A Ten Miler through Paris Museums

My mom and I really had a great visit to Paris.  It was the first visit for both of us.  During our four day visit we went to the Notre-Dame Cathedral, the Louvre, Orsay Museum, the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, Versailles, Rodin Museum, Sacre-Coeur, walked the Champs-Elysees, and visited the Holocaust Museum.  We explored mainly on foot but also took the subways, buses and regional train.  I've already done a blog about our first stop on Friday, which was Versailles.

This will be a fairly lengthy post but it'll be mostly photos.  I thought I'd share some of the photos from the three museums we visited - Louvre, Orsay and Rodin.  We logged more than 10 miles walking to and through these museums.  Surprisingly no-flash photography is allowed in the Louvre and the Rodin but photography is not allowed in the Orsay.  I wrote down some of the sculptures and paintings I found interesting in the Orsay and was just now able to find most of them on the Internet.  So, just a disclaimer, none of the photos or images from the Orsay are my own.    

View of the Louvre from the Arc de Triomphe

Saturday morning we made a beeline straight for the Louvre, wanting to get there close to when it opened, hoping to beat some of the crowd.  To sum up the Louvre in one word would be MASSIVE.  The museum is gigantic and you could visit it every day for a month and still have things to see.  It is the largest museum in the Western world, with more than 30,000 pieces of artwork filling more than three wings of an immense U-shaped palace. We did a fairly quick survey of the museum because we wanted to make it to the Orsay on the same day.  I know we missed so many treasures but we tried to see many of the most notable pieces of art.

Main Entrance - highly recommend getting the Paris Pass to skip some of the lines.

I didn't even notice the mini pyramids until we were inside and saw this view.

The lady below certainly wins most popular in the Louvre.  The crowd around her is always crazy.  I felt like a salmon swimming upstream trying to get close enough to take this photo. 

Mona Lisa - Leonardo da Vinci

I wrote a paper on Andrea Mantegna's St. Sebastian painting when I was in college so it was great seeing the actual painting, which dates back to 1480.  Really amazing that more than 500 years later we can still see it.

St Sebastian (1480) - Andrea Mantegna

The painting below made me think of a female Hamlet contemplating the skull of Yorick in the famous graveyard scene.

Melancholy (1620) - Domenico Fetti

Liberty Leading the People (1830) - Eugene Delacroix

Raising of the Cross (1609-1610) - Petrus Paulus Rubens

Italian Family (1830) - Francois-Joseph Navez

At the Orsay Museum right now there is a special exhibit of Edgar Degas nudes.  I kind of wish we had gone through the exhibit but there was so much to see in the permanent collection that we didn't make it through the temporary exhibit.  Plus we were pretty tired from our ten-miler through the museums.  We did see one of Degas nudes at the Louvre. 

Edgar Degas - Nue apres le bain

The Louvre has some of the most famous Greek statues.  I am just amazed at the talent and skill involved in crafting these statues from a single piece of stone or marble without the high tech equipment and lasers used today.   

Winged Victory of Samothrace (190 B.C.)

Venus de Milo (100 B.C.)

Psyche and Cupid - A. Canova

Michelangelo's Slaves (1513-1515)

After spending several hours in the Louvre, we headed to the Orsay Museum, which features French art of the 1800s and early 1900s.  The museum is in a beautifully rehabbed train station.  Here you'll find paintings by Manet, Monet, Renoir, Degas, Van Gogh, Cezanne and Gauguin.  Definitely a highlight and a museum I would like to visit again.

The Disciples Peter and John (1898) - Eugene Burnand

I found the colors in many of the paintings at the Orsay extremely vibrant and dreamy.  

Florence (1898) Lucien Levy-Dhurmer

Orphee (1865) - Gustave Moreau

Venezia Bella (1893) Edmond-Francois Aman-Jean

In contrast there were also these paintings that were almost ghostly in their appearance.  I thought this painting of Christ on the Cross was extremely powerful.  

Christ on the Cross (1897) - Eugene Carriere

Solitude (1893) - Thomas Alexander Harrison

There were also some beautiful sculptures in the Orsay.  Ones that make you wonder...How did they do that!

Aurore (1900) - Denys Puech

The statute below is made of three materials - marble, Algerian onyx, and malachite.  Really quite amazing.    

Nature Unveiling Herself Before Science (1899) Louis-Ernest Barris

Another museum we visited was the Rodin Museum.  Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) was considered a modern Michelangelo.  The museum is in a mansion where Rodin lived and worked.  We visited this museum on Sunday.  The museum offers an audio guide that I highly recommend getting.  The guide helps explain the sculptures and provides some very good background. 

The Three Shades (Before 1886)

Meditation (1896)

The Thinker (1903)

Adam (1880-1881)

The Centauress

The Burghers of Calais (1889)

The grim faces on the men in "The Burghers of Calais" can be explained by the reason this statue was commissioned.  In 1885 the city of Calais commissioned this statue to commemorate six citizens who, during the Hundred Years War, sacrificed their lives so that the King of England would spare the town.  The statue depicts when they are being taken to their execution.   

These photos are just a snapshot of some of the things to see in these great museums.  Don't miss them when you are in Paris.  Next up, I'll share some pictures of the other sites we visited.