Louvre Museum, Paris - The Italian Painters

Louvre Museum One - The Italian Side

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

which, with the easy power of Adobe Photoshop Elements 7, once you have stumbled across the right controls, becomes

which 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 because Leonardo, who lived the last part of his long life in Paris, had been befriended by Valois French King "Flashy" Francis I when noone much else was into befriending him. To say thank you, Leonardo left a lot of bric-a-brac (including the Mona Lisa) to Flashy, who at that time lived in the Louvre Palace.