Imagine. The year is 1911, you are a handyman (or perhaps just a petty criminal) who has been asked to put some glass cases around some famous artwork at the art gallery. You had planned to steal a portrait of a Lady painted by Leonardo da Vinci that hangs on the museum’s wall. Sometimes during your work, you undo a heavy wooden frame and slid the painting under your clothes and try to exit through the side door. Your plan of a clean escape with the loot is almost foiled by a locked door, but you somehow manage to con an innocent passing plumber to help you open the locked door, and successfully make your lucky escape. It had taken nearly 26 hours before the theft is detected and by that time you are on your way to your homeland, Italy.

The painting is Leonardo’s Mono Lisa, and the museum is ‘The Louvre’ in Paris which is considered the largest and most visited art museum in the world.  

While the painting is recovered within two years as the perpetrator tries to offload his loot to a gallery for half a million lire. The theft and subsequent recovery of the painting causes a media frenzy which has made this painting one of the most recognized piece of art in the world. According to a conservative estimate (…remember beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder!), this single work of art is worth about US $800-$900 million today.   

The Louvre

When we were planning our overseas trip, I was adamant that we needed to visit the Louvre. Although the idea met with some resistance initially, ‘the powers-that-be’ eventually give-in to my wishes and we bought our online tickets for the exhibition.  Note to would-be visitors, it is difficult, if not almost impossible to get the tickets on the day, you may have to wait in the queue for hours to get the tickets and then another few to get into the gallery.

The queue through the glass pyramid gate is long, as the visitors are ‘released’ every half hour. Nearly 15,000 visitors from all corners of the world, visit each day and sending people in batches is the only way to manage the crowd. My initial estimate was that we would need about 3 hours for the visit and was contemptuous of some American tourists whom I overheard saying ‘we should be able to cover this in an hour, tops an hour and a half at best’, and guess what, we were both wrong!

The Louvre was originally built as a fortress in 1190 and was later converted into a palace. Like many buildings of its time, it grew over the years as new buildings were added to the complex.  When the royal palace moved to Versailles, the Louvre became the home to various art academies and offered regular exhibitions of its members' works.

After the French revolution, the building was converted into a gallery in 1793. Napoleon expanded the collection and renamed it Musée Napoléon. He added war spoils from the conquered lands of Belgium, Italy, Prussia and Austria to the museums’ art collections. After the abdication of Napoleon, some 5000 art pieces were returned to the originating country however a few hundred artworks and especially rare artefacts from Egypt still remained.

The current Louvre collection includes Egyptian antiques, ancient Greek and Roman sculptures, paintings by the Old Masters, crown jewels and other artefacts from French nobles. The works cover the period from the sixth century B.C. to the 19th century A.D.

While about 35,000 artworks are on display at any given time, most of its half-a-million-plus collection is locked up in storage. If one was to spend an average of 30 seconds to see each piece, one would need 291 hours to have a glimpse of it all! Maybe that’s the reason most of the nameplates are in French only; instead of being dual language (…museum authorities, take note this is a complaint, not a compliment!).

Covering an area of 66,600 square meters, 4 main levels and more than 400 rooms, the Louvre is staffed by more than 2000 employees. In addition to the main exhibition in Paris, the museum also collaborates with other overseas art galleries and some of its treasures travel around the world to such varied destinations as Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Iran’s National Museum, and the Louvre Abu Dhabi.

Searching for Mona Lisa

We had been in the museum for nearly 4 hours, and we were getting tired, as we started to ‘glide’ through the never-ending rooms. Our sore legs and back started to take over and frankly, trying to decipher the French write-ups for the painting was not helping the cause. Our focus soon reverted to finding Mona Lisa. After all, visiting Louvre and not seeing the Mona Lisa would perhaps be classed as ‘criminal negligence’ in the tourist guidebooks. 

We asked the security personnel and were directed towards ‘Salle des États’ the palace’s largest room. ‘Go to the first floor and then follow the crowds’ was the advice. In route to our destination, we passed through ‘Galerie d’Appollon’ which is the home of French royal jewels and hard stone vessels.

Apparently, King Louis XIV famously identified himself with Apollo (the Greek god of the sun and the arts) and this splendid gallery was the first tangible representation of that image. One of the best gilders, painters and sculptors contributed to the decorations in the room. Truly, the decor of the hall and the treasures inside are breathtaking.

And finally, we reached the most crowded room in the museum, the great hall where Mona Lisa hangs from the centre of the wall. Her enigmatic smile enchanting her audience who crowded around her in droves, with mobiles held high trying to capture the image from all possible angles. It seems that the crowd’s emphasis was more focused towards registering their presence rather than appreciating the artwork. Another tick on their bucket list.

Very few, if anyone appreciates that the painting was the turning point in portraiture painting. Not only the Italian Renaissance but a large number of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries artists were inspired by this work.

 According to Louvre Curator Jean-Pierre Cuzin “In a break with the Florentine tradition of outlining the painted image, Leonardo perfected the technique known as sfumato, which translated literally from Italian means "vanished or evaporated." Creating imperceptible transitions between light and shade, and sometimes between colours, he blended everything "without borders, in the manner of smoke, his brush strokes so subtle as to be invisible to the naked eye”.

It is said that Leonardo was fascinated by the way light falls on curved surfaces he painted the image with layers of transparent colour, each only a few molecules thick, making the Mona Lisa’s face appear to glow.

We spent nearly 4.5 hrs in the museum and barely managed to skim through the displays. Without a doubt, a comprehensive review requires more than one visit.

One other point to note, visitors can also hire headsets at an additional fee which can provide English translation. In hindsight, we should have hired one. But note you will need to have a photo ID and will need to deposit your licence or passport to get the device. Your documents will be returned when you return the device.

The Other Art Gallery- The Petit Palais

While in Paris, another must-visit art museum for art lovers is the Petit Palais.  This building was built for the 1900 World Fair, and now houses the Paris Museum Of Fine Arts.

We were lucky that during our visit, a ‘free entrance’ promotion was on. Though much smaller than the Louvre, it still takes an hour to view the exhibits.

All in all, Paris galleries are a delight for art lovers and rightfully deserve a place in your itinerary.