Louvre Controversy

The worldwide, iconic centerpiece for art and history known commonly as The Louvre has been the home to the French monarchy, a battle fortress during the Hundred Years War and currently as a world-class museum with art ranging from the Mona Lisa by Leonardo DaVinci(which some believe to be a self-portrait of DaVinci) to artifacts from Ancient Egypt to Greek, Etruscan, Native American and Near East antiquities. But the Louvre was not always the artistic mecca that the world has familiarized the name with.

Since its beginnings, the Louvre has conferred legitimacy on those who claimed it, for the brief period of a human lifetime, and as such it has been central to the history of its city and nation, even before there was a nation. It has been a wartime castle, and, rarely, a peacetime palace; it has witnessed faith, bloodshed, grandeur, and spectacle, despair, terror, and resolve that we in our time can only imagine--or reconstruct from the gilded traces left to us. The Louvre drew on the greatest talents of Europe, and was built at the cost of the misery
of anonymous millions. Its construction vied with wars, revolutions, and the fall of kings, the rise of republics, and the loss of empires. At the turn of the thirteenth century, the Capetian warrior king Philip Augustus was trying both to wrest several northern French provinces from King John Plantagenet of England, the treacherous brother of Richard the Lionhearted, and to safeguard the Île-de-France, the region of which Paris was the capital. On the western side of the city's fortifications, facing the Plantagenet holdings, the French king erected a moated castle with towers on a site called the Louvre; the castle walls surrounded a moated circular keep, the Great Tower, one hundred feet high, one of the architectural wonders of the age. Within the stone enclosure, buildings lined the west wall and the Seine wall on the south. This arrangement effectively protected Philip Augustus from foreign enemies to the west and disgruntled subjects to the east; it became the model for military defenses throughout the gradually unified kingdom, and the subject of ballads and popular tales. Ironically enough, the Louvre also served the same capacity for the French as the Tower of London did for their long-time British rivals. The archives and treasury of the Crown were kept there, as were the king's enemies. Philip Augustus, however, lived elsewhere, in his presumably more comfortable palace on the nearby Île de la Cité. Man of war though he was, Philip, also known as Philip II, granted its charter to the University of Paris, the first such institution the world had ever seen. And, in the tradition of monarchs the world over, he was a patron of the arts and of architecture, principally through the many churches he built.

In 1364, Raymond du Temple, architect to Charles V, began transforming the old fortress into a splendid royal residence. Contemporary miniatures and paintings contain marvelous images of ornately decorated rooftops. Apartments around the central court featured large, elaborately-carved windows. A majestic spiral staircase, the “grande vis,” served the upper floors of the new buildings, and a pleasure garden was created at the north end. The sumptuous interiors were decorated with sculptures, tapestries, and paneling.

The Louvre was also a magnificent guest house for visiting dignitaries, such as the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV and his retinue, who came to Paris in 1377. The emperor and his suite arrived at the Louvre by boat--an inadequate word for the floating palace that transported him to Charles's breathtaking new construction. Even the emperor was impressed to see the neatly laid-out gardens, Raymond du Temple's grand staircase, the frescoes, and the chapels, including the French king's private oratory, and the many windows. Gargoyles guarded the castle's turrets, while chimneys atop the high roofs told of fireplaces and residential comfort within. The royal menagerie brought the animals of the illuminated bestiaries to life. Although the territory of France was in the throes of almost constant warfare, Charles's Louvre stood for the ideal of a kingdom that was united and at peace.

The Louvre’s vast and varying different roles throughout the history of France whether it be as a French arsenal against western invaders of the capital, or as a house for visiting dignitaries or even as the center of the French kingdom. The slow progression of the Louvre from battle fortress to dignified palace filled with galleries including the most famous the Grande Galerie was a long and dedicated task by a family line of kings almost 200 years. The reigns of Louis XIII and Louis XIV had a major impact on the Louvre and Tuileries palaces. The extension of the west wing of the Cour Carrée under Louis XIII marked the beginning of an ambitious program of work that would be completed by Louis XIV and added to by Louis XV, resulting in the Louvre that we see today.

The Museum Central des Arts(the name of the museum at the Louvre was known) opened its doors on August 10, 1793. Under the authority of the Minister of the Interior, its first governors were the painters Hubert Robert, Fragonard, and Vincent, the sculptor Pajou, and the architect de Wailly. Admission was free, with artists given priority over the general public, who were admitted on weekends only. The works, mostly paintings from the collections of the French royal family and aristocrats who had fled abroad, were displayed in the Salon Carré and the Grande Galerie.

The first director of the Louvre was Baron Dominique-Vivant Denon, a lifetime diplomat, author and artist. Vivant Denon was appointed by good friend and great military mind Napoleon Boneparte. Whilst on various excursions throughout Europe and Egypt, Denon put his worldly knowledge into the direction and advancement of the museum not to mention the many artifcats collected with his travels found their way back to the galleries in Paris.

Denon's goal was to make the Louvre "the world's most beautiful institution," and he succeeded. Called "Napoleon's eye," he traveled in person, or sent emissaries with shopping lists, in the wake of Napoleon's military victories and diplomatic treaties. Denon's imperial forces plundered Italy especially, in keeping with the French art establishment's grudging acknowledgement that it was that country that had produced Europe's greatest artists. Now, however, French artists would have the home advantage. During Napoleon's reign, over five hundred paintings were taken from the Vatican alone; among the Pope's sculptures, was the celebrated Laocoön, an ancient Greek marble that had been unearthed in Rome in 1506. Denon was the first public person to value painters such as Cimabue, Giotto, and other "primitives," as the artists preceding Raphael were called, and he proceeded with a specific pedagogic program in mind: to illustrate not only the lineage of the masters--what they learned from their masters--but the recognizable spark of genius that is independent of any academic, transmittable skill. In the coming years, the Louvre would meet turmoil, but nonetheless continue to grow due to the perseverance of artistically passionate rulers.
In the last decades of the nineteenth century, the Louvre refined its identity, spawning new museums with the works it shed. During World War I, the greatest masterpieces of the world's greatest museum were evacuated, as they were again from August 1938 to December 1939. The plans to save the Louvre's artworks had been made even before the Munich agreements of 1938, but thousands of crates had to be built. The Louvre, still mainly a government building housing administrative offices, had only one truck, so transport was borrowed from the Samaritaine, a nearby department store. Two days before war was declared, all the art in the Louvre was out of Paris, its priceless treasures sent out to châteaux throughout France, sometimes only a step ahead of the advancing
Germans.
With the jet age--the era of international mass transit--beginning in the mid-1960s, the Louvre, already beloved by Parisians and the French generally, became one of the globe's most popular tourist destinations. By 1977, three million people a year were visiting the museum, and the strain was beginning to be felt. In 1981, François Mittérand, president of the French Republic, unveiled the Grand Louvre project, born as much from a pragmatic assessment of the Louvre's situation as from the principle that the leader of a nation owes a legacy to the people of that nation. In 1989, the first phase of the project ended and with it the iconic glass pyramid designed by architect I.M. Pei. Rising from the center of the Cour Napoléon, it is the focal point of the museum's main axes of circulation and also serves as an entrance to the large reception hall beneath. From here, visitors can also reach the temporary exhibition areas, displays on the history of the palace and museum, Charles V's original moat, an auditorium, and public amenities (coat check, bookshop, cafeteria, restaurant).
The Louvre today is still an epicenter of culture and learning which plays host to some six million visitors every year. It is without a doubt not only one of the defining legacies ofFrance, but a cornerstone for historical art and education. References
History of The Louvre http://www.hlla.com/reference/louvre2.html The Louvre Official Website – History of the Louvre
http://www.louvre.fr/llv/musee/histoire_louvre.jsp?bmLocale=en