Sunday, August 14, 2011

Musée du Louvre. Paris


I am in the most visited museum in the world.  I queued for about 40 minutes to get through security.  It’s 10am on a Saturday.  Outside it is slowly drizzling a cold rain.  It is museum weather, but I’m in a room by myself.  It’s not a boring room, filled with dreary paintings of aristocratic Frenchmen looking down their noses at the proletarian mass.  It’s filled with 15th century tapestries.  They are huge, the work of lifetimes.  The reds have faded to pink, they rarely contain a pure blue, but they are in perspective, allegorical and stunningly beautiful.



The light plays over them, even in the darkened rooms.  I can’t capture the colour with my fancy camera.  Someone managed it with a needle and thread, hundreds of years ago.




To get to this room I wandered past great eastern statues and one of those lions from Babylon (Babylon!!).  They roar their displeasure at the tiles ahead.  How the blues and golds must have gleamed in hanging gardens.  They are stunning on a wall in Paris, how did they get here?



Paying ten euro for the privilege of sitting in a room with such beauty seems like a small price to pay.  I have seen exactly one other tourist and a very friendly security guard.  It’s time to find out where everyone is.



Oh.

They are all looking for the most famous picture ever painted.
It's quite hard to find, or rather to see...





Here it is.
I'm quite short.  I didn't really see it.  However, Babylonian lions and ancient tapestries make a trip to the Louvre worthwhile.