Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
In the field of sculpture, extravagant and monumental tombs had been commissioned by
the nobility from the 14th century, and in Renaissance Paris Pierre Bontemps (c 1507-68)
decorated the beautiful tomb of François I at Basilique de St-Denis, and Jean Goujon (c
1510-67) created the Fontaine des Innocents near the Forum des Halles. No sculpture better
evokes baroque than the magnificent
Horses of Marly
of Guillaume Coustou (1677-1746),
at the entrance to av des Champs-Élysées.
Modern still life pops up with Jean-Baptiste Chardin (1699-1779), who brought the hum-
bler domesticity of the Dutch masters to French art. In 1785 neoclassical artist Jacques
Louis David (1748-1825) wooed the public with his vast portraits with clear republican
messages. A virtual dictator in matters of art, he advocated a precise, severe classicism.
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867), David's most gifted pupil in Paris, contin-
ued the neoclassical tradition. His historical pictures (eg
Oedipus and the Sphinx,
the 1808
version of which is in the Louvre) are now regarded as inferior to his portraits.
Painting Meccas
Musée du Louvre (Louvre & Les Halles)
Musée d'Orsay (St-Germain & Les Invalides)
Musée Picasso (Le Marais, Ménilmontant & Belleville)
Sculpture Studios
Musée Rodin (St-Germain & Les Invalides)
Musée Atelier Zadkine (St-Germain & Les Invalides)
Atelier Brancusi (Louvre & Les Halles)
Musée Bourdelle (Montparnasse & Southern Paris)
Romanticism
One of the Louvre's most gripping paintings,
The Raft of the Medusa
by Théodore Géricault
(1791-1824), hovers on the threshold of romanticism; if Géricault had not died early (aged
33) he probably would have become a leader of the movement, along with his friend Eugène
Delacroix (1798-1863; find him in the Cimetière du Père Lachaise), best known for his
masterpiece commemorating the July Revolution of 1830,
Liberty Leading the People
.
