The nucleus of the gallery of sculpture and painting was formed by Francis I. and the Renaissance princes at the palace of Fontainebleau, where the canvases at the beginning of the seventeenth century had reached nearly 200. Colbert, during the reign of Louis XIV. by the purchase of the Mazarin and other Collections, added 647 paintings and nearly 6000 drawings in ten years. In 1681 the Cabinet du Roi, for so the collection of royal pictures was called, was transferred to the Louvre. They soon, however, followed their owner to Versailles, but some hundred were subsequently returned to Paris, where they might be inspected at the Luxembourg Palace by the public on Wednesdays and Saturdays. In 1709 Bailly, the keeper of the king's cabinet, took an inventory of the paintings and they were found to number 2376. In 1757 all were again returned to Versailles, and it was not until 1793, when the National Convention, on Barrère's motion, took the matter in hand, that they were restored to the Parisians and, together with the works of art removed from the suppressed churches and monasteries preserved by Lenoir, formed the famous gallery of the Louvre, which was formally opened to the public on the first anniversary of the memorable 10th of August. The arrival of the artistic spoils from Italy was stage-managed by Napoleon with consummate skill and imposing spectacular effect. Amid the applauding multitudes of Parisians a long procession of triumphal cars slowly wended its way, loaded with famous pictures, securely packed, but each bearing its title in monumental inscription. The Transfiguration, by Raphael: The Christ, by Titian, etc. Then followed the heavy rumbling of massive cars groaning under the weight of sculptures, these too inscribed: The Apollo Belvedere: The Laocoon, etc. Other chariots loaded with trunks containing famous books, precious manuscripts, captured flags, trophies of arms, gave the scene all the pomp and circumstance of a veritable Roman triumph. These spoils, which almost choked the Louvre during Napoleon's reign, were reduced by the return, in 1815, of 5233 works of art to their original owners under British supervision, and during the removal of the statues and pictures, ostentatiously effected to the bitter humiliation of the Parisians, British sentinels were stationed along the galleries and British soldiers stood under arms in the quadrangle and the Place du Carrousel to protect the workmen.
Before beginning our artistic pilgrimage let us pay grateful tribute to the memory of Alexandre Lenoir, to whose tact and love for the arts we owe the preservation of so many priceless objects here, at St. Denis, and other museums of Paris. Appointed by the National Assembly, Director of a Commission pour les Monuments formed to collect all objects of art worthy of preservation during the search for lead coffins to be cast into bullets, he induced the authorities to grant him the use of the monastery of the Petits Augustins (now part of the École des Beaux Arts) for their storage. There the admirable official succeeded in rescuing some 500 historical and royal monuments from Paris and St. Denis and some 2,600 pictures from the confiscated monasteries and ecclesiastical establishments, although existing receipts for about 600 pictures reclaimed from Lenoir by the Revolutionary Tribunal and burned, prove that he was only partially successful. In 1793 the National Convention assigned the Petits Augustins to Lenoir as a Museum of French Monuments, and the collection was pieced together, somewhat unskilfully it is true, and arranged in six rooms: many of the objects were in due time destined to find their way back to St. Denis, others to enrich the Louvre.
(a) Ancient Sculpture.
Entering the quadrangle of the Louvre and making our way to the S.W. angle we shall see, traced on the granite paving by a line of smaller stones, the outline of the E. and N. walls and towers of the old fortress of Philip Augustus, the position of the E. gateway, the Porte de Bourbon, being marked by its two flanking towers. Enclosed within these lines, the site of the massive old keep is shown by two circular strings of stones on the asphalt. Lescot's and Goujon's beautiful façade (p. [173]) is now before us. Although the whole of the decorative sculpture was designed by Goujon, only three groups of figures can be safely attributed to his hand; those that adorn the three œil de bœuf windows of the ground floor: Fame and Victory; Peace, and War disarmed; History and Glory. Concerning the two first-named figures—Fame blowing a trumpet, and a winged Victory offering a crown of laurel—on either side of the window in the S.W. angle, it is related that one day as King Henry II. sat at table with his architect, he asked him what he had in mind when he made the design. "Sire," answered Lescot, "by the first figure I meant Ronsard, and by the trumpet, the power of his verse, which carried his name to the four quarters of the earth." Ronsard, who was present, returned the compliment by a flattering poetic epistle which he sent to Lescot. Goujon's figures, destined for the pediment of the attic, were placed by Napoleon I. most awkwardly over the entrances to the Egyptian and Assyrian collections in the E. wing, and utterly spoiled of their effect. The monograms on either side of the windows: two D's interlaced with the bar of an H, or two C's with the whole of the letter H, are variously interpreted as the initials of Diana of Poitiers and Henry II. or Catherine de' Medici and Henry II.
We enter the palace by the Pavilion de l'Horloge (the clock pavilion) and, turning L. find on our L. a door which opens to the Salle des Caryatides (p. [173]). Here, in the old Salle Basse, memories crowd upon us—the dangling bodies of the four terrorist chiefs of the Sections hanged by the Duke of Mayenne from the beams of the old ceiling; the Red Nuptials of fair Queen Margot and Henri Quatre; the chivalrous and handsome, but ill-fated young hero of Lepanto, Don John of Austria, on his way, in 1576, to the Netherlands, his brain seething with romantic dreams of rescuing Mary Queen of Scots and seating her beside himself on the throne of England, taking part in a royal ball, disguised as a Moor, and leaving, smitten by the charms of Queen Margot; the lying in state of the murdered Henri; the dying Mazarin wheeled in his chair to witness the royal performances by Molière. Beneath our feet in the caves are part of the foundations of the old feudal château, and pillars and fragments of old sculpture discovered in 1882-1884.
We note Goujon's Caryatides (p. [174]), traverse the hall, filled with Roman sculpture and, turning R. along the Corridor de Pan, enter the Salle Grecque, which contains a small but precious collection of Greek sculptures. In the centre are three archaic works: a draped Juno, and in glass cases, a Head of Apollo, and a Head of a Man, the latter still bearing traces of the original colouring. Also in cases are: Head of a Lapith from the Parthenon; and Head of a woman attributed to the sculptor Calamis, acquired in 1908 from the Humphrey Ward collection. Three bas-reliefs from a temple of Apollo at Thasos show a marked advance in artistic expression, which reaches its ultimate perfection in the lovely fragment of the Parthenon frieze, and in a mutilated metope from the same temple. An interesting comparison is afforded by the metopes (The Labours of Hercules) from the Temple of Jupiter at Olympia, earlier and transitional in style but admirable in craftsmanship. On the walls and in the embrasures of the S. windows are a number of stele, or sepulchral reliefs,[194] executed by ordinary funeral masons, which will demonstrate the remarkable general excellence of Attic sculpture in the finest period: 766, to Philis, daughter of Cleomedes, is especially noteworthy. Even the inferior reliefs are characterised by an atmosphere of dignified and restrained melancholy.
We return to the Corridor de Pan and continue past the Salle des Caryatides through halls filled with Græco-Roman work of secondary importance, to the sanctuary of the serenely beautiful Venus of Melos, the best-known and most admired of Greek statues in Europe. Much has been written by eminent critics as to the attitude of the complete statue. Three conflicting theories may be briefly summarised: (1) That the left hand held an apple, the right supporting the drapery; (2) that the figure was a Victory holding a shield and a winged figure on an orb; (3) the latest conjecture, by Solomon Reinach, that the figure is the sea-goddess Amphitrite, who held a trident in the extended left arm. It was to this exquisite creation[195] of idealised womanhood that the poet Heine dragged himself in May 1848 to bid adieu to the lovely idols of his youth, before he lay, never again to rise, on his mattress-grave in the Rue d'Amsterdam. "As I entered the hall," he writes, "where the most blessed goddess of beauty, our dear lady of Melos, stands on her pedestal, I well-nigh broke down, and fell at her feet sobbing piteously, so that even a heart of stone must be softened. And the goddess gazed at me compassionately, yet withal so comfortless, as who should say: 'Seest thou not that I have no arms and cannot help thee?'"
To the R. of the Salle de la Venus de Milo is the Salle Melpomene, with a fine colossal figure of the Tragic Muse, and, No. 419[196] (163), an excellent Head of a Woman. We enter the Salle de la Pallas de Velletri, and ranged along its centre find: 436, a fine bust of Alexander the Great; the Venus of Arles, 439, said to be a copy of an early work by Praxiteles; a magnificent Head of Homer, 440; and 441, Apollo, the Lizard-slayer, after a bronze by Praxiteles. The colossal Pallas, in a recess to the R., was found at Velletri in 1797: it is another Roman reproduction of a Greek bronze. Near the entrance to the next room stands a pleasing Venus, 525, and in the centre the famous "Borghese Gladiator" or Héros Combattant, actually, a warrior attacking a mounted Amazon. An inscription states that it is the work of Agasias of Ephesus. To the R. is a fine Marsyas, doomed to be flayed alive by order of Apollo; to L. 562, the Borghese Centaur, and near the exit, 529, the charming Diana of Gabii, a Greek girl fastening her mantle. We pass to the Salle du Tibre, in the centre of which stands the famous Diana and the Stag, acquired for Francis I., much admired and over-rated by the sculptors of the renaissance: at the end is a colossal group, symbolising the Tiber and Rome. We turn R. and again enter the Corridor de Pan, pass through the Salle Grecque and reach the Rotonde with the Borghese Mars in its centre. We turn L., continue direct through Rooms XIV. to XVIII. the old Petite Galerie[197] and the apartments of the queen mothers of France still retaining their ceiling decorations by Romanelli. We then turn R. to the spacious Salle d'Auguste, (XIX), at the end of which, in a recess, stands a majestic draped statue of Augustus. In the centre are a bust, 1204, said to be the head of Antiochus III., king of Syria 223-187 B.C., and 1207 the stately Roman Orator as Mercury, which an inscription on the tortoise states to be the work of Cleomanes, an Athenian. In this and the subsequent halls are placed many imperial busts[198] of much historical and some artistic interest.
We return to Room XVIII. where we find, 1205, the colossal bust of Antinous, the beautiful young favourite of Hadrian, who in a fit of melancholy flung himself into the Nile and (deified) became the most popular of the gods in the Panthéon of the later Empire: the eyes were originally formed of jewels. This is the bust referred to by J.A. Symonds, in his Sketches and Studies in S. Europe, as by far the finest of the simple busts of the imperial favourite. In Room XV. is a statue, 1121, of the Emperor Julian, found at Paris, some curious Mithraic reliefs, and, in Room XIV. are interesting Roman altars and sacrificial reliefs. We again enter the Rotonde, turn L. and proceed across the Vestibule Daru to the Escalier Daru, ascending which, we are confronted by the majestic Victory of Samothrace, one of the noblest examples of Greek art, wrought immediately before it had spent its creative force and began to direct a subtle and technical mastery to serve private luxury and pomp. We descend and return to the Quadrangle.
(b) Mediæval and Renaissance Sculpture.