Monday 3 October 2016

Musée du Louvre

Hello!!

Now i'm going to tell you about a place many people would probably already know about. What place is it? A quick guess perhaps? Well you can see it clearly from this post's title actually..

The museum's main building and the iconic glass pyramid in front of it
Musée du Louvre, french for Louvre Museum, is a very well known museum in Paris, France, and one of its landmark. The museum itself is housed in the Louvre Palace. The museum had a huge collections of arts, starting from painting, sculptures, and many objects d'arts. The total collection as in today is more than 380.000 displayed objects and 35.000 works of art.

Before actually being a museum, Louvre had a long history. When and who built the building in the first place was unknown, the oldest history known is that in the 12th century as Louvre Palace, the fortress by Phillip II. Later in the 14th century, Charles V changed the building into a residence and in 1546, Francis I modificate it in French Revulotionary style. After Louis XIV then chose to live in the Versailles Palace instead, the Louvre Palace was used as a residence for artists.
Arts are displayed even on the ceilings, mostly Classical Arts
The building was transformed into a museum in 1791, when French was having the French Revolution. During that time, the Assembly declared that Louvre will be "a place for bringing together monuments of all science and arts". The museum opened on 10th of August, 1793 with an exhibit of 537 paintings. The date itself is the anniversary of the monarchy's demise. Later, the building had a structural problem, and it was closed from 1796 until 1801.
The Museum's location
The museum is located in the center of Paris, capital of France. The neighbourhood is known as the 1st arrondissement. The building had 3 entrances; the main entrance with the glass pyramid, an entrance from Carrousel du Louvre, an underground shopping mall, and at the Porte des Lions, near the western end.

The museum had a massive collection of arts, divided into eight curratorial departments, in which each deparment had several rooms.

Some of the egyptian collections
The first department is the Egyptian Antiquities. It displays several antiques originated from egypt like mummies, papyrus scrolls, tools, clothing, jewelry, weapons, and musical instruments. It occupies room 1 until 19, including the temple rom and the. sarcophagi room. It holds more than 50.000 pieces of art, including a large sphinx in the entrance of the department.

Near Eastern department collections
The Near Eastern Antiquities department is the second newest department. It hold arts from the Arabian Penissula, North Africa, and central asia before the Islamic age. The department is divided into 3 geographic areas, Levant, Mesopotania, and Irac.

Greek, Etruscan, and Roman arts collections
The department of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman antiquities holds arts from the Neolithic ages, Cycladic period, until the Roman Empire. Most of the collections are sculptures and classical arts, but it has expanded and now it also had other stuffs like vases and other object d'arts. It is one of the earliest department the museum had.

Islamic arts collections
The Islamic Arts department is the newest department in the museum. It displays ceramics, glass, metalware, wood, ivory, carpet, textiles, and miniatures spanning 1300 years of Islamic history from Spain until Southeast Asia. It includes around 5000 works and 1000 shards. It was originally part of the decotative arts department, but later made into its own department.

Sculptures collection
Example of the sculpture exhibition, people are allowed
to take photos and artists are allowed to draw the sculptures
The Sculpture Department holds sculptures that does not belong in the Greek, Etruscan, and Roman antiquities. The department was seperated into two areas, the French collection thats located in the Richelieu Wing and the foreign collection thats located in the Denon wing. The collection overview French sculptures including the romanesque works.

Decorative arts collection
The Decorative Arts department holds various type of arts (Object d'art) from the middle ages until the 19th century. The collections include jewelries, silverwares, stained glasses, enamels, furnitures, rugs, and many more. It holds around 1500 middle-age and faience works. The works are displayed in rge Richelieu Wing and the Apollo Gallery.

Painting collections
One of the galleries for the Painting Department
The Mona Lisa is one of the most anticipated exhibit
The Painting department holds a massive collection of more than 7.500 works from the 13th century until 1848. Nearly two-thirds are painted by French artist and others are mostly from Northern Europe and Italy. One of the collection here is the painting almost everyone know about, Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. But if you take a look at the pictures above, you can see that Mona Lisa is actually really small compared to the other paintings!

Paper based print and drawings collections
The Prints and Drawings department holds thousands of works on paper. The works include drawings, prints, and illustrated books from the royal collection. The arts are displayed in the Pavillon de Flore but due to its fragileness, only some are displayed at a time.

The Pavillion de l'Horoge
Additionally, the Pavillion de l'Horoge is located on the west wing of the Louvre Palace. This building is a museum that exhibits the history of the Louvre Museum, equipped with interactive models, digital displays, archived documents, films, and artworks to help telling the story.

I think thats all for now, I hope the information is helpful and poke your interest. Forgive me if there are any mistakes. Are you interested to go to the Louvre Museum now?

sources :
http://www.louvre.fr/en/departements
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louvre#Collections

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