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The bronze tomb of Alberto Pio of Savoy, by Ponzio, on the other hand, exhibits strongly the Italian tendency, and should be compared with the earlier recumbent tombs, behind in Room I, as showing the survival of the mediæval type, transmuted and completely revivified. The same may be said of the tomb of Philippe de Chabot, which, however, is more distinctively French and much less markedly Italian. See how the early prostrate effigies become here recumbent: the figure, as it were, is trying to raise itself. In comparing the various works in this room, endeavour to note these interlacing points of resemblance and difference. The beautiful Genii above are parts of the same tomb, and are exquisite examples of the minor work of the French Renaissance. Passing the Italian Tacca’s admirable bust of Giovanni da Bologna, we come to an excellent Entombment, of the French School, from St. Eustache, which should be compared with earlier specimens in the adjacent rooms. Beneath it, a fine fragment by Jean Cousin. Still lower, a Passage of the Red Sea, beginning to display that confused composition and lack of unity or simplicity which spoiled the art of the later 16th and 17th centuries. The fine Madonna and Child close by should be compared with the very similar example opposite, as well as with its predecessors in other centuries. (Comparison of varying versions of the same theme is always more instructive than that of different subjects.) The tomb of Abbot Jean de Cromois, with its Renaissance framework, shows a survival of earlier tendencies; as does also that of Roberte Legendre, though the figures of Faith and Hope (Charity is missing) are distinctly more recent in type than the recumbent effigy. Those who have time to notice and hunt up the coats of arms on the various tombs will often find they shed interesting light on their subjects. Observe also the churches from which these various monuments have been removed, a point which will fit in with your previous or subsequent knowledge of the buildings in many cases.
The last window contains a few works of the German School, which it is interesting to compare with their French contemporaries. Thus, the shrewd, pragmatical, diplomatic head of Frederick the Pacific, a coarse, cunning self-seeker, is excellently contrasted with the French portrait-busts. The little scene of the Holy Family, after Dürer, which should be closely studied, is essentially German in the domestic character of its carpenter’s shop, in the broad peasant faces of its Madonna and attendant angels, in the playful touches of the irreverent cherubs, and in the figure of the Almighty appearing in clouds at the summit of the composition. The Kiss of Judas, opposite it, is also characteristically German; notice the brutal soldiers, whose like we have seen in woodwork at Cluny: the bluff St. Peter with the sword is equally noteworthy; in the background are separate episodes, such as the Agony in the Garden; though officially ascribed to the French School, this is surely the work of a deft but unideal German artist. Do not neglect the many beautiful decorative fragments collected in this room, nor the fine busts, mostly of a somewhat later period.
Now enter Room VIII, the Salle de Jean Goujon. The magnificent collection of works contained in this room embraces the finest specimens of French Renaissance work of the school of the great artist whose name it bears, and of his equally gifted contemporary, Germain Pilon. They represent the plastic side of the School of Fontainebleau. In the centre is Jean Goujon’s **Huntress Diana, with her dogs and stag; it was probably executed for Diane de Poitiers, and comes from her Château d’Anet, presented to her by her royal lover. (Note all the works from the Château d’Anet, which is a destroyed museum of the art of the Renaissance.) Observe on the base the monogram of H. and D., which recurs on contemporary portions of the Louvre. The decorative lobsters and cray-fish on the pedestal should also be noted. Diana herself strikes the keynote of all succeeding French sculpture. Beautiful, coquettish, lithe of limb, and with the distinctive French elegance of pose, this figure nevertheless contains in it the germs of rapid decadence. It suggests the genesis of the 18th century, and of the common ormolu clock of commerce. Step into the next room and compare it with the Nymph of Fontainebleau, by Benvenuto Cellini. You will there see how far the Florentine artist approached the French, and how much the Frenchman borrowed from the Florentine. Walk round and observe on either side this the most triumphant work of the French Renaissance. Observe also its relations to the Diana of Versailles, in the Classical Gallery – brought to France by François Ier, – and its general debt to the antique, as well as to contemporary Italy.
Perhaps still more beautiful is the exquisite **group of the Three Graces, supporting an urn, by Germain Pilon, intended to contain the heart of Henry II, and commissioned by Catherine de Médicis. It once stood in the Church of the Celestines. Here again one sees the delicacy and refinement of the French Renaissance, with fewer marks of its inherent defects than in Jean Goujon’s statue. Sit long and study this exquisite trio – which the Celestines piously described as the Theological Virtues. Walk round it and observe the admirably natural way in which the figures are united by their hands in so seemingly artificial a position. The charming triangular pedestal is by the Florentine sculptor, Domenico del Barbiere.
The third object in the centre of the room is the exquisite group of the **Four Theological Virtues, in wood, also by Germain Pilon, which, till the Revolution, supported the reliquary containing the remains of Ste. Geneviève, in St. Étienne-du-Mont, and earlier still in the old church now replaced by the Panthéon. These are probably the finest figures ever executed in this difficult material. The faces and attitudes deserve from every side the closest study. If you have entered into the spirit of these three great groups in the centre of this room, you have succeeded in understanding the French Renaissance.
Now, begin at the further wall, in the body of the Salle, and observe, first, the exquisite reliefs of *Tritons and Nereids, with **Nymphs of the Seine, by Jean Goujon. Read the labels. We shall visit hereafter the Fountain of which these graceful and delicate reliefs once formed a portion. The Nymph to the L is one of the loveliest works ever produced by its sculptor, and is absolutely redolent of Renaissance spirit. It indicates the change which had come over French handicraft, under the influence of its Italian models, at the same time allowing the national spirit to shine through in a way which it never succeeded in doing in contemporary painting. Beneath it are two noble figures in bronze, from the tomb of Christopher de Thou, attributed to an almost equally great artist, Barthélemy Prieur. Frémin Roussel’s Genius of History still more markedly anticipates more recent French tendencies. It is intensely modern. Germain Pilon’s monumental bronze of René Birague prepares us for the faults of the French works of this style in the Louis XIV period. Mere grandiosity and ostentation are here foreshadowed. The centre of the next wall is occupied by Germain Pilon’s fine chimney-piece, with Jean Goujon’s bust of Henri II as its central object. The decorative Renaissance work on this mantel should be closely studied, as well as that – so vastly inferior – on the adjacent later columns of the age of Louis XIV. Barthélemy Prieur’s exquisite bronzes from the tomb of the Constable Anne de Montmorency also breathe a profoundly French spirit. The figures represent Justice, Courage, and Abundance. Germain Pilon’s too tearful Mater Dolorosa (painted terra-cotta) close by, from the Sainte Chapelle, indicates the beginnings of modern French taste in church furniture. His recumbent tomb of Valentine Balbiani, on the other hand, is admirable as portraiture; but the genius of the artist is only fully displayed in the repulsive figure of the same body seen emaciated in death and decomposition beneath it. Barthélemy Prieur’s recumbent figure of Anne de Montmorency shows survival of the older type, doubtless due to the prejudices of patrons.
Above it is an admirable piece of Renaissance sculpture, by Jean Goujon, for the decoration of the rood-loft (now removed) in St. Germain l’Auxerrois. The rare beauty of the existing one at St. Étienne-du-Mont (by a far inferior artist) enables us to estimate the loss we have sustained by its disappearance. The Deposition, in the centre, marked by the highly classical style and secular or almost sensuous beauty of its Maries, and the anatomical knowledge displayed in its Dead Christ, should be contrasted with earlier specimens in adjacent rooms. In the accompanying figures of the four Evangelists, notice how earlier conceptions of the writers and their attendant symbols have been altogether modified by a Raphaelesque spirit. You would scarcely notice the eagle, angel, bull, and lion (compare Sacchi upstairs), unless you were told to look for them. Germain Pilon’s Agony in the Garden displays an exactly similar transformation of a traditional subject.
Some interesting works are placed near the windows. In the first is a fragment from the pulpit of the Church of the Grands Augustins in Paris, by Germain Pilon, representing Paul Preaching at Athens. The bald head and long beard of the Apostle of the Gentiles are traditional; the figure is modelled on Italian precedents; here again the female auditors are introduced entirely in the classical spirit, and treated with Renaissance love for exuberant femininity. Nominally sacred, such works as this are really nothing more than sensuous and decorative in their tendencies. The Church accepted them because they were supposed to be artistic. Other fragments opposite exemplify the same baneful tendency, pregnant with decadence. Christ and the Woman of Samaria (with her classical urn) is a subject we have already met with elsewhere: here, it is much permeated by Renaissance feeling. The Preaching of St. John Baptist gives the artist an opportunity for introducing two attractive female listeners. In the second window, the contrast between the comparatively archaic St. Eloi from Dijon, and the Nymphs of the school of Jean Goujon, is sufficiently abrupt to point its own moral. Germain Pilon’s Entombment may be instructively compared with Jean Goujon’s and others; the Magdalen here is an admirable figure. Glance across from one to the other and note the resemblance. Even at this late date, how close is the similarity in the attitudes of the chief actors! They almost correspond figure for figure: – Joseph of Arimathæa, and then Nicodemus, supporting the dead Christ; next, the fainting Madonna, in the arms of one of the Maries; then, the Magdalen at the foot, with her box of ointment, and the mourning women; all stand in the same relations in the two reliefs. If you will compare both paintings and sculptures in this manner, you will learn how much the artist borrowed in each case from predecessors, and exactly how much is his own invention. Opposite the Entombment are other Nymphs of the school of Jean Goujon, and a characteristic transitional figure of a Donor and his Family, showing a distinct attempt to treat an old motive by the new methods; L the Donor, kneeling, introduced by his patron, St. John Baptist; R, two ladies of his family, introduced by a sainted bishop and an abbot; near them, their children, kneeling, but with some genial allowance for the sense of tedium in infancy; in the background, Renaissance architecture, with quaint bas-reliefs of Samson carrying off the gates of Gaza; the Resurrection and Appearance to the Apostles; the Supper at Emmaus; and Jonah emerging from the mouth of the whale. Works like these, often artistically of less importance, nevertheless not infrequently throw useful light on the nature of the conditions under which the sculptor worked – the trammels of tradition, the struggle to wriggle out of the commands of a patron, who desires to see reproduced the types of his childhood. The third window contains some charming but mutilated fragments from the tomb of the Duc de Guise: more figures by Germain Pilon; and a thoroughly Renaissance Awakening of the Nymphs, attributed (with little doubt) to Frémin Roussell. Germain Pilon’s good bust of Charles IX strikes the keynote of the king’s vain and heartless character. The baby Christ, by Richier, though evidently suffering from water on the brain, is otherwise a charming early French conception of soft innocence and infantile grace. Notice, above this, a somewhat transitional Pietà, placed as a votive offering (like so many other things) in the (old) church of Ste. Geneviève, with the kneeling donor represented as looking on, after the earlier fashion. The Judgment of Daniel, attributed to Richier, though splendid in execution, forms an example of the more crowded and almost confused composition which was beginning to destroy the unity and simplicity of plastic art. As a whole, the works in this room should be attentively and closely studied, illustrating as they do the one exquisite moment of perfect fruition, when the French Renaissance burst suddenly into full flower, to be succeeded almost at once by painful degeneracy and long slow decadence. I would specially recommend you to compare closely the more classical works of this room with those in the adjoining Salle de Michel Ange in order to recognise the distinctively French tone as compared with the Italian. The importance of these various rooms, of both nationalities, to a comprehension of Paris and French art in general, cannot be over-estimated. By their light alone can you fully understand the fabric of the Louvre itself, the Luxembourg, the Renaissance churches, the tombs at St. Denis, and above all, Fontainebleau, St. Germain, Versailles itself, and the entire development of architecture and sculpture from François Ier to the Revolutionary epoch. Especially should you always bear in mind the importance of works from the Château de Gaillon (early) and Château d’Anet (full French Renaissance).
In the vestibule, as you pass out, notice a copy in bronze, probably by Barthélemy Prieur, of the antique Huntress Diana, the original of which we have already noticed in the Classical Gallery. It helps to accentuate the direct dependence of French Renaissance sculpture upon the classical model as well as upon that of the contemporary Italians. Observe that while each of these arts is based upon the antique, it necessarily follows the antique models then and there known to it – not the “Venus of Milo” discovered in 1820, or the figures from Olympia of quite recent discovery.
3. MODERN SCULPTURE
This collection is entered by a separate door in the Cour du Louvre, marked E on Baedeker’s plan. It takes up the development of French plastic art at the point where the last collection leaves off. It is, however, of vastly inferior interest, and should only be visited by those who have time to spare from more important subjects. The decline which affected French painting after the age of the early Renaissance had even more disastrous effects in the domain of sculpture. I will not, therefore, enumerate individual works in these rooms, but will touch briefly on the characteristics of the various epochs represented in the various galleries.
The Salle de Puget contains sculptures of the age of Louis XIII and XIV, for the most part theatrical, fly-away, and mannered. They are grandiose with the grandiosity of the school of Bernini; unreal and over-draperied. Like contemporary painting, too, they represent official or governmental art, with a courtier-like tendency to flattery of monarchy, general and particular. A feeble pomposity, degenerating into bombast, strikes their keynote. Few works in this room need detain the visitor.
The Salle de Coyzevox continues the series, with numerous portrait-busts of the celebrities of the age of Louis XIV, mostly insipid and banal. The decline goes on with accelerated rapidity.
The Salle des Coustou, mostly Louis XV, marks the lowest depth of the degradation of plastic art, here reduced to the level of Palais Royal trinkets. It represents the worst type of 18th century handicraft, and hardly contains a single passable statue. Its best works are counterparts in marble of Boucher and Greuze, but without even the touch of meretricious art which colour and cleverness add to the craft of those boudoir artists. Few of them rise to the level of good Dresden china. The more ambitious lack even that mild distinction.
The Salle de Houdon, of the Revolutionary epoch, shows a slight advance upon the preceding (parallel to the later work of Greuze), and is interesting from its portrait-busts of American statesmen and French republican leaders. Some of the ideal works, even, have touches of grace, and a slightly severer taste begins to make itself apparent. The classical period is foreshadowed.
The Salle de Chaudet, of the First Empire, answers in sculpture to the School of David in painting. It is cold, dignified, reserved, and pedantic. It imitates (not always at all successfully) the antique ideals. The best works in this room are Canova’s; but the intention is almost always better than the execution. A sense of chilly correctness distinguishes these blameless academic works from the natural grace and life of antique Greek sculptors. They lie under the curse which pursues revivals.
The Salle de Rude contains plastic work of the Restoration, the July Monarchy, and the Second Empire. It answers roughly to the romantic School of Delaroche in painting. Several of these almost contemporary works have high merit, though few of them aim at that reposeful expression which is proper to sculpture. Some, indeed, trench upon the domain of painting in their eager effort to express passing emotion and action. Picturesqueness and sensuousness are their prevailing features. Nevertheless, the room, as a whole, exhibits the character of a real renaissance, such as it is, from the mediocrity of the last century, and the bleak propriety of the classical revival. Too many of the works, however, are aimed at the taste of the Boulevards. They foreshadow that feeling which makes too much modern sculpture attempt to catch the public by flinging away everything that is proper to the art. The desire for novelty is allowed to override the sense of beauty and of just proportion: repose is lost; dignity and serenity give place to cleverness of imitation and apt catching at the momentary expression.
III. THE SMALLER COLLECTIONS
The other collections at the Louvre appeal for the most part rather to the specialist than to the general public. They are for workers, not for sight-seers. The Egyptian Museum, for example, to the L as you enter the Cour du Louvre by the main entrance, contains, perhaps, the finest collection of its sort in all Europe. You must, of course, at least walk through it – especially if you have not seen the British Museum. The objects, however, are sufficiently indicated for casual visitors by means of the labels; they need not be enumerated. The opposite wing, to the R as you enter, contains the Assyrian Collection, inferior on the whole, especially in its bas-reliefs, to that in the British Museum. Beyond it, again, to the left, lie a group of rooms devoted to the intermediate region between the sphere of Assyrian and Greek art. These rooms ought certainly to be examined by any who wish to form some idea of the origin and development of Hellenic culture. The first two rooms of the suite contain Phœnician works, – important because the Phœnicians were the precursors of the Greeks in navigation and commerce in the Mediterranean, and because early Greek art was largely based on Phœnician imitations of Assyrian and Egyptian work, or on actual Egyptian and Assyrian objects imported into Hellas by Phœnician merchants. These Semitic seafarers had no indigenous art of their own; but they acted as brokers between East and West, and they skilfully copied and imitated the principal art-products of the two great civilisations on whose confines they lay, though often without really understanding their true import. The Phœnicians were thus the pioneers of civilisation in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Room IV, beyond these two, contains more Phœnician antiquities, and others from Cyprus, an island inhabited by Greeks or half Greeks, but one in which this imported Oriental culture earliest took root and produced native imitations. Examine these objects as leading up to, and finally correcting, the archaic Greek work ill represented by a few objects in the Salle de Phidias. The Salle de Milet, beyond, contains Greek antiquities from Asia Minor, some of which indicate transition from the Assyrian to the Hellenic type. Examine these from the point of view of development. The reliefs from the temple of Assos in Mysia show an early stage in the evolution of Asiatic Greek art. Compare them with the archaic objects in the Salle de Phidias. It must be borne in mind that civilised art entered Greece from Assyria, by way of Phœnicia, the Hittites, Lydia, Phrygia, the Ionian cities in Asia Minor, and the Islands of the Archipelago. These intermediate rooms should therefore be studied in detail from this point of view, dates and places being carefully noted, as illustrating the westward march of art from Nineveh to Athens. The last hall of the suite, the Salle de Magnésie, on the other hand, contains works from Ephesus of a late Greek period, representing rather a slight barbaric deterioration than a transitional stage. These collections, most important to the student of Hellenic culture, may be neglected by hurried or casual visitors.
The Salle Judaïque, to the right, under the stairs, contains the scanty remains of the essentially inartistic Jewish people, interesting chiefly from the point of view of Biblical history. The famous and much-debated Moabite Stone, recording the battles of King Mesa of Moab with the Jews in B.C. 896, is here preserved. It is believed to be the earliest existing specimen of alphabetic as opposed to hieroglyphic or ideographic writing.
There is, however, one group of objects in the Louvre, too seldom visited, which no one should omit to inspect if time permits him. This is the admirable **Dieulafoy Collection of Persian Antiquities. To arrive at it, go to the front of the Old Louvre, facing St. Germain l’Auxerrois, as for the previously noted series. Enter by the principal portal, and turn to the R, through the Assyrian collection, whose winged bulls and reliefs of kings you may now inspect in passing, if you have not done so previously. Mount the staircase at the end, and, at the landing on the top, turn to your L, when you will find yourself at once face to face with the collection.
The First Room contains merely Græco-Babylonian objects (of a different collection) which need only be inspected by those whose leisure is ample. They illustrate chiefly the effect of Hellenic influence on Asiatic models. On the entrance wall of the Second Room is the magnificent *Frieze of Archers of the Immortal Guard, in encaustic tiles, with cuneiform inscriptions, from the Throne Room of Darius I. This splendid work, mere fragment though it is of the original, gives in its colour and decorative detail some idea of the splendour of the Palace of the Persian monarchs. The colours are those still so prevalent in Persian art, showing a strong predominance of blues and greens, with faint tones of yellow, over red and purple, which latter, indeed, are hardly present. Round the rest of the walls are ranged decorative fragments from the Palace of Artaxerxes Mnemon. Opposite the archers is another magnificent frieze of angry lions, from the summit of the portals in the last-named palace. The next compartment of the same room contains the *Base of a Column and a **Capital of the same, also from the Palace of Artaxerxes Mnemon: – two figures of bulls supporting between them the enormous wooden rafters of the ceiling. These gigantic and magnificent figures form perhaps the most effective and adequate supports for a great weight to be found in any school of architecture.
The next room contains the admirable reconstruction of the Palace, when entire, showing the position on the walls of either pylon, and the manner in which the columns supported the colossal roof. If, from inspection of this model, we return to the base and capitals themselves, we shall be able to judge what must have been the magnificent and gigantic scale of this Titanic building, the effect of which must have thrown even the Temple of Karnac into the shade. At the side are a lion and winged bull, which help to complete the mental picture. This collection, unique in Europe, serves to give one an idea of the early Persian civilisation which can nowhere else be obtained, and which helps to correct the somewhat one-sided idea derived from the accounts of Greek historians. On no account should you miss it.
The minor art-objects of the Louvre, though of immense value and interest in themselves, may be largely examined by those who have the time in the light of their previous work at Cluny. The collection of drawings, one of the finest in Europe, is mostly interesting to artists. That of smaller Mediæval and Renaissance Objects contains works closely similar to those at Cluny, including admirable ivory-carvings, fine pottery (the best of which is that by Palissy, and the Henri II ware), together with Oriental faïence, bronzes, etc. The Greek Vases, again, of which this Museum contains a magnificent collection, are mainly interesting to Hellenic specialists. For the casual visitor, it will suffice to examine one or two of them. The Etruscan Antiquities give a good idea of the civilisation of this ancient race, from which, both in earlier and later times, almost all the art, poetry, and science of Italy has proceeded. Though entirely based upon Greek models, the Etruscan productions betray high artistic faculty and great receptive powers of intellect. Among the minor Greek works, none are more interesting than the beautiful little terra-cotta figures from Tanagra in Bœotia, which cast an unexpected light on one side of Greek art and culture. Examine them as supplementing the collection of antique sculpture. These figurines, as they are called, were produced in immense quantities, chiefly in Bœotia, both for household decoration and to be buried with the dead. They were first moulded or cast in clay, but they were afterwards finished by hand, with the addition of just such accessories or modifications as we have seen to obtain in the case of the statues in the antique gallery. Finally they were gracefully and tastefully coloured. Nothing better indicates the universality of high art-feeling among the ancient Greeks than the extraordinary variety, fancy, and beauty of these cheap objects of every-day decoration; while the unexpected novelty given by the slightest additions or alterations in what (being moulded) is essentially the same figure throws a flood of light upon the methods of plastic art in higher departments. Look out for these exquisite little figures as you pass through the (inner) rooms on the South Side of the old Cour du Louvre, on the First Floor. Most of them will be found in Room L of Baedeker’s plan. Almost every visitor is equally surprised and charmed by their extremely modern tone of feeling. They are alive and human. In particular, the playfulness of Greek art is here admirably exemplified. Many of them have touches of the most graceful humour.
Here, again, do not suppose that because I do not specify, these minor works of art are of little importance. If you have time, examine them all: but you must do so by individual care and study.
The neighbouring Salle des Bijoux contains beautiful antique jewellery; do not miss the very graceful gold tiara presented to the Scythian King Saitaphernes by the Greek city of Olbia in the Crimea – a lovely work of the 3rd century B.C. Its authenticity has been disputed, but not its beauty.
The Galerie d’Apollon contains, among many objects of considerable interest, the Reliquary which encloses the Arm of Charlemagne – who, having been canonized, was duly entitled to such an honour. The Reliquary of St. Henry, and the Chasse of St. Louis are also well worthy of inspection. Notice, too, the Hand of Justice, used at the coronation of the French Kings. But all these objects can only be properly studied, by those who wish to investigate them, with the aid of the official catalogue. I shall recur at greater length to a few of them after our return from St. Denis.
When you have learnt Paris well, go often to and fro between these rooms of the Louvre, the Mediæval and Renaissance Sculpture, the halls at Cluny (particularly Room VI, with its French architectural work), and the older churches, such as St. Germain-des-Prés, Notre-Dame, St. Denis, etc. Thus only can you build up and consolidate your conceptions.
A special small collection, to which part of a day may well be devoted, is the Early Christian Sculpture, to which I have already briefly alluded, in the first room to the R as you enter the Renaissance Galleries in the Cour du Louvre.
The centre of the hall is occupied by a good Early Christian sarcophagus, with a cover not its own, sufficiently described as to origin on the label. The front towards the window represents the True Vine, surrounding the “X P,” which form the first two letters of the name of Christ in Greek, inscribed in a solar circle, and with the Alpha and Omega on either side of it. This figure, repeated on various works in this room in slightly different shapes, is known as a Labarum. It forms, after Constantine (who adopted it as his emblem and that of the Christianized Empire), the most frequent symbol on early Christian monuments. Note modern reproductions on the frieze of this apartment. Its variations are numerous. At the ends, are other True Vines and a better Labarum, with a Star of Bethlehem. The back has the same devices repeated.
