Treasures Of The Louvre

The text chronicles the growth of the Louvre, from its thirteenth-century origins as a fortress to its present pre-eminence in the world of art.

In August 1939, curators at the Louvre nestled the world's most famous painting into a special red velvet-lined case and spirited her away to the Loire Valley as part of the biggest museum evacuation in history. As the Germans neared Paris in 1940, the French raced to move the masterpieces still further south, then again and again during the war, crisscrossing the southwest of France. Throughout the German occupation, the museum staff fought to keep the priceless treasures out of the hands of Hitler and his henchmen, often risking their lives to protect the country's artistic heritage. Saving Mona Lisa is the sweeping, suspenseful narrative of their struggle.

A rich production followed of objects for daily use, ritual, and luxury living, finely carved in various materials or fashioned of clay. Monumental sculpture was made in stone or bronze, and dramatic friezes were composed of brilliantly glazed bricks. Among the discoveries are tiny, intricately carved cylinder seals and splendid jewelry. Clay balls marked with symbols offer fascinating testimony to the very beginnings of writing; clay tablets from later periods bearing inscriptions in cuneiform record political history, literature, business transactions, and mathematical calculations. A very important group of finds from Susa is made up of objects brought back as booty from conquests in Mesopotamia. These works, many of them the royal monuments of Akkadian and Babylonian monarchs - for instance, the great stele of Naram-Sin - are among the best known of all objects from the ancient Near East.

This tiny-format work covers one of the world's finest art collections - the Louvre in Paris. It gives a history of the museum itself and takes the reader on a guided tour of its seven departments - paintings, drawings, sculpture, decorative arts and Egyptian, Greco-Roman and Oriental art.

The centuries-long history of the Louvre, from humble fortress to Royal palace to the world’s greatest art museum—with photos and building maps. Some ten million people from all over the world flock to the Louvre each year to enjoy its incomparable art collection. Yet few of them are aware of the remarkable history of the site and buildings themselves—a fascinating story that historian James Gardner elegantly chronicles in this authoritative history. More than seven thousand years ago, men and women camped on a spot called le Louvre for reasons unknown. Centuries later, King Philippe Auguste of France constructed a fortress there, just outside the walls of a nascent Paris. Intended to protect the capital against English soldiers stationed in Normandy, the fortress became a royal residence under Charles V two centuries later, and then the monarchy’s principal residence under the great Renaissance king François I. In 1682, when Louis XIV moved his court to Versailles, the Louvre languished until the French Revolution when, during the Reign of Terror in 1793, it first opened its doors to display the nation’s treasures. Ever since—through the Napoleonic era, the Commune, two World Wars, to the present—the Louvre has been a witness to French history, and expanded to become home to a legendary art collection that includes the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo. Includes sixteen pages of full-color photos illustrating the history of the Louvre, a full-color map detailing its evolution from fortress to museum, and black-and-white images throughout the narrative.

This breathtaking survey of French royal patronage features full-color illustrations of more than 100 objects, many so precious that they rarely leave the Louvre. French decorative arts reached their pinnacle in craftsmanship and design between the reign of Louis XIV and the Revolution, beginning with the sumptuous works of art made at the Gobelins manufactory, which was established to furnish the royal palaces, and continuing with luxury pieces made in specialist workshops across Paris through the end of the ancient régime. This book reveals the story of patronage and collecting among the French kings and queens with some of the greatest works from the collection of the Musée du Louvre, Paris, alongside illuminating essays describing the history and background of these beautiful royal objects. Drawing from the Louvre's extraordinary Département des Objets d'Art, Royal Treasures from the Louvre examines the full breadth of decorative arts in 17th- and 18th-century France, offering readers a generous view into the splendor of the French court.

This catalogue, which accompanies the exhibition “Roads of Arabia: Archaeological Treasures of Saudi Arabia”, presents a historical journey through the trade routes, incense roads and pilgrimage paths of the Arabian Gulf. Following the major themes of the exhibition and highlighting its masterpieces, the book introduces a variety of cultures that inhabited these lands through their statues, funerary monuments, grave goods and daily use objects. Beginning with artifacts from the earliest human settlements to prehistoric times, continuing through to the dawn of Islam and precious religious objects and finally exploring the Middle Ages and the modern period with maps and photographs, the catalogue illustrates the essential connections and networks that the Gulf has always maintained with surrounding regions and civilizations.