Paris: Louvre Museum

The Louvre is one of the most important museums in the world. Located in Paris, France, in the palace of the Louvre.

With over eight million visitors in 2006 is by far the most visited art museum in the world.

The building that houses the museum is the Louvre. Its origin is in a twelfth-century fortress, with extensions and more late Renaissance. In the building King Charles V amassed their art collections. Subsequent monarchs Francis I and Henry II planned reforms of the palace, to make it truly a Renaissance royal residence. It was Queen Catherine de Medici outlining the project that made the great palace of the Louvre is today, work that continued Henry IV after the wars of religion.

The construction of the Palace of Versailles, the Louvre made the stay vacated by the royal family, and therefore it was installed, and in the eighteenth century the French Academy first, and then the remaining schools. There were held annual exhibitions of the Academy of Painting and Sculpture.

Collections

The Louvre museum currently has several collections of works of art from civilizations, cultures and times vary.Contains about 300,000 pieces, of which only 35,000 are exposed.

The Louvre art shows before 1848, later works are displayed in the Musée d'Orsay and contemporary art at the Centre Pompidou.

In the Louvre is the Mona Lisa's famous but no less famous painter and sculptor Leonardo Da Vinci and other works of artists such as the Venus de Milo, the Winged Victory and the seated scribe. Although these facts have caused tensions between the French and the Italians, Greeks and Egyptians were the first "takeover" of his most important works.

Apart from that we can also find it works quite well known authors such as Jacques-Louis David, Fragonard, Rembrandt, Rubens, Titian, Poussin, Goya or even Spanish and Zurbarán.

The oriental antiquities department retains objects current region between India and the Mediterranean Sea. Since Neolithic times, many civilizations have occurred in this area, showing the emergence of a political administration, military and religious. It is also the birthplace of writing, which made an appearance around 3300 BC in Uruk Mesopotamia.

The museum soon had to bend the space devoted to Islamic art to display at least 3005 works.

Featured Paintings

Thirteenth to fifteenth century

• Madonna with Angels, Cimabue (c. 1270)
• St. Francis receiving the stigmata, Giotto (c. 1290-1300)
• Portrait of John II the Good, Anonymous (c. 1350).
• Virgin of Chancellor Rolin, Jan van Eyck (c. 1435).
• Portrait of Charles VII, Jean Fouquet (1445-1448).
• Il Condottiere, Antonello da Messina (1475).
• San Sebastian, Andrea Mantegna (1480)
• The Ship of Fools, Hieronymus Bosch (1490-1500)
• Self Portrait, Albrecht Dürer (1493).

Renaissance: XVI Century

• The Virgin of the Rocks, Leonardo da Vinci (1483-1486)
• The Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci (1503-1506)
• The Virgin, the Infant Jesus and St. Anne, Leonardo da Vinci (1508)
• La Belle Jardiniere, Raphael (1508).
• Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, Raphael (c. 1515)
• The Wedding at Cana, Paolo Veronese (1562-1563).

XVII Century

• Charles I of England, Sir Anthony van Dyck (1635)
• Still Life, Willem Heda (1637)
• San Jose carpenter, Georges de la Tour (1642)
• The foot varus, José de Ribera (1642)
• Pilgrims of Emmaus, Rembrandt (1648)
• Child beggar, Murillo (h.1650)
• Bathsheba in the bath, Rembrandt (1654)
• The Flayed Ox, Rembrandt (1655)
• Exvoto 1662, Philippe de Champaigne (1662)
• The Lacemaker, Johannes Vermeer (1669-1670)
• Et in Arcadia ego, Nicolas Poussin (1637-1638)

Eighteenth Century

• Portrait of Louis XIV, Hyacinthe Rigaud (1701)
• Embarkation for Cythera, Antoine Watteau (1717)
• Still Life with Cat and stripes, Jean Siméon Chardin (1728)
• Oath of the Horatii, Jacques-Louis David (1784)
• Master Hare, Joshua Reynolds (1788-1789)
• Portrait of the Countess of Carpio, Francisco de Goya (1794-1795)

Nineteenth century

• Bonaparte visiting the plague victims of Jaffa, Antoine-Jean Gros (1804)
• The Raft of the Medusa, Théodore Géricault (1819)
• Bridge of Narni, Camille Corot (1826)
• Liberty Leading the People, Eugène Delacroix (1830)
• The two sisters, Chassériau Théodore (1843)
• The Turkish Bath, Ingres (1862)

Featured Sculptures

• Write seated, anonymous author (2480-2350 BC)
• Venus de Milo, anonymous author.
• Winged Victory of Samothrace, probably Pithókritos Rhodes, (to the 190 BC)
• Cupid and Psyche, by Antonio Canova (ca.1800)

More information: www.wikipedia.org .