Lucy's Post: The Louvre

Our day at the Louvre started with an adventure. First, we had to hurry through the Metro because we were running late. Then, as we were crossing a street on the way to the Louvre, we saw an old woman walking toward us with two huge suitcases that she was struggling to push. In the middle of the crosswalk she just stopped and put her head down on the suitcase as if she were ready to pass out. Even though we were in a hurry, Mama stopped and asked her “Do you need help?” In return, her head popped up and with her fist right by her face, and yelled like a French Tuskin Raider (the sand people from Star Wars), as if we were trying to steal from her! We were all a little freaked out so we just walked away with her still cursing us in French.

One of my favorite things about the Louvre was that it had different subjects. For example, there were a few rooms about Egypt, a few rooms about Greece, a few rooms about Persia, many rooms about France, and many about the Italian Painters.

 Our tour guide was really nice. I had been worried about the guide because one time in Spain we had a tour guide whose English was very hard to understand and it ruined the tour, so I didn’t know what to expect. I was so happy when we found out she was not only American, but from Los Gatos, California! We were hungry (because we had been rushing to meet her and didn’t have time to eat breakfast) so she took us to Starbucks in the basement of the Louvre. Then she gave out booklets so that we could be “Art Detectives,” finding clues in the paintings and the statues, and then writing down the answers in our booklets, using numbers and letters to solve a puzzle at the end. The answer was a phrase in French that we had to say to the coat check person to get our prize! We sounded horrible in French, but it was fun to try!

Here are some things I saw:

A big black thumb-shaped stone called a stela that had the first of set of rules that a human being has ever written down on it. It was called Hammurabi’s Code, and one of the rules was that if a child hit his parents, the parents would have the right to chop off his or her hand!

 We saw some HUGE statues from ancient Babylon. I learned that a specific kind of hybrid figure (I don’t remember what it was called) were the guards of the palace of the king because they had a bull’s body for strength and power, bird wings for speed, and a human face for wisdom.

A sphinx statue from Ancient Egypt. Its nose was broken off, like many other Egyptian statues, and I was wondering why it was always the nose that was missing. I learned that it’s because the Egyptians thought that the nose was the most powerful part of the body, so when people robbed tombs and pyramids, they would use a chisel to break off the nose of the statues so they would lose their power.

The foundations of a Medeival Castle that they found when they were digging under the Louvre 

We saw some famous statues. Namely, the huge statue of Nike (the goddess of victory, not of shoes) and the Venus de Milo. We learned that her name was not really Venus de Milo! It was really Aphrodite. We learned that that statue was a big deal because she was the first statue to actually look like a woman. Unlike the other Aphrodite statue we saw (who looked pretty much like a man), the Venus de Milo Aphrodite looked softer and more like the Goddess of Love and Beauty instead of a stiff man.

The Louvre Museum used to be King Louis IVX 's palace. Some of the palace was left like it was when he lived there. Way too fancy.

We had to look for clues in the ceiling 

 The Italian Painters exhibit was amazing. First we saw how people painted in the Middle Ages (which is the painting in the photo above), which was completely flat and definitely not realistic, as if there were no background or space and the whole scene was cramped onto a paper. Then we moved into the Renaissance Room, where we saw the first painting when people had learned about perspective so that you could see if the people were in a room, then you could see the actual space as if they were really in a room. And the people definitely looked more realistic. Some of the paintings looked so realistic that when they first started doing that kind of painting, the Italian people got scared that they would actually fall into the painting! It was like a 3-D movie for them.

Then we went to see the Mona Lisa. One interesting thing that I learned was that in the 1800’s the painting got stolen!! The thief was someone who worked at the Louvre and he thought that the Mona Lisa should go back to Italy, where she was painted. A year later they found it and brought it back to the Louvre. Before in the museum, they had put it on a wall with other Leonardo di Vinci paintings. But then since it was such a famous painting, it was too hard for everyone to be crowded around one wall, so they put it on its own wall behind bullet-proof glass so that it wouldn’t get stolen again. Another thing was that there was a rumor that the Mona Lisa’s eyes would follow you wherever you went, so if you walked to the right, it would look like she was looking at you, but then if you moved to the left, she would still be looking at you! We tried it, and it really worked!! We learned that it was because Leonardo di Vinci painted shadows under her eyes so it looked like she was looking wherever you were. He knew how to do that because he was also a scientist and had learned how to do that in his paintings. Otherwise that would be very difficult!

They had a special room where you were allowed to touch the statues! 

I loved our day at the Louvre!!