Vermeer, Rodin, and Vanille

April 25-27

We wound up at a restaurant a short block from the hotel for dinner Tuesday.  It’s called La Cosi and specializes in southern dishes, a lot of them Corsican.

When we sat down, they brought us small cups of something that looked like tahini sauce. We weren’t sure if we were supposed to eat it or pour it on something that was coming later. 

When a group of people who seemed to be regulars came in, they gave us our cue. We ate it like soup.

It has a long wine list, but sells only three wines by the glass—a white, a rose, and a red, all from Corsica.

We shared a fish filet dressed with a tangy brown sauce served over what I believe was rice cooked with cheese.

We wanted a little more food, but not dessert, so we had an appetizer, fritters of zucchini and cheese served over arugula.

We tried all three wines by the glass, and they were lovely. When the bill came, it charged only for only two. I pointed it out to the lady who waited on us, and she shrugged. Forget it.

Wednesday we made it to the Louvre. We actually knew which bus to take. I always feel that I’m really sophisticated when I can use the buses in a foreign city.

The one thing you can count on at the Louvre is that you will have to spend a lot of time standing in lines. 

There is a line outside the pyramid for the security check. That took a little more than a half hour. 

Then there is a line at the ticket windows.

It takes the best part of an hour to be ready to see some of the actual museum.

It didn’t matter much because the museum would be open till 9:45 on Wednesday.

When we were staying with the Chabrans, Claude contacted a friend who keeps up on art events in Paris. One of the recommendations was the special exhibition at the Louvre that compares several Vermeer paintings with others on similar subjects done by contemporaries.

There was a long line for that, too, but not as bad as I had expected. We entered the museum at one and had to choose an hour when we would go to the special exhibition. The earliest opening was at five. 

We spent part of the intervening time visiting old favorites, the Greek and Roman marbles in the Hall of the Caryatids, the Venus de Milo. 

I started to get woozy after we saw Venus, bad enough that I was having a hard time concentrating on the oversize Minerva at the far end of the hall.

It was time for lunch, past time, in fact.

We retraced our steps to the cafe in the entrance hall. It was fairly busy, so most of the tables were taken. We found one table for four with a lone man. He saw us coming and gave his chair to Joanna and went to find another for himself. 

His wife was on her way so we’d need four seats, he said.

Turns out, he is Canadian, which explains why he is so polite. He and his wife have lived in a few different places in Canada, including a few years in Toronto, but they are now back in their original province of Newfoundland.

On this trip, they had been to Rome and were in Paris for a few days before returning home. 

It was their first time at the Louvre, and they had a few hours left. The asked us for recommendations of what to see.

If you can only see one, make it the Winged Victory of Samothrace.

Along with the Venus de Milo and Mona Lisa, it is considered one of the three most famous holdings of the museum. It is the most spectacular, standing on its pedestal and striding forward with its wings swept back. 

It looks like it’s about to fall, but of course, it is perfectly balanced and graceful.

Where to find it was the question. All I could remember is that it stands alone in a great staircase. For all its importance, there is no reference to the Winged Victory on the museum floor plan.

After lunch, we asked a lady at the information booth in the main lobby, who marked its location on the museum map.

It was still hard to find.

We passed by Mona Lisa. The room is always packed. It’s the most famous painting in the world, and I can’t see why. There are so many others right here, and everywhere else too, that are far more interesting.

We were walking the long gallery, where the Italian paintings are, when I saw it in the distance.

The placement of the statue, including its original base, which is shaped like a ship’s bow, is perfect. It is always surrounded by admirers snapping photos. But even so, there is always room to get a view from various angles, because it stands on an elevated perch.

After the search for Victory, we were starting to wear down, so we returned to the lobby to rest a few minutes. 

We had to enter the line for the Vermeer exhibit at 4:30. Actually, that was the first line. Then there was a second. The wait at the desk for an audioguide wasn’t so long. We were in before half past five.

The theme of the exhibition is Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting. The museum has collected paintings by Vermeer and his contemporary rivals, whose names I didn’t recognize, including Dou, ten Broch, Netscher, and de Hooch. The works have similar subjects and often similar compositions.

Every one of them is exquisite in its own right, but most of them don’t quite convey the lightness and color of the Vermeers. Of course, that could be just the power of suggestion working: Wow, this is real Vermeer, guy.

It seems that painters recognized certain popular subjects that people would pay money for, so they met the demand. One group of paintings shows treatments by various artists, including Vermeer, of people writing or reading letters.

A large group of paintings shows young women, sometimes accompanied by men, playing musical instruments. There is often a boy in the background bringing a drink or, in one painting, a lute.

Doctor’s visits, hand washing, ladies primping, and unexpected visitors were also recurring themes. Vermeer’s Lacemaker and Milkmaid are also genre paintings, and are shown next to works on similar subjects by other painters.

After the Vermeer exhibit, we were done in by standing in lines and the slow process of museum walking. It was actually comforting to walk on the street, so we skipped cab or bus and walked back to the neighborhood of the Petit Pont by Notre Dame, to the warren of narrow streets lined with restaurants.

We found one that looked promising, the Cafe Paris. All right, not a very clever name, but they had duck confit.

Neither of us had eaten it before, and according to what I read on the Internet (and therefore must be true), it is a signature dish of France. I believe it is duck leg cooked in its own fat for several hours. Like frying chicken, cooking it that way helps it last longer. 

We shared a plate of the duck confit with a red Bordeaux. The duck came with thinly sliced roast potatoes and we ordered some green beans with it.

The skin was crisp and the meat was falling apart. That Internet article said the dish was invented in Gascony but has spread across the country. I can see why.

We both loved it.

Thursday we decided to take in a temporary exhibition at the Grand Palais that marks the centenary of Rodin’s death. The show was also recommended by Claude’s friend, and I had seen something about it in the New York Times.

We took the bus again, but had more walking to do than that last few times.

I could see that if we could get to the Place de la Concorde, we’d be very near the Grand Palais.

The map, though, isn’t as detailed as the real world. But I knew the general direction to follow.

We checked out a few restaurants in the high-rent district, and wound up at a small Vietnamese cafe on (maybe) Rue des Capucins. We had a baguette with ham and cheese and a glass of red.

We pressed on and found ourselves on Boulevard de la Madeleine. I wasn’t sure exactly where we were or how to go any farther.

We stopped at a bistrot called Madeleine 7 for a rest, a glass of wine, a piece of apple tart, and a map check.

Still unsure after discussing the map with Joanna, I asked the waiter. Duh. 

Down the block past the Madeleine monument and turn left. 

We found Place de la Concorde and the Champs Elysees. It had been spotting rain off and on during our walk, but now started to set up a steady drizzle. 

The dense cover of horse chestnut trees kept the rain off us, and the Grand Palais was only a few hundred yards away.

The exhibition is built around 200 or so works by Rodin. It also includes a number of pieces, sculpture and drawings both, by artists clearly showing the influence of Rodin. They included Giacometti, Matisse, and Picasso.

I usually think of Rodin as a maker of bronzes. There were several of them in the exhibit, but more sculptures were plaster or marble.

According to literature that accompanied the show, Rodin liked working in plaster because it showed so much evidence of the artist’s hands. He would introduce works in plaster and wait till he got a commission to cover the cost of rendering them in marble or bronze.

The exhibit also brings out something I hadn’t noticed before. Rodin recycled images. One of the works on display is a crouching woman. She also appears in several group sculptures. One is a walking man carrying a woman in fetal pose on his shoulder. She is also on the Gates of Hell.

I had forgotten that the Thinker reappears in reduced scale above the Gates of Hell.

A very strange and wonderful piece is the Mask of Marie Claudel. It is a masklike portrait of the head of Claudel, one of Rodin’s students. The hand that seems to be shaping her hair in clay or plaster is copied from the Burghers of Calais.

The eroticism of Rodin’s nudes would alone make me think his work is great. But on the other hand, there are things like Balzac. 

Most of the figure is covered in a smoothly undulating, almost teepee-like dressing gown. That is topped with the craggy head and hair, with that confident face full of mischievous humor. 

A couple of rooms later, we saw the rendering of the gown alone, with no Balzac in it. That was hilarious too.

My favorite piece not by Rodin in the exhibit is a bronze by a British artist, Barry Flanagan, who called it Large Monument. There are three dancing rabbits on top of a column and a Thinker rabbit near the base. 

The shadow it casts on the wall is as funny as the piece itself. 

This was a second day of museum stalking, so we decided to take the bus. It took us as far as the Musee Orsay, so we still had a bit of a walk to get to Rue Pontoise, which is right off the river a little beyond Notre Dame.

The destination was Le Petit Pontoise, that great little restaurant hidden in a small street. 

We started with escargot for two en cassolette. Partly to find out what a cassolette is and also because we have eaten snails prepared in many different ways and have yet to find one we didn’t like.

The snails came in a green broth with bits of mushroom for company. We’re not sure what made the broth green. Basil, maybe? It had plenty of salt and garlic.

We polished it all off with a basket of bread—snails, mushrooms, and broth. 

Cassolette, I learned later, refers to the dish that held everything

Le Petit Pontoise serves one of the greatest dishes in France—better than onion soup or duck confit. It is grilled sea bass in vanilla sauce.

It sounds so wrong that you know it has to be ingenious. Joanna ordered it once a few years ago and offered me a sample of it. We were both wowed.

It’s fish, but it held up very well with a red Bordeaux. (Come to think of it, just about everything does.)

The filet was served with the skin on and crisp over a bed of vegetables that included fennel, carrots, snow peas, and green beans. There may have been small pieces of turnip, too.

We stopped at a bar in the Place de la Sorbonne, around the corner from the hotel, for a little more wine. Well, I had wine, and Joanna a crepe.

Then we were done in.

Be well, all, and don’t stint on the vanilla.

Harry