Louvre Museum, Paris - The Italian Painters

Louvre Museum One - The Italian Side

On to Louvre Museum Two Back to Paris Overview Page

Artists of the Italian Renaissance Paintings by Artists of the Italian Renaissance

Facing off in the crowded supposedly "no photography" Gallery 6 of the Denon Wing of the Louvre is Leonardo's you know who.

In August 1911 the lady was actually stolen from her then much less significant position amongst the other masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance ....

read about it

and when (unlike most visitors) you turn round ......

which, with the easy power of Adobe Photoshop Elements, once you have stumbled across the right controls, becomes

there is another over the top feast by the over the top Venetian artist, Paolo Veronese (1528 - 1588 (60)). The excuse for this one is the Wedding at Cana (that's where our man JC did his first and most awesome miracle - turning water into wine). Painted for the refectory of the Palladian monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, how, one wonders, did this end up in France? Simple, it was cut up and Bonaparted to Paris in 1797, and somehow the French forgot to give it back.

For interest, the Mona Lisa got here a long time before Napoleon because Leonardo lived the last part of his long life in Paris, where he had been befriended by Valois French King "Flashy" Francis I when noone else much was into befriending him. Ungratefully, Leonardo did not leave the painting to his royal patron when he died, and Francois had to buy it .