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History of the Louvre
Originally, the Louvre was a
fortress. It was constructed in 1190 for Philippe II Augustus in order to
“…defend the Seine
below Paris against the Normans and English” (Discover
France!). The fortress was an immense cylindrical dungeon that was
surrounded by high walls. As the city of Paris expanded, the Louvre lost
its defense powers. Thus, in the fourteenth century,
Charles V enlarged and
beautified the large stronghold. To do this, Raymond du Temple, who was an
architect to Charles V,
transformed the fort to a royal palace. The changes
include the following: elaborately carved windows, ornately decorated
rooftops,
a regal spiral staircase, and the castle was decorated with
sculptures, tapestries, and paneling (Louvre). When Charles VI died,
the
Louvre was unused until 1527. This date was when François I took over
the palace and transformed the medieval castle to a
Renaissance citadel. In
1546, François I started the construction of several other buildings at the
Louvre. The entire west wing was
deconstructed and in its place,
Renaissance style buildings were built. While Henri II was in control, he
built the Salle des
Caryatides (Hall of Caryatids) and the Pavillon du Roi
(King’s Pavillion). The Pavillon du Roi housed the King’s private
quarters.
By the end of the sixteenth century, the Louvre was a combination
of new buildings, works in progress, and barely standing
structures that
were there from the beginning (Louvre). There was to be a new palace
to be built called the Tuileries, a residence to
the west, as commanded by
Catherine de Médicis. In 1610, Henri IV finished a pathway between the
Louvre and the Tuileries. In
1625, Louis XIII resumed the Grand Dessein
(Grand Design) which was built on top of the Petite Galerie as originally
planned by
Henri IV. Between the years of 1655 and 1658, a suite of private
apartments were built to house Anne of Austria. The six rooms
include the
following: “…a large salon, anteroom, and vestibule, a grand cabinet (study
or private sitting room), a bedchamber, and
a petit cabinet overlooking the
Seine” (Louvre). In 1668, the original Louvre vanished as the last
medieval parts were reconstructed
and widened. The end piece was double the
width of the original palace. The first art gallery that was shown in the
Louvre was in
1692 when Louis XIV ordered antique sculptures to be shown in
a gallery in the Salle des Caryatides. In 1699, in the Grande
Galerie, the
Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture had their first exhibition at
the Louvre. In 1756, construction started up
again at the Louvre under the
orders of Louis XV. The Assemblée Nationale said that the “Louvre and the
Tuileries together will be
a national palace to house the king and for
gathering together all the monuments of the sciences and the arts” in 1791 (Louvre).
On
10 Auust 1793, the Museum Central des Arts opened in the Louvre.
Painters, architects, and sculptors were featured. The
admission was free
to the general public only on the weekends. In 1806, the Arcc de Triomphe
du Carrousel was built, aligned with
the Pavillon de l’Horloge and that
central pavilion of the Tuileries. During 1838 to 1848, Spanish art was
shown to the public in the
Louis-Philippe Spanish gallery. The gallery of
over four hundred paintings were sold in London in 1853. In 1857, Napoleon
III
finally finished the wing connecting the Louvre and the Tuileries.
During May 1871, the Tuileries were burned to the ground,
symbolizing
monarchy. The ruins were finally taken care of in 1883 after twelve years
of standing there. When World War II broke
out, the several art pieces were
evacuated, and the heavier pieces were covered and protected with sandbags.
These evacuated works
were taken to the Château de Chambord in the Loire
valley. In 1940, the Louvre reopened with only plaster casts in the
galleries.
André Malraux, the minister of culture, ordered for a dry moat
to be dug in front of Perrault’s Colonnade in 1964. Originally, the
moat
was never an idea of Louis XIV and was never on the original plans for the
building. On 26 September 1981, the President,
François Mitterrand, made a
plan to restore the Louvre to its function as a museum. A Chinese-American
architect, Ieoh Ming Pei,
constructed a giant glass pyramid that was
inaugurated on 30 March 1989. It is now used as the entrance to a large
reception hall
underground. From this reception hall, “visitors can also
reach the temporary exhibition areas, displays on the history of the palace
and museum, Charles V’s original moat, an auditorium, and public amenities”
(Louvre). At this time, the Louvre contains;
“Oriental (ancient
Mesopotamian) antiquities, Egyptian antiquities, Greek and Roman
antiquities, sculpture from the middle ages to
modern times, furniture and objets d’art, and paintings representing all the European schools” (Discover
France!). Even now, there
is a school of the Louvre that trains the
curators in the history of art and archaeology.
Works Cited
“History
of the Louvre.” Louvre. Musée du Louvre. 28 January 2008
<http://www.louvre.f/llv/musee/visite_virtuelle.jsp?bmLocale=en>.
“Musée du Louvre,
Paris.” Discover France! 2003. Grolier Publishing Company, Inc. 28
January 2008
<http://www.discoverfrance.net/France/Paris/Museuam-Paris/Louvre.shtml>.
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