the Centre Georges Pompidou the Musee d Orsay Versailles the Guimet Museum the Musee Rodin and the Musee du quai Branly 147 Controversy EditThe Louvre is involved in controversies that surround cultural property seized under Napoleon I as well as during World War II by the Nazis During Nazi occupation thousands of artworks were stolen 148 But after the war 61 233 articles on more than 150 000 seized artworks returned to France and were assigned to the Office des Biens Prives 149 In 1949 it entrusted 2 130 unclaimed pieces including 1 001 paintings to the Direction des Musees de France in order to keep them under appropriate conditions of conservation until their restitution and meanwhile classified them as MNRs Musees Nationaux Recuperation or in English the National Museums of Recovered Artwork Some 10 to 35 of the pieces are believed to come from Jewish spoliations 150 and until the identification of their rightful owners which declined at the end of the 1960s they are registered indefinitely on separate inventories from the museum s collections 151 They were exhibited in 1946 and shown all together to the public during four years 1950 1954 in order to allow rightful claimants to identify their properties then stored or displayed according to their interest in several French museums including the Louvre From 1951 to 1965 about 37 pieces were restituted Since November 1996 the partly illustrated catalogue of 1947 1949 has been accessible online and completed In 1997 Prime Minister Alain Juppe initiated the Matteoli Commission headed by Jean Matteoli to investigate the matter and according to the government the Louvre is in charge of 678 pieces of artwork still unclaimed by their rightful owners 152 During the late 1990s the comparison of the American war archives which had not been done before with the French and German ones as well as two court cases which finally settled some of the heirs rights Gentili di Giuseppe and Rosenberg families allowed more accurate investigations Since 1996 the restitutions according sometimes to less formal criteria concerned 47 more pieces 26 paintings with 6 from the Louvre including a then displayed Tiepolo until the last claims of French owners and their heirs ended again in 2006 citation needed According to Serge Klarsfeld since the now complete and constant publicity which the artworks got in 1996 the majority of the French Jewish community is nevertheless in favour of the return to the normal French civil rule of prescription acquisitive of any unclaimed good after another long period of time and consequently to their ultimate integration into the common French heritage instead of their transfer to foreign institutions like during World War II citation needed Napoleon s campaigns acquired Italian pieces by treaties as war reparations and Northern European pieces as spoils as well as some antiquities excavated in Egypt though the vast majority of the latter were seized as war reparations by the British army and are now part of collections of the British Museum On the other hand the Dendera zodiac is like the Rosetta Stone claimed by Egypt even though it was acquired in 1821 before the Egyptian Anti export legislation of 1835 The Louvre administration has thus argued in favor of retaining this item despite requests by Egypt for its return The museum participates too in arbitration sessions held via UNESCO s Committee for Promoting the Return of Cultural Property to Its Countries of Origin 153 The museum consequently returned in 2009 five Egyptian fragments of frescoes 30 cm x 15 cm each whose existence of the tomb of origin had only been brought to the authorities attention in 2008 eight to five years after their good faith acquisition by the museum from two private collections and after the necessary respect of the procedure of declassement from French public collections before the Commission scientifique nationale des collections des musees de France 154 In 2011 over 130 international artists urged a boycott of the new Guggenheim museum as well as Louvre Abu Dhabi citing reports since 2009 of abuses of foreign construction workers on Saadiyat Island including the arbitrary withholding of wages unsafe working conditions and failure of companies to pay or reimburse the steep recruitment fees being charged to laborers 155 156 According to Architectural Record Abu Dhabi has comprehensive labor laws to protect the workers but they are not conscientiously implemented or enforced 157 In 2010 the Guggenheim Foundation placed on its website a joint statement with Abu Dhabi s Tourism Development and Investment Company TDIC recognizing the following workers rights issues among others health and safety of the workers their access to their passports and other documents that the employers have been retaining to guaranty that they stay on the job using a general contractor that agrees to obey the labor laws maintaining an independent site monitor and ending the system that has been generally used in the Persian Gulf region of requiring workers to reimburse recruitment fees 158 In 2013 The Observer reported that conditions for the workers at the Louvre and New York University construction sites on Saadiyat amounted to modern day slavery 159 160 In 2014 the Guggenheim s Director Richard Armstrong said that he believed that living conditions for the workers at the Louvre project were now good and that many fewer of them were having their passports confiscated He stated that the main issue then remaining was the recruitment fees charged to workers by agents who recruit them 161 162 Later in 2014 the Guggenheim s architect Gehry commented that working with the Abu Dhabi officials to implement the law to improve the labor conditions at the museum s site is a moral responsibility 157 He encouraged the TDIC to build additional worker housing and proposed that the contractor cover the cost of the recruitment fees In 2012 TDIC engaged PricewaterhouseCoopers as an independent monitor required to issue reports every quarter Labor lawyer Scott Horton told Architectural Record that he hoped the Guggenheim project will influence the treatment of workers on other Saadiyat sites and will serve as a model for doing things right 157 163 See also Edit Arts portal Visual arts portal History portal France portalCenter for Research and Restoration of Museums of France List of museums in Paris Musee de la mode et du textileReferences Edit a b Rapport d activite 2019 du musee du Louvre p 29 website www louvre fr a b c Louvre Museum museums eu 1 Franceinfo Culture 6 January 2023 The New Oxford American Dictionary gives the respelling loo v re which has been converted to its IPA equivalent The portion within parentheses indicates a variant pronunciation Louvre Museum Inexhibit Retrieved 15 October 2016 Louvre Website Chateau to Museum 1672 and 1692 Louvre fr Archived from the original on 15 June 2011 Retrieved 21 August 2011 Louvre Website Chateau to Museum 1692 Louvre fr Archived from the original on 15 June 2011 Retrieved 21 August 2011 The Louvre A Guide to the World s Largest Art Museum How to get here Louvre Museum Archived from the original on 21 September 2008 Retrieved 28 September 2008 Menon Lakshmi 22 July 2019 Which Louvre Entrance Suits You Best All About The 4 Louvre Entrances Headout Blog Retrieved 6 July 2023 a b c d e f Pierre Rosenberg 2007 Dictionnaire amoureux du Louvre Paris Plon Philippe Malgouyres 1999 Le Musee Napoleon Reunion des Musees Nationaux Museum rules Le Louvre Retrieved 7 December 2022 Nintendo 27 November 2013 Nintendo Direct Nintendo 3DS Guide Louvre YouTube Nintendo of America Retrieved 9 July 2023 Explore the Louvre with Nintendo 3DS Guide Louvre on Nintendo 3DS Nintendo UK Nintendo of Europe GmbH Retrieved 9 July 2023 a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag Claude Mignot 1999 The Pocket Louvre A Visitor s Guide to 500 Works New York Abbeville Press ISBN 0 7892 0578 5 OCLC 40762767 a b Edwards pp 193 94 In Larousse Nouveau Dictionnaire etymologique et historique Librairie Larousse Paris 1971 p 430 loup 1080 Roland leu forme conservee dans a la queue leu leu Saint Leu etc du lat lupus loup est refait sur le fem louve ou le v a empeche le passage du ou a eu cf Louvre du lat pop lupara the etymology of the word louvre is from lupara feminine pop Latin form of lupus In Lebeuf Abbe Fernand Bournon Histoire de la ville et de tout le diocese de Paris par l abbe Lebeuf Vol 2 Paris Fechoz et Letouzey 1883 p 296 Louvre a b Edwards p 198 Nore p 274 Jean Philippe Boulle Son of Andre Charles Boulle V amp A 21 July 2019 Death of Andre Charles Boulle Mercure de France March 1732 Masters of marquetry in the 17th century Boulle Khanacademy Chaundy Bob 29 September 2006 Faces of the Week BBC Retrieved 5 October 2007 Robert W Berger 1999 Public Access to Art in Paris A Documentary History from the Middle Ages to 1800 University Park Pennsylvania State University Press pp 83 86 a b c d Nora p 278 Carbonell p 56 Oliver pp 21 22 Monaghan Sean M Rodgers Michael 2000 French Sculpture 1800 1825 Canova 19th Century Paris Project School of Art and Design San Jose State University Archived from the original on 20 April 2008 Retrieved 24 April 2008 Oliver p 35 a b c d Alderson pp 24 25 McClellan p 7 Vivien Richard Summer 2021 Quand Bonaparte nomme Denon Grande Galerie le Journal du Louvre 55 74 a b Genevieve Bresc 1989 Memoires du Louvre Paris Gallimard a b Alderson p 25 a b Plant p 36 Swetnam Burland Molly 2009 Egypt Embodied The Vatican Nile American Journal of Archaeology 113 3 440 doi 10 3764 aja 113 3 439 JSTOR 20627596 S2CID 191377908 Popkin p 88 For example Mantegna s Calvary Veronese s The Wedding at Cana The Marriage of Cana and Rogier van der Weyden s Annunciation were not returned Paolo Veronese The Gentleman s Magazine No December 1867 A Dodd and A Smith 1867 p 741 Johns Christopher M S 1998 Antonio Canova and the Politics of Patronage in Revolutionary and Napoleonic Europe University of California Press p 190 ISBN 978 0520212015 Genevieve Lacambre 2008 Les collections chinoises et japonaises du musee de la Marine avant 1878 un cas marginal pour l ethnographie Le role des voyages dans la constitution des collections ethnographiques historiques et scientifiques Actes du 130e Congres national des societes historiques et scientifiques Voyages et voyageurs La Rochelle 2005 Paris Editions du CTHS pp 94 109 a b Geraldine Barron April 2021 Le musee de Marine du Louvre un musee des techniques Artefact 5 5 143 162 doi 10 4000 artefact 695 The opening of the Assyrian museum at the Louvre Grands sites archeologiques Khorsabad Jeannine Baticle Cristina Marinas 1981 La galerie espagnole de Louis Philippe au Louvre 1838 1848 Paris Reunion des musees nationaux What is the Louvre Hobble Creek hobblecreek us Retrieved 9 December 2022 Rene Heron de Villefosse 1959 Histoire de Paris Bernard Grasset Frederic Lewino Anne Sophie Jahn 16 May 2015 Visite interdite du Louvre 4 la magnifique rampe en fer a cheval de la cour des Ecuries Le Point Olivia Tolede 9 February 2010 Guillaume Edmond 24 juin 1826 Valenciennes 20 juillet 1894 Paris INHA Institut national d histoire de l art a b c d Genevieve Bresc Bautier 2008 The Louvre a Tale of a Palace Paris Louvre editions Max Charles Emmanuel Champion de Nansouty 1906 Actualites scientifiques Volume 3 p 282 Life 4 November 1940 p 39 Alan Riding And the Show Went On Cultural Life in Nazi Occupied Paris Alfred A Knopf New York 2010 p 34 Matila Simon The battle of the Louvre The struggle to save French art in World War II Hawthorn Books 1971 p 23 Simon p 177 Vincent Delieuvin Les accrochages de la Joconde de 1797 a nos jour PDF Louvre Devorah Lauter 27 March 2010 Hitting the Louvre ceiling Los Angeles Times Rita Salerno 30 May 2019 Pierre Paulin the man who made design an art Elle Decor Michel Conil Lacoste 9 February 1972 Le salon Carre prestigieux vestibule a la Grande Galerie Le Monde Pierre Mazars 18 November 1964 1964 Le Louvre sera le plus beau musee du monde Le Figaro Online Extra Q amp A with the Louvre s Henri Loyrette Business Week Online 17 June 2002 Archived from the original on 10 December 2013 Retrieved 26 April 2015 a b Gareth Harris 13 September 2012 Islamic art covered Financial Times Carol Vogel 19 September 2012 The Louvre s New Islamic Galleries Bring Riches to Light The New York Times Denis Bocquet 20 February 2013 Structural Innovation and the Stakes of Heritage The Bellini Ricciotti Louvre Dpt of Islamic Arts Academia edu Serafin Amy 21 October 2007 The Louvre Now Accepts the Living The New York Times ISSN 0362 4331 Retrieved 16 January 2023 Doreen Carvajal 5 March 2021 Palace Intrigue at the Louvre as a Paint Job Leads to a Lawsuit New York Times Archived from the original on 28 December 2021 L esprit d escalier Francois Morellet Cnap www cnap fr Retrieved 16 January 2023 Didier Rykner 8 June 2014 La reouverture des salles d objets d art du Louvre de Louis XIV a Louis XVI La Tribune de l Art Elias Crespin l art de la ligne au Louvre LEFIGARO in French 20 January 2020 Retrieved 16 January 2023 Louvre museum visitors dropped more than 70 in virus wracked 2020 France 24 8 January 2021 Retrieved 13 January 2021 Makoni Abbianca 19 May 2021 Bienvenu Louvre museum reopens after six month shutdown Evening Standard Retrieved 7 December 2022 Le Louvre lance un site Internet plus immersif et une base publique recensant ses collections Le Journal du Dimanche Marie Anne Kleiber 24 mars 2021 website le jdd fr Louvre a b c d e f g h i Nave pp 42 43 a b Egyptian Antiquities Musee du Louvre Archived from the original on 11 March 2008 Retrieved 30 April 2008 Caubet Annie 1991 The Louvre Near Eastern antiquities Internet Archive Paris Ed Scala Reunion des musees nationaux ISBN 978 2 7118 2477 9 Decorative Arts Musee du Louvre Archived from the original on 20 October 2007 Retrieved 20 May 2008 Forgotten Empire The World of Ancient Persia University of California Press 2006 Retrieved 12 November 2007 a b c Greek Etruscan and Roman Antiquities Musee du Louvre Archived from the original on 4 November 2007 Retrieved 30 April 2008 Hannan p 252 a b Islamic Art Musee du Louvre Archived from the original on 9 November 2007 Retrieved 30 April 2008 a b Ahlund p 24 Saudi Arabia s Princess Lamia opens new and improved Islamic art space at Louvre in Paris Arab News 10 September 2019 Retrieved 11 September 2019 a b c Sculptures Musee du Louvre Archived from the original on 7 November 2007 Retrieved 23 April 2008 a b c Nave p 130 Decorative Arts Musee du Louvre Archived from the original on 3 December 2007 Retrieved 30 April 2008 Lasko p 242 Barbier Muriel Armoire said to be by Hugues Sambin louvre fr Retrieved 12 March 2021 Barbier Muriel Commode of Madame du Barry louvre fr Retrieved 12 March 2021 Catherine Voiriot Barometer thermometer louvre fr Retrieved 12 March 2021 Hannan p 262 According to Giorgio Vasari Michelangelo s Leda and the Swan now lost was acquired by Francis I Chaundy Bob 29 September 2006 Faces of the Week BBC Retrieved 5 October 2007 Paintings Musee du Louvre Archived from the original on 23 March 2008 Retrieved 23 April 2008 French artists in Louvre Museum Paris Digest 2018 Retrieved 13 September 2018 At the Heart of the Renaissance Palace Le Louvre Retrieved 9 December 2022 Hannan p 267 Hannan pp 270 78 www louvre fr Musee du Louvre Exhibitions Past Exhibitions The La Caze Collection Retrieved 23 May 2009 Archived 17 September 2011 at the Wayback Machine Galerie de tableaux en tres haute definition c2rmf fr Prints and Drawings Musee du Louvre Archived from the original on 20 December 2008 Retrieved 23 April 2008 Edmond de Rothschild Collection at the Louvre www edmondderothschildfoundations org Retrieved 7 December 2022 a b New Boss at Louvre s helm BBC News 17 June 2002 Retrieved 25 September 2008 a b c Gumbel Peter 31 July 2008 Sacre Bleu It s the Louvre Inc Time Magazine Archived from the original on 29 December 2008 Retrieved 25 September 2008 a b c d e f Baum Geraldine 14 May 2006 Cracking the Louvre s code Los Angeles Times Retrieved 25 September 2008 Louvre Organization Chart Louvre fr Official Site Archived from the original on 10 May 2008 Retrieved 24 May 2008 a b Farah Nayeri 20 January 2009 Banks compete to manage Louvre s endowment International Herald Tribune Matlack Carol 28 July 2008 The Business of Art Welcome to The Louvre Inc Der Spiegel Online Retrieved 25 September 2008 Lunn p 137 in French Un archeologue prend la direction du Louvre Le Monde du 3 April 2013 a b c Vincent Noce 13 July 2015 Louvre s superstore to go ahead despite protests Archived 15 July 2015 at the Wayback Machine The Art Newspaper Victoria Stapley Brown 10 November 2014 Designers chosen for Louvre s 60m storage outpost Archived 11 November 2014 at the Wayback Machine The Art Newspaper Rogers Stirk Harbour Partners Breaks Ground on Green Roof Topped Louvre Storage Facility ArchDaily 15 December 2017 Retrieved 7 December 2022 Scarlet Cheng 15 November 2012 Louvre and Sll Francisco museums sign five year deal Archived 16 June 2013 at the Wayback Machine The Art Newspaper Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Musee du Louvre Sign Accord www artforum com 15 November 2012 Retrieved 7 December 2022 Louvre show opens in Tehran as cultural diplomacy thrives the Guardian 6 March 2018 Retrieved 7 December 2022 Noce Vincent 5 March 2018 Against the odds Louvre exhibition opens in Tehran in historic deal The Art Newspaper Louvre lends art to Tehran for unprecedented show France24 5 March 2018 The Louvre at Tehran Louvre s Press Room March 2018 Exhibition of Louvre Museum s Items Opens in Tehran IFP News Iran Front Page Retrieved 5 March 2018 Mashhad to Host Louvre Exhibit after End of Tehran Show 16 April 2018 Prisco Jacopo Louvre debuts its biggest ever Leonardo exhibition CNN Retrieved 9 December 2022 Decoding da Vinci Inside the largest Leonardo exhibition ever assembled The Irish Times Retrieved 9 December 2022 Greenberger Alex 23 October 2019 A Guide to the Louvre s Gargantuan Leonardo da Vinci Retrospective ARTnews com Retrieved 9 December 2022 Leonardo da Vinci s Unexamined Life as a Painter The Atlantic 1 December 2019 Retrieved 1 December 2019 Louvre exhibit has most da Vinci paintings ever assembled Aleteia 1 December 2019 Retrieved 1 December 2019 The Louvre Recovers Armor Pieces Stolen Nearly 40 Years Ago The New York Times 6 March 2021 archived from the original on 6 March 2021 retrieved 7 March 2021 Paris Louvre recovers 16th century armour stolen nearly 40 years ago the Guardian 3 March 2021 Retrieved 17 January 2023 Louvre appoints Laurence des Cars as first female president the Guardian 26 May 2021 Retrieved 9 December 2022 Greenberger Alex 26 May 2021 Laurence des Cars to Become First Woman to Direct Louvre ARTnews com Retrieved 26 January 2023 Laurence des Cars to Become First Woman to Direct Louvre 26 May 2021 Fernando da Silva Alexandre 8 April 2021 O Louvre ao alcance de todos The Louvre within everyone s reach in Portuguese Jornal O Maringa Retrieved 25 July 2021 2 FranceInfo Culture 6 January 2023 A New Safe Home for the Louvre s Unseen Treasures The New York Times 12 February 2021 ISSN 0362 4331 Retrieved 17 January 2023 Helene Brossier 2014 Archives des musees nationaux musee de cluny Serie J repertoire numerique n 20144783 French National Archives p 7 Sophie Jugie Autumn 2020 Alain Erlande Brandebourg l homme des cathedrales Grande Galerie le Journal du Louvre 52 12 Le Jeu de Paume en 10 dates Jeu de Paume Jean Luc Martinez 2009 La gypsotheque du musee du Louvre a Versailles Comptes rendus des seances de l Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres 153 3 1127 1152 Benoit Lafay 17 October 2012 La gypsotheque du Louvre rouvre a Versailles Connaissance des Arts The musee national Eugene Delacroix Louvre Jean Jacques Aillagon devoile son plan de decentralisation culturelle LaDepeche fr 27 May 2003 Claire Mesureur 10 January 2020 2019 a ete un excellent millesime pour le Louvre Lens avec plus de 530 000 visiteurs France Bleu The Louvre Abu Dhabi Le Louvre Retrieved 9 December 2022 Louvre to build branch in Abu Dhabi NBC News 6 March 2007 Retrieved 17 January 2023 Louvre Abu Dhabi Ateliers Jean Nouvel Retrieved 9 December 2022 Riding Alan 6 March 2007 The Louvre s Art Priceless The Louvre s Name Expensive The New York Times Retrieved 24 April 2008 Breeden Aurelien 8 February 2018 Art Looted by Nazis Gets a New Space at the Louvre But Is It Really Home The New York Times ISSN 0362 4331 Retrieved 9 December 2022 National Museums Recovery MNR works at the musee du Louvre website louvre fr Rapport Matteoli Le pillage de l art en France pendant l occupation et la situation des 2000 oeuvres confiees aux Musees nationaux pp 50 60 69 PDF Retrieved 21 August 2011 National Museum Recovery MNR works at the musee du Louvre website collections louvre fr Rickman p 294 Merryman abstract Le Louvre se dit satisfait de la restitution des fresques egyptiennes Culture Tempsreel nouvelobs com 9 October 2009 Retrieved 21 August 2011 Nicolai Ouroussoff 16 March 2011 Abu Dhabi Guggenheim Faces Protest The New York Times Archived from the original on 3 January 2022 Retrieved 21 October 2011 Artists urge Guggenheim boycott Al Jazeera 3 April 2011 a b c Fixsen Anna What Is Frank Gehry Doing About Labor Conditions in Abu Dhabi Architectural Record 25 September 2014 Joint Statement on Workers Rights Solomon R Guggenheim Foundation 22 September 2010 accessed 8 October 2014 Carrick Glenn and David Batty In Abu Dhabi they call it Happiness Island But for the migrant workers it is a place of misery The Observer 22 December 2013 accessed 30 June 2014 Batty David Conditions for Abu Dhabi s migrant workers shame the west The Observer 22 December 2013 accessed 1 December 2014 Batty David Campaigners criticise UAE for failing to tackle exploitation of migrant workers The Observer 22 December 2013 accessed 30 June 2014 Rosenbaum Lee Guardian Expose Substandard Conditions Reportedly Persist for Some Abu Dhabi Construction Workers plus Guggenheim s TDIC s reactions updated CultureGrrl ArtsJournal com 24 December 2013 Rosenbaum Lee Satellite Museums Panel My Interchange with Guggenheim s Richard Armstrong on Abu Dhabi Human Rights Concerns CultureGrrl ArtsJournal com 24 April 2014 Kaminer Ariel and Sean O Driscoll Workers at N Y U s Abu Dhabi Site Faced Harsh Conditions The New York Times 18 May 2014 Rosenbaum Lee Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Still Stalled as Monitoring Report Is Issued on Saadiyat Island Labor Conditions CultureGrrl ArtsJournal com 4 February 2016 Works cited Edit Alderson William T Alexander Edward 1996 Museums in motion an introduction to the history and functions of museums Walnut Creek CA Published in cooperation with the American Association for State and Local History by AltaMira Press ISBN 0 7619 9155 7 OCLC 33983419 Ahlund Mikael 2000 Islamic art collections an international survey Richmond Surrey England Curzon ISBN 0 7007 1153 8 OCLC 237132457 Bierman Irene A 2003 Napoleon in Egypt Ithaca Press ISBN 0 86372 299 7 Bowkett Stephen Porter Tom 2004 Archispeak an illustrated guide to architectural terms London Spon Press ISBN 0 415 30011 8 OCLC 123339639 Carbonell Bettina 2004 Museum Studies An Anthology of Contexts Blackwell Pub ISBN 978 0 631 22825 7 OCLC 52358814 Edwards Henry Sutherland 1893 Old and New Paris Its History Its People and Its Places Paris Cassell 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Lawrence D Kritzman 1996 Realms of Memory New York Columbia University Press ISBN 978 0 231 10926 0 OCLC 234041248 Oliver Bette Wyn 2007 From Royal to National The Louvre Museum and the Bibliotheque Nationale Lexington Books ISBN 978 0 7391 1861 0 OCLC 70883061 Plant Margaret 2002 Venice Fragile City Yale University Press ISBN 978 0 300 08386 6 Venice Fragile City Popkin Jeremy D 2015 A Short History of the French Revolution 6th ed Yale University Press ISBN 978 0 205 96845 9 Rickman Gregg 1999 Swiss Banks and Jewish Souls Transaction Publishers ISBN 1 56000 426 6 OCLC 40698624 Rogers Elizabeth A 2001 Landscape design a cultural and architectural history New York Harry N Abrams ISBN 0 8109 4253 4 OCLC 186087857 results tuileries fire louvre axis Strathern Paul 2009 Napoleon in Egypt Bantam ISBN 978 0 553 38524 3 OCLC 299706472 Sturdy David 1995 Science and social status the members of the Academie des sciences 1666 1750 Woodbridge Suffolk Boydell Press ISBN 0 85115 395 X OCLC 185477008 External links Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to Musee du Louvre Official website Digital Collection Louvre s 360x180 degree panorama virtual tour 48 51 40 N 2 20 9 E 48 86111 N 2 33583 E 48 86111 2 33583 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Louvre amp oldid 1168300753, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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