Great Museums of the World: Louvre, Paris

Second Hand (Hardcover)

Excellent Condition

Anyone who has visited the Louvre will have experienced a feeling of awe at the sheer size of this great museum and the fantastic wealth of art treasures that it houses.

Some of these works have such a universal and irresistible fascination that they have become household names: the Mona Lisa, the Venus di Milo and the Winged Victory of Sajnothrace. But of course, these are but three of the countless masterpieces, some perhaps less familiar, to be found in the Louvre. So vast is this museum that anything but a lengthy stay can easily produce a sense of frustration: it is almost impossible to be selective when innumerable works of art of all ages and origins are spread out in a complex of rooms and halls covering over 40 acres.

This book provides the answer. Here, in 130 full-colour plates, is the `heart' of the Louvre - a cross-section that takes us through the history of art from the earliest times. Works of ancient and primitive civilizations, of Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece and Rome, Persia, Christian Egypt and Byzantium, all are represented here.

As one might expect of France's greatest museum, the Louvre has an incomparable collection of French masterpieces: from the 12th-century painted wooden Christ Descending from the Cross and the famous 15th-century Avignon Pieta to the works of de la Tour and Poussin of the 17th century and Watteau, Chard in and Fragonard of the 18th. From 19th-century France comes the famous Raft of Medusa by Gericault and the works of other romantics such as Corot, Delacroix and Courbet.

Finally, we reach the magnificent collection of Impressionist paintings by Monet, Degas, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Cezanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin. But if the French Schools are well represented, the Louvre also provides proof of the universality of art. A huge section is devoted to the great Italian masters such as Uccello, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto and Michelangelo. From the Schools of Flanders, Holland, Germany and Spain come such incomparable works as Van der Weyden's Annunciation, Hieronymus Bosch's Ship of Fools and paintings by Vermeer, Rembrandt, Durer, Goya, El Greco and Velasquez.

With fascinating analyses of the works by well-known art historians, a foreword by the Director of the Museums of France and an account of the history of the museum itself, this book gives a magnificent impression of one of the greatest existing monuments to man's cultural achievement.