Today we went to the louvre and the aquarium. Two other students and I met at the ISA and walked over to the Louvre. We had to be tourists for a minute so we took pictures with the triangle before we went in. you have to go underground to get into the museum. You go in the pyramide du louvre and go down some stairs and you’re in.
The first room we went in had three paintings we had learned about already. We saw the Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault. This artist used fellow painters and real dead bodies as models for the people in this painting.
The next painting we immediately recognized was Bonaparte Visits the Plague Stricken in Jaffa. This painting depicts Napoleon visiting his plague stricken soldiers. This painting shows him comforting them and promisinghe will get them help and they will be ok. As he was leaving the room where they all were he told one of his soldiers who wasn’t sick “kill them all” and they were all killed. He had this painting commissioned to make him look like the good guy so people wouldn’t think he had his own sick soldiers killed, when in fact he did.
After that we saw la Grande Odalisqueby Jean Augsuste Dominique Ingres This is a famous painting that incurred a lot of criticism because the artist really distorted this woman’s body. The painting is beautiful but the proportions and the way her legs are unnaturally crossed is unsettling. The woman in the painting was painted with two or three, some even say five, extra vertebrae so her back appears more elongated. It is still unknown why the artist did this, but it is thought to be an intentional decision rather than a mistake.
We saw the Mona Lisa of course. It was all blocked off and covered in layers of glass and you can’t get close to it, but it was still very amazing to see. The architecture of the building alone is incredible, the paintings were amazing and I really enjoyed the Egyptian exhibit.
After the Louvre we went to the aquarium. On our way to the aquarium a group of little girls that couldn’t have been older than 11 tried to steal this woman’s purse, but she stopped them. It was very different from any aquarium I have been to in the United States. my favorite part was the touch tank. It was a touch tank of huge koi fish. They came right up to you and let you pat them it was really fun.
