St. Sulpice has a reputation for good music.
The Fontaine St. Sulpice, in front of the church, is from Visconti’s designs, and has appropriate statues of the four great French preachers—Bossuet, Fénélon, Massillon, and Fléchier. The pulpit here is still famous for its oratory.
From St. Sulpice, the Rue Férou, to the R of the façade, leads you straight to the Luxembourg Palace. The long low building almost directly opposite you as you emerge is the
**Musée du Luxembourg,
containing the works of modern French painters. This, of course, is one of the most important objects to be visited in Paris; but I do not give any detailed account of it here, because the pictures themselves are entirely modern, and chiefly by living painters and sculptors, the various examples being sent to the Louvre, or to provincial museums, within ten years of the death of the artist. A visit to this Museum is therefore indispensable to those who desire to form a just acquaintance with contemporary art. But nothing in the Gallery demands historical elucidation. The visitor should provide himself with the Official Catalogue, which will amply suffice for his needs in this Gallery. I need hardly say that a proper inspection of it cannot be combined in one day with the other objects mentioned in this Excursion. Devote to it at least one or two separate mornings.
Turning to the L, as we leave the end of the Rue Férou, the first building on our R is the official residence of the President of the Senate; the second is Marie de Médicis’s
Palace of the Luxembourg,
now employed as the seat of the Senate. Walk along its façade, the work of Jacques Debrosse, one of the ablest architects of the later classicizing Renaissance, in order to observe the modified style of the age of Henri IV and Louis XIII, which it still on the whole preserves, in spite of modern additions and alterations. Note the gradual falling-off from the exquisitely fanciful period of the earlier French Renaissance, which produced the best parts of the Louvre and St. Eustache; and the way this building lets us down gently to the bald classicism of Louis XIV and Perrault. If you know Florence, observe also the distinct reminiscences of the Pitti Palace. Continue your walk along the whole of the façade, as far as the corner by the Odéon Théâtre,—the subventioned theatre of the students and the Quartier Latin. Then, turn into the garden, and note the rest of the building, whose façade towards this side, though restored under Louis Philippe, more nearly represents Debrosse’s architecture than does that towards the main thoroughfare. You need not trouble about the interior: though it contains a few good modern paintings.
The garden, however, is well worth a visit on its own account, both for the sake of the typical manner in which it is laid out, and especially for the handsome Fontaine de Médicis by Debrosse, on the side next the Panthéon. The group of sculpture in the middle represents Polyphemus surprising Acis and Galatea. Go round to the back, to see the (modern) Fountain of Leda,—that favourite subject of Renaissance sculpture. The best way back from this Excursion is by the Rue de Seine, which leads you past the Marché St.-Germain.
Another building in this district to which, if possible, the reader should pay at least one visit, is the École des Beaux-Arts in the Rue Bonaparte. This collection is interesting, both because it contains a number of valuable fragments of French Renaissance work, especially architectural, and also because of its Museum of Copies, including transcripts (mostly very good) of the best pictures of various ages, many of which are useful to the student of art-history for comparison with originals in the Louvre and elsewhere. Everybody who has not been to Rome, Venice, and Florence, should certainly try to visit this Museum; and even those who have made firsthand acquaintance with the masterpieces of Italian art in their native homes will find that it sometimes affords them opportunities for comparison of works widely scattered in the originals, which can be better understood here in certain of their aspects than in isolation. The building is open to the public, free, from 12 to 4 on Sundays; on week-days, non-students are also admitted from 10 to 4 (except Mondays), on application to the Concierge (small fee). I strongly advise a Sunday visit, however, as you are then less hurried, and also as the door on the Quai Malaquais is open on that day. This building should, if possible, be made the object of a separate excursion. It takes a long time to inspect it thoroughly.