The name "Louvre" is instantly recognizable as the most famous art museum in the world. With collections numbering in the millions, it sprawls through a complex of buildings that dates from the 12th through the 20th centuries and covers acres in the heart of Paris—a city that is the art capital of Europe. Many of the millions of annual visitors to the Louvre make what amounts to a pilgrimage to this hallowed museum only once in their lifetimes. They stand in line, negotiate the signs, follow hired guides, listen to a veritable Babel of languages, and leave—a few hours or a few days later—both amazed and exhausted, knowing that their quest to see all that is great in the Louvre is far from complete. Returning to their homes, they nurture memories that are a confused blur of aesthetic sensations that are often difficult to sort or evaluate. This series of lectures introduces the greatest of universal museums. Its aim is not comprehensive. The focus is narrowed to just one of the seven curatorial departments of the Louvre: the single most famous, the Department of Paintings, which is responsible for European paintings from the Middle Ages until the mid-19th century. These works of art form an encyclopedic summary of the achievements of painters that can be called the single most important such collection in the world. Alone, they require a day of walking to survey adequately; the aim of these lectures is to both prepare new viewers for this visit and to be a “study aid” for those who have been and gone before. European painting has been considered for centuries to be among the most glorious and complicated modes of expression in the long history of the arts. The Louvre treats that history by dividing the works by national tradition and, within those traditions, by region, school, style, and major master. Each lecture will focus on a small number of major paintings that form a canon of European painting from the 15th through the 19th centuries.
Museum Masterpieces: The Louvre
Trailer
01: Palace to Museum-The Story of the Louvre
This lecture provides an overview of the history of the Louvre, describes the layout of the building, and offers tips and strategies for making the most of a visit to this remarkable museum.
02: Leonardo and the Origins of the Collection
Francis I sparked an artistic revolution in the 16th century by attracting Leonardo da Vinci to France and creating a rivalry between French and Italian art. Leonardo's La Joconde (The Mona Lisa) serves as the anchor for a lecture exploring works by Italian painters, including Raphael, as well as earlier French painters....
03: Italian Renaissance and Baroque Painting
This lecture explores the Louvre's immense collection of Italian painting dating from the medieval period through the early 17th century. Featured works include altarpieces and portraits by masters of the High Renaissance and Baroque era in Italy including Raphael, Giorgione, Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto, and Andrea Mantegna, as well as the religious and secular works by the mercurial Caravaggio.
04: Spanish School of Painting
The Louvre's collection of Spanish paintings is small but contains some fine examples that were highly influential on later French painting. Jusepe Ribera's Clubfooted Boy serves as the featured masterpiece for the lecture, leading to a discussion of selected Spanish painters from the deeply religious images of El Greco to the court portraits of Goya....
05: Rubens and Flemish Painting; Early German
From the Rubens's immense canvas of The Apotheosis of Henry IV to Quentin Metsys's precise, quotidian portrait, The Moneylender and His Wife, this lecture surveys the Louvre's remarkable collection of paintings by Flemish and German artists....
06: Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Dutch Painting
This lecture discusses the major paintings in the collection by the three greatest Dutch artists of the 17th century-Rembrandt, Hals, and Vermeer-and explores the French interest in miniature Dutch cabinet pictures (Little Masters)....
07: De La Tour, Le Nain, and 17th-century Painting
This lecture initiates a broad survey of French painters that serves as the focus for the remainder of the course. De la Tour and the Le Nain brothers represent an original and indigenous style of French painting, which is contrasted to contemporary artists trained in Italy and the north.
08: Claude and Poussin-French Painters in Rome
The Grand Siecle (great century) of French painting-the 17th century-is represented by the works of two startlingly different artists: the intellectual painter Nicolas Poussin and the artist of tranquil landscapes, Claude Lorrain....
09: Watteau and Chardin
This lecture explores the state of French painting at the end of the reign of Louis XIV by contrasting the styles of two geniuses: the delicate, melancholy of Jean-Antoine Watteau and the earthy clarity of Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin.
10: Boucher, Fragonard, and the Rococo in France
Jean-Honore Fragonard's vigorous operatic painting and Boucher's delicate sensuality offer two versions of French Rococo painting and are contrasted to the classically inspired moralism of Greuze and their contemporaries.
11: Jacques-Louis David and His School
As a painter who started his career in the final salons of the Ancien Regime to become the premier artist of the French Revolution, Jacque-Louis David embodied the social and political transformations of his time....
12: Delacroix and Ingres-The Great Dialectic
The course concludes with an examination of two contrasting style of early 19th-century art, as seen in the works of Eugène Delacroix and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.
About
Richard Brettell (1949–2020) was the Margaret McDermott Distinguished Professor of Art and Aesthetics at The University of Texas at Dallas. He earned his BA, MA, and PhD from Yale University. Prior to joining The University of Texas at Dallas, Professor Brettell taught at Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, Yale University, and Harvard University. Professor Brettell was the founding American director of the French Regional and American Museum Exchange, designed to promote the exchange of art and information between regional museums in France and the United States. He served as the McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art and advised and consulted for museums such as the Portland Museum of Art and the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. His museum exhibition work included Monet in Normandy (for the de Young Museum in San Francisco) and The Impressionist in the City: Pissarro’s Series (for the Dallas Museum of Art). He gave scholarly lectures at numerous museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art, and he wrote more than 25 books, including Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century European Drawings in the Robert Lehman Collection and Impression: Painting Quickly in France, 1860–1890.
