Since the last entry, there has been a day of mostly writing postcards & novel revisions (Friday), a day of mostly writing and then of running out to the Marche aux Puces to buy enough of the tiny pietons (creche figures) that one finds in gallettes to fill out our missing members – a lot, since we only earned one donkey, last year – and a small crystal bowl, and to buy a cheap athletics bag for our weekend trip to Montpellier next weekend, then buy some groceries on the way home (Saturday), and then a day of mostly wandering around the cold streets of Laon and having a grand lunch at the cathedral brasserie opposite the cathedral (yesterday, Sunday).
Today, I went to the Louvre, and am home nursing my feet and eating a late lunch of Special K and milk. Tomorrow the Louvre is closed, so I’ll go to the Museé d’Orsay, and then Wednesday I’ll go back to the Louvre with my pastels and my camp stool. Thursday, we’ll see.
So what is that like, going to the Louvre Museum? For me, it was first a matter of careful packing and dressing. Into my small plastic shopping bag from Galignani Bookstore (using shopping bags for carrying even one’s purse is a trick I learned of old in Rome) went my slim reading book (Rousseau’s Reveries of a Solitary Walker), my postcards that still needed mailing, my small sketchbook from Santa Claus, and my small pencil case with inkwash brush pens, pencils, and watercolors. I put on my undies, long-johns (shirt and pants), wool socks, sweater, jeans, blazer and most comfortable shoes, then wool coat, new knit gloves (old ones became too holy at last, yesterday), Roman woolen foulard (as a scarf), and blue fleece hat. Then I set off, a half an hour behind Robin, who was off to Orsay as usual.
Once at the Louvre (walk to Denfert-Rochereau station, take Metro 4 to Châtelet, change for Metro 1, take it to Palais-Royale-Musee du Louvre, follow the signs through the shopping gallery and security check), I jammed my gloves, hat & foulard in the pockets of my coat (noticing that my nice new gloves have left light-blue fuzz all over my wool coat) and checked my coat at the Denon Coat-Check (there are at least two Coat-Checks, at the various entrances to the various wings of the palace), got my 4-day pass – having carefully written my name in the correct blanks – stamped at the entrance to Denon (ancient art, mostly), and went on in.
The plan was to case the whole joint and then return for later drawing, but of course this could not be. The first thing to happen was that the room I came up into was full of Roman statuary, the first of which to catch my eye happened to have been carved for Herodes Atticus in order to decorate his little place out on the Via Appia called the Triopium, so I was immediately hooked (the Big Novel being about H. A.’s adoptive daughter, Ourania) and decided to go through ALL the Roman statuary, looking for other refugees from the Triopium. In the end, I found about twelve, and pledged to return to sketch at least one of the nicest (i.e., the first), which I had used to rub the worst of the rust off my sketching (ouch!). Then – after scoping out a place on the upper landing where I can sketch the Nike of Samothrace – I went to do homage to the Etruscan collection, specifically the gorgeous gold granulated jewelry and the beautiful terracotta portrait bust of the maiden, who deserves a pastel treatment, too. Then I thought it was high time I actually visited the Venus de Milo, and found a spot just to the left of the endless streams of grinning tourists getting their picture taken with her, and did my first serious sketch with my ink-wash pen.
I would have loved to use more than one intensity of grey, but standing up, that was really impossible, so I did what I could with light touches of the tip of the pen: not so great. Someone admired what I was doing, but it is the statue that is truly admirable. My intense scrutiny turned up some interesting gaffes in the drapery, however, and of course the reason I started to sketch was the curious line across the hips, which seems to indicate a very thin ribbon tied there…I got her from navel to knee.
Then it was time to wander, the idea being to walk as briskly as possible to counteract the effects of standing so long in one place (maybe 40 minutes on the Venus sketch?), so I went down to the cold, cold ground floor’s little collection of Northern European, high medieval religious sculpture, nearly all in wood, and came face to face with not only a really gorgeous Magdalen, but probably one of the most beautiful Christs I’ve ever seen – and believe me when I say I’ve seen quite a few -- second only to the Pantokrator in the cathedral at Cefalù, I’d say. Represented as ascending into Heaven, he stood only about two feet high in his bare feet, wearing only a gorgeous red bishop’s robe trimmed in gold, swirled modestly about himself, standing in a very graceful contrapposto curve, showing his wounded hands in a lovely gesture between blessing and surprise, tilting his beautiful head to look out of big, limpid eyes under delicately-pencilled brows, lips slightly parted amid his trim beard and moustache, dark hair curling away from his face and onto his graceful shoulders, Byzantine-style. Under his feet was a black storm of clouds which, according to the note on the label, represented the clouds which hid him from the gaze of his adoring disciples as he ascended. Got something like the look in my sketch, but only something.
I had sit down on the bench nearby to eat two Prince cookies from my purse (and got a scandalized look from a visitor) before going off again. Luckily I remembered where a bathroom was (they are few, and carefully hidden in the Louvre, though to be fair they are marked on the maps) and went up the stairs where the Cellini Diana sculpture is and down the hall with the temporary exhibits are (between Italian and Other Paintings and French Paintings) to nip into the loo. Then I was ready not only for the temporary exhibit of Franco mannerist-era drawings (wonderful pencil and ink work, gorgeous bodies but weird faces) but for a quick-march down the Italian and Other gallery in search of future subjects. I did see three or four easel painters with their oils, laboring away on copies in a way that made me feel good about my plan… Two Raphaels stopped me dead: Baldassare di Castiglione and the Madonna and two children known as La Belle Jardiniere. The blacks of the man’s portrait completely mesmerized me, and I had to sketch ‘em, and my most successful sketch yet. Then, on the Madonna, I began with the perfect curves of the front of her bodice – the beautiful half-oval on the left and the recurved line on the right, and gradually worked in the cloak and sleeves before attempting the heads of the Christ and the John the Baptist and finally and least successfully, the tender face of the Virgin herself. These two sketches kept me very happy for a long time.
Actually drawing what one sees makes one realize the perfection and the sweetness of these (the second, I really mean; the man is wonderfully vital), so that it is impossible to keep from smiling while trying to follow the lines.
I did homage to two Caravaggios I intend to return for on Wednesday and took a gallop down to the Mona Lisa by way of the other end of the hall where a handful of English gems lie – six paintings worth all the nameless-Italian baroque stuff in the place – and to which I hope to return Wednesday, and then I enjoyed turning my back on the sublime Gioconda to gape at the enormous Veronese Wedding at Cana and to basically slurp up every Veronese in the room. You can keep your Titian reds: give my my Veronese blues, and the way he transitions from flesh to sky. Holy cow!
Then I dashed through the French collection – standing astounded at the big, dark cross-roads room with the Brutus Condemning His Two Sons to Death and grinning foolishly at the Aeneas and Dido – then staggered home, after a mere five hours, hoping to save my feet for another day.
No comments:
Post a Comment