Grand Galerie at the Louvre

 Yeah, there are so many masterworks here it's absurd. A lot of it stolen by Napoleon!

Here are some of my favorites from the visit, with a few brief notes.

First up in the freak show is the Girl With the Extra Vetebrae! OK, it's a gorgeous painting by Ingres. So what if he took a bit of artistic license with the human form.


Remember the Fuseli show? Below is one of the paintings that we would normally pass over. Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson won the Prix de Rome and was a student of Jacques-Louis David, but he's not an artist the casual viewer would be drawn to. But, because we loved the dramatics of Fuseli, we took a second look at Girodet. He has the same theatrics and even apparently the same hair fetish. (Notice the hair pulling at the bottom of the painting.) Girodet was 70 years before Fuseli, and is often considered an early beginning toward Romanticism.


More Mantegna! He's always worth looking at. The below picture was stolen from the Gonzagas. It shows the "Virgin of Victory" blessing the Signor Gonzaga. It's not one of his best. I think it's a bit play for pay. But look at the lovely head of St. Anne in the second photo. Second-rate Mantegna is still a master.



Here are two details from a small but vivid crucifixion scene, and then the whole painting. It's a bit gruesome, but beautifully so!




And here is a Mantegna with lots of grotesques, The Triumph of the Virtues, which has to include the vices, of course.


Why so many pictures of death and monsters and freaks? I can post lovely pictures of loveliness and grace too. Here's the Madonna del Cardellino by Raphael.


And here's more monsters!




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