Thursday, 18 April 2013

Musée du Louvre

Today we ventured no more than one kilometre from our hotel, yet we saw:

Winged Victory of Samothrace

And this...which was quite small...

Surely you don't need an explanation?!

And this...which hangs opposite the Mona Lisa in the same gallery and is, in our opinion, much more impressive...

The Wedding at Cana by Veronese

And...

The Virgin holding the sleeping baby Jesus by Bernardino

And...this one which was HUGE and very popular, yet not historically accurate!

The Coronation of Napoleon by Jacques Louis David

And...

Venus de Milo - dates from around 100BC, found by a farmer in his field on the Island of Milos.

We had our Coldplay ready to go but we didn't see Victory Leading the People - it's currently being housed in another museum and will return to the Louvre next year.

Despite spending a whole day at the Louvre we probably saw a quarter of the collection - you would have to spend a week there to explore the place properly, it's ginormous! The building itself is amazing and has an incredible history, we also saw this:

The Inverted Pyramid

Plus the museum has it's own shopping centre underground, as we discovered when they kicked us out at closing time!

 

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6 comments:

  1. Andrew H18 April 2013 at 17:20

    Well, you can take the girls out of Frankston!@#$% So excited to visit the Champs Elysees - for the shopping??? That was bad enough. If I went to the Champs Elysees I would be stealing a bike and doing a lap for sure. Granted, I can see why Collette doesn't want to be photographed with bikes again. But shopping!? Such an insult to Kadel Evans. And now, and now, you spend a day in the Louvre and the punchline is there's a shopping centre. Did they have snails in the caffeteria or just chiko rolls and the usual healthy options? Did you think that the Mona Lisa is sitting on a very modern crappy Yr 8 woodwork pine shelf with an aluminium frame that don't do anything for the 500 year old masterpiece they're showing. The Venus de Milo is much better framed. Also, the pine shelf looks like it's waiting for somebody to put a tabernacle on it. Did you notice that the child in the front left of the Mary holding Jesus picture looks totally like one of the little McTaggarts. The Cana picture, the earliest know version of Where's Wally, is a crack up. There's a chihuahua walking along the table on the right, and another one sitting on the orange guy's lap on the front left. (I was having a quiet morning) Opposite him is a dwarf with a parrot, presumably on his way to the dwarf tossing at the local fair. A bit taken by the double bass in the middle of the front. The Veronese painting is 1560's (looked it up) and the double bass wasn't invented to the 1500's, so were the latest fad at the time!! (I knew that already) Would be like painting the Wedding Feast at Cana now and having guests listening to their ipods and going into the photobooth for a selfie. Speaking of which, don't get out of the habit of the selfie - 'cause you're more beautiful than anything in the Louvre and I just bought a new double door fridge ...

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  2. Anonymous18 April 2013 at 21:57

    Have you seen Dan Brown around the traps decoding Da Vinci. That baby Jesus was a great lump of a child for poor Mary to be holding especially with no nappy on. Why wasn't Joseph there holdind him for her? Didn't realise you would be allowed to take photos in there. They were great pictures. Now Andrew, did you get your double door fridge from the man/lady at the antique shop in Ede hope? Cheers FOA

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    1. Andrew H18 April 2013 at 23:16

      I'm not answering the question about the man/lady or about the origin of the enormous, even by Louvre proportions, big enough for heaps more Bond girl photos, double door fridge, until you answer this one, "Who or what is FOA?" Haven't slept for days trying to work it out. Even googled it: Florida Optometric Association? A Tongan Island? Friends of the Argonauts? Fashion Outlets of America?

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  3. Unknown19 April 2013 at 03:13

    FOA - friend of Andrew! How did you not get that one!
    FOA - feeling otherwise arroused
    FOA - fxxxing ordinary arse
    FOA - family of aardvarks
    fOA - farting out arse
    FOA- feeding our army

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  4. Unknown19 April 2013 at 03:45

    Favorite old aunt!

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    1. Anonymous19 April 2013 at 05:28

      Well done Joel. Can't believe Andrew was so slow when it was him who started all this back at the very beginning. Did you cheat and go back to the first couple of days. I'm surprised he didn't. Cheers FOA

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