The Louvre, or the Louvre Museum, is a national art museum in Paris, France. It is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the city's 1st arrondissement and home to some of the most canonical works of Western art, including the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo. The museum is housed in the Louvre Palace, originally built in the late 12th to 13th century under Philip II. Remnants of the Medieval Louvre fortress are visible in the basement of the museum. Due to urban expansion, the fortress eventually lost its defensive function, and in 1546 Francis I converted it into the primary residence of the French Kings.
An art museum or art gallery is a building or space for the display of art, usually from the museum's own collection. It might be in public or private ownership, be accessible to all, or have restrictions in place. Although primarily concerned with visual art, art museums are often used as a venue for other cultural exchanges and artistic activities, such as lectures, jewelry, performance arts, music concerts, or poetry readings. Art museums also frequently host themed temporary exhibitions, which often include items on loan from other collections.
The Mona Lisa is a half-length portrait painting by Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. Considered an archetypal masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, it has been described as "the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, [and] the most parodied work of art in the world". The painting's novel qualities include the subject's enigmatic expression, monumentality of the composition, the subtle modelling of forms, and the atmospheric illusionism.
Jean-Baptiste Regnault was a French painter.
Michal Hornstein was a Polish-born Canadian businessman, art collector and philanthropist.
The Musée de l'Orangerie is an art gallery of impressionist and post-impressionist paintings located in the west corner of the Tuileries Garden next to the Place de la Concorde in Paris. The museum is most famous as the permanent home of eight large Water Lilies murals by Claude Monet, and also contains works by Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri Rousseau, Alfred Sisley, Chaïm Soutine, Maurice Utrillo, and others.
Henri Loyrette was the chairman of Admical, a French organisation dedicated to corporate philanthropy, and the former director of the Louvre Museum (2001–2013). He became first curator and then director of the Musée d'Orsay in 1978 and 1994, respectively.
Sir Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish artist and diplomat from the Duchy of Brabant in the Southern Netherlands. He is considered the most influential artist of the Flemish Baroque tradition. Rubens's highly charged compositions reference erudite aspects of classical and Christian history. His unique and immensely popular Baroque style emphasized movement, colour, and sensuality, which followed the immediate, dramatic artistic style promoted in the Counter-Reformation. Rubens was a painter producing altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. He was also a prolific designer of cartoons for the Flemish tapestry workshops and of frontispieces for the publishers in Antwerp.
The Museum of Grenoble is a municipal museum of Fine Arts and antiquities in the city of Grenoble in the Isère region of France.
Les Trois Grâces is a set of three public artworks by French-American sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle. The Three Graces were a part of the National Museum of Women in the Arts New York Avenue Sculpture Project. It was created in 1999. It is located in Washington, DC, United States.
The Wounded Cuirassier is an oil painting of a single anonymous soldier descending a slope with his nervous horse by the French Romantic painter and lithographer Théodore Géricault (1791–1824). In this 1814 Salon entry, Géricault decided to turn away from scenes of heroism in favor of a subject that is on the losing side of the battle. On display in the aftermath of France's disastrous military campaign in Russia, this life-size painting captured the feeling of a nation in defeat. There are no visible wounds on the figure, and the title has sometimes been interpreted to refer to soldier's injured pride. The painting stood in stark contrast with Géricault's Charging Chasseur, as it didn't focus on glory or the spectacle of battle. Only his Signboard of a Hoofsmith, which is currently in a private collection, bears any resemblance in form or function to this painting.
The pendant portraits of Maerten Soolmans and Oopjen Coppit are a pair of full-length wedding portraits by Rembrandt. They were painted on the occasion of the marriage of Maerten Soolmans and Oopjen Coppit in 1634. Formerly owned by the Rothschild family, they became jointly owned by the Louvre Museum and the Rijksmuseum in 2015 after both museums managed to contribute half of the purchase price of €160 million, a record for works by Rembrandt.
The Finding of Moses is a c.1581 oil-on-canvas painting by Paolo Veronese. It is the smallest of at least eight works on the subject by him and his studio showing the finding of Moses – art historians often consider it to be the preparatory sketch for the variant in Dresden.
The Musée L or Musée universitaire de Louvain, French for: Louvain University Museum, is a Belgian university museum of the University of Louvain (UCLouvain) located in Louvain-la-Neuve, Walloon Brabant, Belgium.
The Napoleonic looting of art was a series of confiscations of artworks and precious objects carried out by the French army or French officials in the conquered territories of the French Republic and Empire, including the Italian peninsula, Spain, Portugal, the Low Countries, and Central Europe. The looting began around 1794 and continued through Napoleon's rule of France, until the Congress of Vienna in 1815 ordered the restitution of the works.
Adoration of the Magi is a painting in tempera on wood panel by Luca Signorelli (1450–1523) and his assistants, executed c. 1493–1494, and now in the Louvre in Paris. It was probably the first painting he produced in Città di Castello, and originally hung over the main altar of the monastery church of Sant'Agostino. The surface displayed within the frame is 331 cm by 245.5 cm. In late 2022 it was not on display.
Vereniging Rembrandt is a Dutch association of art patrons who raise funds to assist Dutch museums and art galleries in purchasing artworks. Since it was founded in 1883, it has helped purchase over two thousand works, including Vermeer's The Milkmaid.
The 136 museums in the city of Paris display many historical, scientific, and archeological artifacts from around the world, covering diverse and unique topics including fashion, theater, sports, cosmetics, and the culinary arts.
The Société des amis du Louvre is a voluntary association created in 1897 whose objective is to buy objects with an artistic, archeological, or historical value for the Louvre museum.
