Italian painting in perspectiveThe Grande Galerie

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The 'Grande Galerie' Room 710, Denon wing, Level 1

The Grande Galerie has been a hotspot in Louvre since the palace became a museum. And the emblematic gallery has a long history! Nowadays, visitors come to the Grande Galerie to see the Louvre’s extraordinary collection of Italian paintings, one of the largest and most impressive of its kind.

An emblematic gallery

Dozens upon dozens of paintings hanging one after the other as far as the eye can see in a majestic long gallery…The Grande Galerie was built at the end of the 16th century to link two royal palaces:  the Louvre and Tuileries. After the French Revolution of 1789, it was one of the first parts of the former palace to open to the public once the Louvre became a museum. Today, the Grande Galerie is the very symbol of the museum. Take a stroll down its long history.

A waterfront gallery

As king of France, Henri IV undertook major construction work on the Louvre starting in 1595. To assert his new power, he took cues from the great builder kings who came before him. His grand architectural plan to enlarge and spruce up the dusty old palace of the French monarchy included linking the Louvre to the elegant Tuileries palace (now gone) that the queen Catherine de’ Medici had had built a few decades before him.

The star feature of this project, known as the ‘Grand Design’, was an immense corridor-like gallery that ran alongside the Seine: the ‘waterfront gallery’. Built mostly by the architects Louis Métezeau and Jacques Androuët du Cerceau, this huge building which connected one palace to another measured 460 metres! At the time, it was the longest of its kind in Europe.

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The 'Grande Galerie' Room 710, Denon wing, Level 1

A place where art reigns

>When he was just a lad, this long gallery served as playground to Louis XIII. When Louis became king, he continued the work started by his father, Henri IV. In 1641, he called upon the painter Nicolas Poussin to decorate the space, but the project was never finished.

It was under the reign of Louis XIV that the first floor of this vast gallery became a place to display works of art by members of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. This was fitting since the ground floor had housed workshops and lodgings for artists who worked for the kings since Henri IV. The Grande Galerie was also the setting for major events, like the laying-on of hands ceremony, when the king touched the abscesses of people suffering from disease. Indeed, it was believed that the king’s touch had the power to heal.

Mantegna’s San Sebastian

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The Musée du Louvre is born

It was during the reign of Louis XVI that the project to dedicate the Grande Galerie to the permanent display of the royal painting collection took shape. The idea of transforming the Louvre into a museum saw the light of day. The painter Hubert Robert had several possibilities in mind for the Grande Galerie. Then the Revolution broke out, and on 10 August 1793, the Muséum central des arts was created and opened to the public. The Grande Galerie had been dedicated to the arts from the time of its construction; in the newfound museum, it continued to serve as a setting for art when the royal collection of painting was moved there.

Under the First Empire, when the museum was re-named the Musée Napoléon, the architects Percier and Fontaine were entrusted with re-fashioning the Grande Galerie to make it even more attractive. They created nine bays separated by sumptuous columns that support a series of arches.

Lighting up the gallery

To create optimal conditions for admiring this extraordinary collection, the choice was made to light the space from above by means of glass ceilings that bring in daylight. Napoleon III’s architect, Hector Lefuel, opened up the ceiling to create skylights. Natural and evenly-diffused light prevented unsightly glares on the paintings that hung below.

Today, masterpiece after masterpiece by the greatest names in Italian painting grace the walls of the Grande Galerie: Mantegna, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Arcimboldo, Caravaggio, to name but a few.

Masterpieces in the Grande Galerie

  • Andrea Mantegna, Saint Sebastian

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Did you know?

Leonardo takes pride of place at the Louvre

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Leonardo da Vinci, Portrait of a Lady from the Court of Milan, known as La Belle Ferronnière Room 710 (Grande Galerie), Denon wing, Level 1

Napoleon I’s wedding

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Benjamin Zix, Wedding Procession of Napoleon I and Marie-Louise of Austria (detail)

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