The story of the Louvre Museum: Part 2

In part 1 of the story of the Louvre, the world renowned art gallery saw centuries of political upheaveal, a royal fascination with art and a shocking architectural scandal. In part 2, read how the Louvre's prestigous art collection has grown to encompass some of the world's finest artists, despite robbery attempts and attacks against one of it's most valuable pieces. 

Credit: Krivinis

After Napoleon seized power in 1799, he rebranded the Louvre as the Musée Napoléon. The museum now contained the spoils of his conquests. 

To celebrate his military victories, Napoleon built the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel at the Louvre in 1808-8 to serve as a grand entrance to the Tuileries palace. 

After the final defeat of Napoleon, many of his spoils of war were returned to their rightful owners. Nonetheless, in ensuing decades the Louvre’s collection, under new royal patronage, continued to grow with around 20,000 donations. 

Liberté, Fraternité, Egalité by Eugène-Delacroix. Credit: The Louvre 

Paris was the hotbed of artistic progress throughout the 19th century and into the 20th, as trends shifted from the Neoclassicism of David and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, to the Romanticism of Eugène Delacroix and Théodore Géricault and onto Realism, Impressionism, Fauvism and Cubism. 

Young artists flocked to Paris to learn from the masters and attend the annual Salon exhibitions. At the Louvre, they could study the work of international masters of the past: sculpture from ancient Greece and Rome, and painting and sculpture by the great Renaissance artists from across Europe.

Celebrated works include The Dying Slave by Michelangelo (Italy), the largest Leonardo collection in the world (including The Virgin of the Rocks as well as the Mona Lisa), self portraits by Rembrandt (Dutch) and the immense, controversial The Raft of the Medusa by Géricault. 

Vicenzo Perugia, the man who stole the Mona Lisa. Credit: Wikimedia commons 

At times, the fame of the Louvre’s collection has attracted the wrong kind of attention, directed in particular towards its most celebrated possession: the Mona Lisa, known at the Louvre as La Joconde after the name of the possible patron, La Giaconda.

In 1911, the painting was stolen. The poet Guillaume Apollinaire came under suspicion. Apollinaire in turn implicated Pablo Picasso. Both were exonerated when, two years later, the real culprit was discovered: Vincenzo Perugia, a Louvre employee of Italian origin, who had walked out with the painting under his coat. Peruggia had wanted to return Leonardo’s masterpiece to Italy, but was caught when he tried to sell it to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

In 1956, a visitor to the Louvre threw acid at the painting, damaging the lowerpart, and later that year another visitor hurled a rock at it. A protective shield of bullet-proof glass now encases the Mona Lisa and has since saved the smiling woman from a flying cup lobbed at it in 2009.

Spring by Giuseppe Arcimboldo - Credit: The Louvre 

The cut-off date for paintings in the Louvre is 1848. That said, the Louvre still has one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of paintings in the world, covering all the major European schools. Naturally, the Louvre also has the world's greatest collection of French art.

The Louvre Museum today is easily the world’s most popular museum in terms of visitor numbers, receiving 8.5 million every year, exceeding the second most visited museum, The British Museum in London, by more than 2.6 million.

Not only does the Louvre have one of the greatest collections of art in the world: it has also created one of the best environments in which to see an eclectic collection of traditional art, made accessible through innovative architecture for a modern audience. 

Banner credit: izhairguns

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