Playing the Palace

October 16

We had a forecast of rain, so we decided pursue indoor activities today.

We wanted to be out of the hotel before the lights went out, so we left before 8 o’clock. After breakfast at L’Atelier, we took the Metro to the Concorde station, where we went yesterday.

The political demonstration was packed up and gone. There were no discernible bullet holes or blood stains in evidence, so I guess everything went peacefully enough.

We walked through the Tuileries to the Louvre. It took almost two hours to get inside the museum. The line snaked across the monstrous courtyard into a passage to the east side of the palace. It moved fairly fast, but everyone had to go through a quick security check, putting bags through a scanner, or at least letting a security guard look inside.

Then there were more lines to buy tickets. These were glacially slow because although there are four of more places to get tickets, each one had only one window open. 

Everybody has questions, so that slows the lines down more. The underground lobby is immense, noisy, and busy. This was my second time there in about a week, and I still had trouble orienting myself. We wandered around looking for the bag check, which is one place, and the coat check, which was closed, and the second coat check on the far side.

Wow. Time to sit down and get something to eat. That was Joanna’s idea. If we waited till lunch time, she said, everything would be so crowded that it could take hours. We shared ham and cheese on a baguette and an apple turnover. They didn’t sell wine at that counter, so I settled for orange juice.

Everything in the Louvre is worth seeing. The place is so big, though, that you’ll never do that, unless of course you have plenty of time on your hands, like maybe 50 years with no distractions. That big crowd filing in? They were distributed through all that space so you’d think they’d disappeared.

Last time we were at the museum, we saw Mona Lisa and part of the Renaissance galleries before the museum closed and we were chased out by security guards and a man with a push broom.

Today, I wanted to see one of the paintings highlighted on the museum plan, a Vermeer called The Lacemaker. On the map, it’s on the second floor, where the letter C is. This took me through some of my favorite territory, 17th century Holland and Flanders.

Many painters’ names were new to me. Others were familiar, Huysmans, Cuyp, and of course, Vermeer. We saw a painting of the Herengracht. The boats and the walk are different, but the buildings are the same today.

The Louvre has two Vermeers. I think there are about three dozen in the whole world. The Lacemaker has vivid light, maybe necessary to practice the craft. There are red or tan shadows in her yellow dress. I wonder if that is where Vermeer painted a surface of one color and then repainted another contrasting color over it.

This is one of the few technical details I know about masters and oils, especially Vermeer. So I mention it to sound smart.

The painting is tiny, like other Vermeers in the Rijksmuseum. It measures about 8 by 10 inches. The amount of detail on that small scale is amazing. Some red thread is spilling out of her basket. If you lean in, not quite close enough to set off the proximity alarm, you can see where the artist drew individual threads.

The lacemaker is wearing a collar that may show off her own work. The details of the lacework even at that small scale are so real that you know if you could touch the surface you would feel the lace.

Next to it is The Astronomer. This is one of the Vermeers with light coming through a window on the left of the picture. It seems to be a favorite orientation of his. The light falls on the astronomer’s face, his hands, and a globe. He is surrounded by a crescent shadow.

We went through several galleries, and even saw a wall of paintings by students and emulators of Rembrandt, but so far not one painting attributed to Rembrandt.

That’s because there is an entire room that’s all Rembrandt: self portraits with a hat, without a hat, with a cloth cap, young and old. There are landscapes, portraits of merchants. and the Supper at Emmaus. The guy could do anything, and nobody else could do it as well.

A two-hour walk through the Low Countries got us a little thirsty. We didn’t want to eat anything, so we went down to one of the cafeterias where I had a small bottle of Just Merlot from Pays d’Oc, while Joanna ate yogurt. 

That threat of having to eat Dutch food for two years if they mess up the wine must really motivate the French. Even this cheap stuff was smooth and fruity.

Next we decided to visit Venus de Milo. It’s also one of the most famous holdings of the Louvre, and so we’d see it to say we did. 

But first you work your way through galleries of Classical statuary. Some are so fragmentary that the appeal is lost on laymen. The interest is probably scholastic.

But most of the statues are striking, lots of butt cheeks and sleek limbs. Some of these stones were carved more than 2000 years ago, and once Rome fell, it took Europe more than a thousand years to relearn how to represent the human form that well. It must require a good knowledge of anatomy, and nearly magical handling of tools and stones. There are also bronzes, but the biggest and the most sensuous works are made of marble. 

The most spectacular room in this area of the museum is called the Salon des Caryatides.

As you go in, you pass under a colonnade held up by four caryatides. They are original to the palace and were carved in a neo-classical style sometime in the 16th or 17th century. Being French, they have huge nipples.

The rest of the room is filled with marbles from about the third or fourth century B.C. to the second A.D. There are several of Venus, others of Hercules, a couple of Silenus, and one of a sleeping hermaphrodite. There’s lots more, too, heads of emperors and other things too many to recall after only a half hour of looking.

Venus de Milo is in a separate room and very beautiful, but I didn’t see anything that distinguished it in quality or appeal from the several other Venuses, or even the Dianas, on display under the Room of the Caryatides. At least one of the other pieces, a fragment of a Venus torso, was more sensuous and suggestive.

Not quite ready to quit, we went to the Egyptian section, to see a large statue of Rameses. I was trying hard to show off and recite “Ozymandias,” but all I could remember was “I am Ozymandias, king of kings. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.” Which is close, but not quite right.

For the record, the first of those two lines should read: “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:” ending with a colon.

In any event, the full irony is lost on me. Sure, Ozymandias and his empire are long gone, but there was his statue. In France. Now that’s still pretty influential.

We spent at least six hours wandering the Louvre. It’s like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, only far bigger.

It rained most of the time that we were inside the museum. Today’s photo is the Eiffel Tower, seen in the rain from the Louvre.

We slogged through the wet sand of the Tuileries to the Metro station. As we often do, Joanna went for a rest when we got back to the hotel, and I drank wine.

We had dinner at a place up Rue d’Orsel called the St. Regis.

I was really craving food made of stuff that is usually tossed out back home. So we had snails, frogs’ legs, and something called “slice of neck pork.” We were handed menus in English, so I don’t know the original French name for that dish. 

The pork was a little tough, but tasty. The reason frogs’ legs are said to taste like chicken is that they seem only to be served fried. I’d like to try them done some other way, but haven’t had the opportunity so far.

I ordered the no-name house red in a half-liter carafe. If you order like that in the States, you can wind up with Opici, which ain’t going to poison you, but is made to sell for about 15 bucks a gallon. I used to drink it all the time, and still do now and then. 

But then came my downfall. Larry had to take me to a wine tasting three or four years ago in New York. It caused my wine bill to go up, but it did give me a new life’s ambition. Since then I have been trying to sample all the wines made in Western Europe. As well as the western United States.

Anyhow, this carafe at the St. Regis was a hoot. Wines are fruity, sometimes with a bite. Some people taste specific fruits, like plums, cherries, and so on. Many wines have a spicy aftertaste. Loire Valley wines often have a slightly mineral flavor, for instance. This one, whatever it is, was the first wine that ever gave me a hint of smoked ham. No kidding. As it was going down, I tasted hickory-smoked country ham.

After dinner, Joanna seemed to be doing just fine, but I had enough walking, high culture, and viniculture to fill one day, so I was ready to pass out. I came back to my room and did just that.

Sleep well, all.