Louvre Museum
After visiting L’Orangerie I set off for the Louvre. One of the things that has changed about Paris since we lived there is Le Pyramid. The plans and construction of this new architectural feature were just beginning when we left Paris in 1987. With only a few hours I had to decide where to go first. So I quickly found the Vermeers and Reubens.
This small gem was just as I had hoped it would be…perfect. Next to it hung “The Astronomer.” I”m sorry to say I didn’t get a good picture. We could take photos without flash, so some of the shots are a little blurry.
This is the Hall of Reubens. One gorgeous painting after another. One of the things that kept surprising me was the size of paintings. Either they were smaller than I had imagined or they were much larger, like these.
The “Winged Victory of Samothrac.”
Taken from a window inside the Louvre looking towards Le Pyramid and the Eiffel Tower.
Next were the Egyptian artifacts, I was actually looking for something in particular that I had remembered from my childhood. But this piece looked a little incomplete without a head, so I had to stop and help out.
I found him. This is “Pete.” I’m not really sure who this man was in real life, historians place his death around 332- 330 B.C. But this mummy caused me more nightmares as a child than any scary movie I ever saw. My brother, Houston, and I named him Pete many years ago after the decomposed garden additive Pete moss. I sought him out to symbolically conquer my fears of mummies. Yep, it did the trick. No big deal any more.
On to the Persian antiquities. Does this look familiar? This is from King Darius I palace in present day Iran. This is similar to the bird-like version that my brothers and I stood on when I was about 3 of 4 years old. (May 2007 Archives)
I knew I had seen this before. This is also from King Darius’ I palace in Persia. The Frieze of Archers circa 520 B.C. Note the picture below is about thirty years old, and was taken in Iran. Yes, that’s me, and Houston is on the far right. Cute tummy bro !
July 4th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
What the picture doesn’t really show is that it was food in my hands … thus the pudge. What can I say, it was a phase.