1001 Paintings from the Louvre: From Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century [Illustrated] [Hardcover]

If a trip to Paris including a day at what is arguably the most famous museum in the world isn't in your plans, this gorgeous volume is an excellent armchair visit. Further, it is a visit you can make whenever you wish with no walking, standing or climbing stairs involved!

Edited by Vincent Pomarede and featuring gorgeous photographs (many full page) by Erich Lessing this volume is as the Preface states "a dazzling printed gallery of works selected both to please and instruct." The volume does, of course, contain many well-known and loved masterpieces such as the Mona Lisa and La Tour's The Adoration of the Shepherds, in addition it also holds lesser known paintings that merit our attention.

Thumbnail captions by various curators accompany each painting often drawing the eye to an important attribute of the work or placing it in appropriate context with other artists and periods. Although I've used "painting" in its broadest term, also included are remarkable illuminated manuscripts, studies, stained glass, pottery, furniture and tableware.

It is tantamount to impossible to describe the wealth of beauty housed in the Louvre and words are also inadequate to described the wonders found in the 576 pages of this exquisite volume. It is a rare book, one that will be enjoyed over and over again as well as by generations to come.

Highly recommended.

- Gail Cooke

It's stunning to think how much the creators of this book had to leave out in order to confine themselves to just 1001 works in the Louvre, and limit those to paintings. The Winged Victory of Samothrace. The Venus de Milo. The ancient Egyptian collection's Seated Scribe, alertly awaiting, down the centuries, further dictation. The building itself, the 16th century palace of the Louvre on its massive medieval foundations that can still be visited, mysteriously caverned beneath the miles of corridors where the paintings hang.

But the greatest masters of painting are here: Ingres, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, El Greco, Velázquez, Jan van Eyck, Goya, Raphael, Giotto, Hals...Vermeer's Lace-Maker and Astronomer glow from these pages (the latter painting, interestingly, acquired in 1983 by donation in payment of estate taxes). Here one may wonder whether the insightful Van Dyck's Charles I, King of England replaces mere haughtiness in the monarch's bearing with nobility. Rubens' The Landing of the Queen at Marseille, 3 November 1600 portrays Marie de Médicis, about to become the bride of Henri IV of France, disembarking from a ship wearing an expression of wide-eyed utter blankness, surrounded by allegorical figures including typically Rubenesque enormous naked females roiling the water below; the picture makes the viewer gasp at his phenomenal technique while perhaps repressing a grin at the writhing cellulite among the waves. Given the crowds that invariably jam the space in front of the Mona Lisa at the museum, you may be glad of a chance to get a closer look at her - how did Leonardo make the painting look as though he'd smoked it onto the panel? - in the book. Contemplating enigmatic wall paintings from Pompeii, you will be drawn into a time in which we partly recognize ourselves, but are baffled by unanswerable questions.

"He'll make your Paris Louvre shake for it," runs a line in Shakespeare's Henry V. Through the wars that have shaken France since the Louvre's beginnings, it has hidden its irreplaceable treasures when it had to, and survived. Today it houses such a stupendous collection of art objects that no lifetime of visits could be long enough to absorb them all.

If you've been to the Louvre, you surely didn't see them all, however desperately you wanted to. This large volume will help you revisit and remember the paintings from antiquity to the 19th century that you did see. As for those you may have missed, you'll find here many of those most worth seeing. If you're going to the Louvre for the first time, 1001 Paintings will help you prepare to make the most of your visit. It's true that the more you know before you get there, the richer your experience will be. If you're looking for a gift for an art lover, this would be a good choice.

At its list price of $80, this volume might be regarded as a fairly heavy investment. Available at a discount as you're likely to find it, though, it becomes more affordable. The better color reproductions of paintings are, the more expensive they are to produce; and this coffee table-sized book is crammed with decent full-color illustrations. There are souvenir art books available in museum bookstores from which one turns away in disappointment, the reproductions fall so very far short of the originals. The reproductions in 1001 Paintings, however, come acceptably, if not ideally, close to the original art they represent.

The contents, organized by period and place of origin, include Oriental, Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities; Islamic arts; French, Italian, Spanish, Flemish, Dutch and Germanic paintings, as well as those of other Northern schools. The section on Graphic Arts encompasses the magnificent French pastel portraits which by themselves are worth a visit to the Louvre. (Those by Maurice-Quentin de la Tour alone, in fact, are worth a visit.) The section on Decorative Arts, extending the definition of "painting," displays, among other objects, stained glass windows, painted enamels, faience, shields, even ones that may have actually been carried in tournaments, covered with intricately detailed paintings; pictorially carved wooden furniture; and such a bemusing piece as a dazzling Byzantine lidded bowl, dating from the 10th-11th century, which entered the collection of Louis XIV before 1673.

The accompanying essays are readable, instructive and helpful. Too many members of the Louvre's battalions of experts participated to name any here but the editors, Vincent Pomarède and Delphine Trébosc, and the photographer, Erich Lessing.

Innumerable paintings from the Louvre are pictured in bright colors on glossy paper catching all their details and shadings. "Painting" is used loosely, so that there are also many rarely-seen works from the famed museum's Cabinet de Dessins (Drawing Gallery) as well as illuminated manuscripts, murals, and works on decorative objects such as porcelain objects and watchcases in addition to the oils, watercolors, gouaches, and others on canvas or paper and usually framed. Beginning with works from the Orient, the organization moving through centuries and across cultures leads to more detailed sections on European paintings by centuries and ends with sections on graphic arts and decorative arts. There are many attractive, voluminous books of art from the Louvre and other outstanding museums. But this one is distinctive for its reach regarding the major genre of painting in the incomparable collection of this leading museum of international reputation. Also, with essays on cultural influences, styles, subjects, and leading painters of the eras and keenly observant, often incisive annotations on each of the numerous works by art historians, the book is especially informative and educating.