We arrived in Paris on the 14th of June. Paris!! One thing I loved doing in Paris was walking around and taking pictures of all the old buildings.
Walking along the river, even though the water isn’t exactly the cleanest or the bluest, is also nice. One thing I like about walking along the river is that there were climbing structures randomly placed along the walkway. The first time we walked along the river was when we went for a tour the Louvre Art Museum. The Louvre was beautiful.
And huge, too. We started our tour with a bit of history about the building. At first we walked around what used to be the moat, watching short videos that showed what the castle would’ve looked like. Then we went upstairs to see the art! The first place we went was the dancing hall, where we saw a statue of Artemis. Like the outside, the inside was beautifully decorated.
After Artemis we went to see Venus de Milo.
Venus de Milo was found on a Greek Island called Milos. Venus de Milo used to be decorated with jewellery, although it was stolen not long after she was finished, and was coloured. And apparently so were all of the other statues, but their colour has either faded away or flaked off. After Venus de Milo we saw a statue of Nike, the victory goddess.
Like Venus de Milo, the statue of Nike was found on a Greek Island, this time it was on the Island Samothrace. Then we went to see paintings by Leonardo Da Vinci. Among them was the Mona Lisa, which actually means ‘Miss Lisa’, in case you were wondering. I learned that Da Vinci’s paintings actually had very vivid, light colours, but the varnish that was used got darker as it aged, so the colours appear to be mainly yellow, black, brown and dark blue.
We actually saw some that were cleaned and re-varnished, and the colours were lovely.
The Mona Lisa still has its old varnish, but they don’t want to re-varnish it because it’s such a famous piece. Wich is unfortunate because I really wanted to see it with new varnish. After Da Vinci’s paintings we went to see some French artist paintings. One of the paintings had a depiction of Psyche and Eros, another one was of Napoleon crowning his wife. Originally Napoleon wanted the picture to be of his coronation, but the artist didn’t like the look of the painting, one of the reasons being that Napoleon’s arms were in front of his face. (he crowned himself, which was a popular thing to do at the time.) At the back of the painting in the centre is Napoleon’s mom, who wasn’t actually at the coronation because she didn’t like Napoleon’s wife Josephine, but Napoleon told the artist to put her in anyways.
More about Paris in my next blog post!
A year of discovery 