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ISBN: 9780802148797

Content: " The fascinating and little-known story of the Louvre, from its inception as a humble fortress to its transformation into the palatial residence of the kings of France and then into the world's greatest art museum. Some nine 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 that place and of the buildings themselves a fascinating story that historian James Gardner elegantly chronicles in the first full-length history of the Louvre in English. More than 7,000 years ago, men and women camped on a spot called le Louvre for reasons unknown,a clay quarry and a vineyard supported a society there in the first centuries AD. A thousand years later, King Philippe Auguste of France constructed a fortress there in 1191, just outside the walls of a city far smaller than the Paris we know today. 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 1546. It remained so until 1682, when Louis XIV moved his entire court to Versailles. Thereafter the fortunes of the Louvre languished until the tumultuous days of 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 collection, including such masterpieces as the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo, whose often-complicated and mysterious origins form a spectacular narrative that rivals the building's grand stature. "

Content: Biographisches: " James Gardner is an American art critic and literary critic based in New York and Buenos Aires and the author, most recently, of Buenos Aires: The Biography of a City . His writings have appeared in the New York Times , the Wall Street Journal , the New Republic , and the British Spectator . He was the art critic at the New York Post and wrote architecture criticism for the New York Observer , before serving as the architecture critic at the New York Sun . He is now a contributing editor at The Magazine Antiques . This is his sixth book." Rezension(2): "〈a href=http://www.kirkusreviews.com target=blank〉〈img src=https://images.contentreserve.com/kirkus_logo.png alt=Kirkus border=0 /〉〈/a〉: February 1, 2020 The evolution of the Louvre reflects the political, intellectual, and aesthetic history of France. Before the Louvre was a museum, writes art and literary critic Gardner (Buenos Aires: The Biography of a City, 2015, etc.), it was a palace, and before that a fortress, and before that a plot of earth, much like any other. Drawing on scholarly sources that include the recently published three-volume Histoire du Louvre, the author offers a vivid chronicle of strife, wars, rivalries, and aspirations culminating in the present grand architectural complex, comprising nearly 400,000 objects, a vast, indiscriminate cocktail of princely collections purchased or purloined over the course of centuries. Gardner focuses on several of France's rulers whose embrace of the arts shaped the future of the museum--e.g., Francois I, who brought the Italian Renaissance across the Alps as a patron and collector of works by Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian, and Leonardo, whom he lured from Italy. When Leonardo arrived in 1516, he had in his trunks three paintings, including the Mona Lisa, which has become the Louvre's most coveted attraction. In addition to collecting art, Francois took up the challenge of modernizing the royal residence, beginning the 350-year process that would result in the Louvre as we know it today. The 17th-century monarch Louis XIII, though not particularly interested in art or architecture, assigned the renowned architect Jacques Lemercier to enact significant changes. As far as the art collection itself, Louis XIV, with an unappeasable appetite for masterpieces, filled the Louvre with priceless treasures as well as quadrupling its size. But when Louis decided to move the court to Versailles in 1682, the Louvre fell into disrepair. After the American Revolution, repayment of the Colonies' debt to France funded considerable repair and reconstruction. A small portion of the palace opened as a public museum--the Musée Central des Arts--only in 1793, in the midst of the Reign of Terror. Gardner cites Napoleon III, who ruled France from 1848 to 1870, as decisive in transforming the Louvre into its modern iteration. A richly detailed journey through a palimpsest of the past. COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. " Rezension(3): "〈a href=http://www.publishersweekly.com target=blank〉〈img src=https://images.contentreserve.com/pw_logo.png alt=Publisher's Weekly border=0 /〉〈/a〉: Starred review from March 9, 2020 Art critic Gardner ( Buenos Aires ) traces the turbulent history of Paris’s Louvre Museum from fortress to castle to center of France’s cultural universe in this engrossing account, revealing a building that Gardner calls “as great a work of art as anything it contains.” The Louvre was a nexus of French art, architecture, and culture, and Gardner argues that through the Louvre one can see the growth of “Paris itself.” The site was originally a campground 7,000 years ago,in 1191, King Philippe Auguste constructed a fortress there,a century and a half later, Charles V had remodeled the Louvre into a castle, which in the early 16th century became the primary residence for King Francois I. After Louis XIV moved the royal court to Versailles in 1682, the Louvre suffered neglect until it was converted into a public art museum in 1793, during the French Revolution. In elegant prose, Gardner describes how over the next 200 years the Louvre endured constant evolution and construction as its reputation as a leading repository for art treasures grew and it became the world’s most famous museum (“there is something at once presumptuous and miraculous in its emergence out of nothing”). Fast-paced and evocative, this is a must for Francophones as well as art and architecture lovers." Rezension(4): "〈a href=http://lj.libraryjournal.com/ target=blank〉〈img src=https://images.contentreserve.com/libraryjournal_logo.png alt=Library Journal border=0 /〉〈/a〉: April 1, 2020 Gardner ( Buenos Aires ) charts the progress of the Louvre in this comprehensive text. Starting as a fortress in the Middle Ages, the Louvre became a royal residence under Charles V and then the French monarch's primary abode under Renaissance king Fran�ois I. In the late 17th century, when Louis XIV abandoned the estate and moved to the Palace of Versailles, the Louvre was used to house the five great acad�mies of France, including the Acad�mie Royale de Peintre et de Sculpture and the Acad�mie Fran�aise, finally opening as a museum in 1793 during the French Revolution. From here, the progression of the Louvre's art collecting is examined from the treasures plundered during Napoleon Bonaparte's military campaigns as well as works acquired from archaeological excavations, donations from collectors, and savvy purchases by the museum's curators. A detailed, clearly marked floor plan helps readers navigate the different wings of this enormous and complicated building from the Louvre's days as a palace under various rulers to those as a museum. VERDICT Recommended for readers interested in the history of France, the history of architecture, and museology. --Sandra Rothenberg, Framingham State Univ. Lib., MACopyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission. "

Language: English

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