Treasures of the Louvre

This programme contains some strong language.

My name's Andrew Hussey

and I'm the Dean of the University of London Institute in Paris.

I first came to the city as a teenager

and I have had a big connection with it ever since.

Now, I live and work here.

I still love the place and I'm still fascinated by it.

But these days, I travel around Paris not just for pleasure,

but also to explore the places that inspire my writing about the city.

But there's still one trip in Paris that I always make

with a fair amount of trepidation.

And that's here.

To the Louvre.

As you can see, the Louvre is big, brooding and vast.

To be honest, I've always been quite

intimidated by this most massive of museums.

But in this film,

I want to change the way that I, and maybe you, see it too.

So I want you to come with me

on a tour of this extraordinary institution,

and to do a little bit of time-travelling in French history.

On the way, I am going to try and make sense of a place

that's jam-packed with over 35,000 pieces of art

that you'll find in mile after mile after mile of galleries.

It's a building that's over 800 years old and bursting with history.

So come with me and see the Louvre transformed

from a medieval fortress to a royal palace,

and then to a modern-day museum.

We will look at the great art of da Vinci,

Rubens,

David

and Gericault.

We will enjoy the glories of antiquity

and explain why the magnificent artworks that you can see today

arrived in the museum,

and what they tell us about both the Louvre and France.

I want to argue that if you know the secrets of the Louvre,

know its history, know the glorious art within these walls,

then I think you can understand France.

The Louvre.

Well, there's lots and lots and lots and lots of art here.

So, where to begin?

Why not start with one of the oldest paintings in the museum?

From the 15th century, a work of art with a gruesome subject.

It will give us our first clue to the Louvre's long history.

Look at this.

This is a painting called La Crucifixion du Parlement de Paris.

There's a lot of interesting stuff going on here.

Here in the foreground, for example,

this bloke with his head in his hands.

That's Saint Denis, who was one of the patron saints of Paris.

Saint Denis was martyred in the third century,

beheaded on the high ground above the city,

the present-day quartier of Montmartre.

But his is not the only image of suffering.

At the centre of the painting is Christ on the cross.

On one side of him is the grieving Virgin Mother,

comforted by Mary Magdalene. On the other, St John the Evangelist.

And this is art with a purpose.

It was deliberately hung in the main chamber of the Parlement de Paris,

a reminder to lawmakers to show due humility

in the face of divine justice.

But one other detail provides an insight into more earthly

matters of bricks and mortar.

This is the best approximation of what the Louvre

would have looked liked to medieval Parisians.

What they saw was a fortress, a citadel of military power.

The medieval Louvre

was built strategically close to the River Seine,

along the walls of the medieval city.

A 30-metre tower looked out to the West and the enemy,

the English, on a border sometimes only 45 miles away.

The castle dominated the Parisian skyline,

a very visible, a very deliberate assertion of French power.

On the outside of today's museum,

there are a few clues to what lies underneath.

The opening of a well and a cesspit.

Below, there are the thick, strong walls and tall palisades

that defended the Capetian and Valois kings of France

from their enemies.

This is the Louvre entresol, the basement of the museum.

30 years ago, excavations took place which revealed these walls,

which show just how forbidding the Louvre was

in its original medieval incarnation.

Now, there's been a lot of debate

over the meaning of the word "Louvre".

But I'm going to go with the old French term, "louver",

which means "fortress" or "stronghold".

I think that pretty much sums up the place and its history.

When the Renaissance came to France in the 16th century,

this military fortress became

a royal palace of great style and culture.

In the museum today is the portrait

of the man who began this transformation.

This is Francois I, King of France,

and the first great builder of the Louvre.

It was painted around 1530 by the artist Jean Clouet.

It's a portrait of a real Renaissance man. He is a fighter.

Check out the hand on the sword ever ready. But he is also a lover...

of culture. And so it's a picture of refinement.

Check out the tasteful clothes.

He is every inch, as the French would say, a man "a la mode".

Francois I began the tradition that French kings should be both

connoisseurs of art and patrons of artists.

In 1516, he persuaded an elderly Leonardo da Vinci to leave Italy.

The painting days of the great genius were over,

but it is thought that he brought with him...you-know-who.

This painting that millions come to see today was the first-ever

work of art to enter the French royal collection.

# Mona Lisa

# Mona Lisa, men have named you... #

Ah, Mona Lisa.

Mona Lisa.

That smile, that smile.

Enigmatic, mysterious, tender or mocking?

"What is it about that smile?"

I asked the Louvre's curator of Renaissance art, Vincent Delieuvin.

La probleme que j'ai avec La Joconde, c'est...

'The problem I have got with the Mona Lisa

'is that she is such a big media star.'

THEY SPEAK FRENCH

'What you have to do is

'to try and forget that she is such a big star

'and really get into the painting.

'Get up close and love it for what it is,

'and she definitely invites us to love her.

'It's such an incredible ability of the painter to portray that

'most difficult and subtle of human expressions, the smile.

'There are 1,000 ways of interpreting a smile, and that was the genius

'of Leonardo, to be able to capture

'such a subtle and rich human expression.

'She is such a flirt. Of course she's a huge flirt.

'The French like that sort of thing,

'but hey, you're not completely untouched by her, are you?'

# Mona Liiiii-saaaa. #

What else is there left to say about this painting?

Only that in the 16th century, La Joconde, as it's known

in France, was something quite new in Western art.

'The idea of creating a sense of contact between the viewer

'and the subject had never been done before.

'Or the open posture with her hands turned towards us.

'She's greeting us as if we were in her palace, in her room, even.

'It's even smiling at us.

'That technique of drawing the viewer directly into the painting

'was hugely innovative.

'Was all this a new departure for Western art? Absolutely.'

'How many politicians' portraits have you seen in the style of La Joconde?

'Everyone uses Leonardo's style, from the framing to

'the posture, to the direct approach of the subject to the audience.'

So how influential was this approach to portraiture at the time?

Well, let's go back to the portrait of Francois.

Had its creator, Jean Clouet, seen the Mona Lisa?

We don't actually know. But Francois does look us straight in the eye.

His body is turned towards the viewer

and his hands face the same way

as da Vinci's Florentine lady.

And as with her, we are drawn towards the personality of the King.

Francois was not only a patron of the arts but a builder of palaces.

He'd spent some time in Italy

and he wanted to emulate the

So the medieval tower was pulled down.

Moats were filled in and a courtyard built, the Cour Carree,

overlooked by this imposing and ornamented facade.

And within, the King demanded

a makeover of gloomy royal apartments.

This is the Salle des Caryatides.

I think it's a place that best captures the spirit

and feeling of the Renaissance Louvre.

It's a vision of science and nature in harmony,

and it signals the beginning of the French classical tradition.

You can see its expression in the four sculptures by Jean Goujon,

which give the room its name.

These are the four caryatides.

They have a function as pillars,

but they are also works of art in themselves -

beautifully sculpted forms,

every curve and fold capturing a fleshy allure.

And they stand sentinel to an elegant stairway that reveals to us

yet another treasure of the Louvre.

If we look around here, we see images also sculpted by Jean Goujon.

And they give us pointers to the man who commissioned this

passageway, between the first and second floors of the palace.

He and his mistress have a love of hunting.

And here, look at this letter H.

That's a royal monogram, a kind of graffiti tag chiselled in stone.

And H stands for Henri II, who succeeded Francois II.

Both within and without, every ruler who wanted to use the Louvre

as a symbol of their power would leave their mark in this way.

So, the walls read like an alphabet designed for posterity.

The Renaissance Louvre was a place of great culture

but it was also the location for great violence

during the infamous Saint Bartholomew's Eve massacre.

When religious war between Catholics

and Huguenot Protestants threatened to tear France apart,

the palace was witness to great horror that began with

that most familiar of sounds from

the nearby church of Saint Germain L'Auxerrois.

In the early hours of the 24th of August 1572,

the sound of monks tolling the bell for Matins could be

heard as usual throughout the streets of Paris.