|
|
| © Musée du Louvre/A. Dequier |
|
|
 |
| Author(s) |
|
Sandrine Bernardeau, conférencière RMN
Direction des Publics, conseil à la visite. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Opening days: Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday
Duration: 1 hr. 30 mins.
  
On their first visit to the Louvre, people often want to see the museum’s three great ladies — the Venus de Milo, the Victory of Samothrace, and Mona Lisa. As you follow this accessible guided tour, you will (re)discover these and other key works and reflect upon that indefinable notion of “masterpiece.”
When the museum first opened in 1793, playing host to the former royal collections, its goal was to provide illustrious educational models for the artists of the future to ensure the revival of the “grand style” of the past. Although you will still come across students and copyists in the exhibition rooms today, museum policy has changed radically. Nearly six million visitors from every country and culture in the world flock to the Louvre each year, and there are several different ways of visiting the museum. However, there is always a quasi-universal crowd around certain “masterpieces,” which seem to strike a chord in the hearts of all spectators, whatever their nationality or culture.
In the 4th century BC, the Greek philosopher Plato wrote that an artist could never attain ideal Beauty. Artists of every generation have been confronted with this question of supreme, timeless Beauty and suggested answers that reflected the age in which they lived and their particular genius. Some of these answers still seem to find an echo in us today.
But with the arrival of the 19th century, the work of art acquired new functions and the masterpiece was no longer necessarily synonymous with Beauty, with aesthetic abstraction intended to delight the eye. Some works resounded with this new tone, in many ways heralding the status of contemporary works in present-day society.
Far from being chronological, this tour spotlights works in front of which visitors spontaneously come to a halt.
|
|
Starting from the Pyramid, head toward the Sully wing. Go round the escalators and take elevator D or E (on your right) to the mezzanine floor ("Mezzanine-accès aux collections"). Enter the Sully wing and head toward the Medieval Louvre; turn left at the entrance and take elevator G to the 1st floor. Turn right out of the elevator, and cross the landing to enter the Bronze Room. Go straight on into Room 74. Turn right; elevator C is on your right when you leave the room. Take the elevator down to the ground floor to Greek Antiquities. The first work on the trail, the Venus de Milo, is on your left when you enter Room 7.
|
|
|
