Italian and Spanish Painting at Musee du Louvre

From Paris Hotels Reviews

Over in the Denon wing, on the first floor, the second area of the Louvre devoted to painting is dominated by the staggering Italian collection. The first two rooms house frescoes including two exquisite Botticelli allegories painted for the Villa Lemmi near Florence. Next, the high-ceilinged Salon Carré (room 3), used to exhibit paintings since the first exhibition of “salon” of the Académie royale in 1725, displays the so-called Primitives, with thirteenth- to fifteenth-century works from Italian painters such as Giotto, Cimabue and Fra Angelico, as well as one of Uccello’s bizarrely theoretical panels of the Battle of San Romano.

To the west of the Salon, the famous Grande Galerie, originally built to link the Louvre and Tuileries palaces, stretches into the distance on a ribbon of pale perfect parquet. On its walls, it parades all the great names of the Italian Renaissance, kicking off with Mantegna’s opulent Madonna of Victory and his meticulous miniature of the Crucifixion, and continuing through Giovanni Bellini, Filippo Lippi, Raphael, Coreggio and Titian, in the part of the gallery alone. Leonardo da Vinci’s Virgin of the Rocks, St John the Baptist and Virgin and Child with St Anne are on display just after the first set of pillars, untroubled by crowds. Roughly halfway along the Grande Galerie, the Mannerists make their entrance with a wonderfully weird St. Anne with Four Saints by II Pontormo and a Rosso Florentino Pieta. The later part of the Galerie dwindles in quality and breadth as it moves towards the eighteenth century.

The relatively small Spanish collection is relegated to the far end of Denon but has a few gems, notably Murillo’s tender Beggar Boy, and the Marquise de Santa Cruz amongst the Goya portraits. From room 32, stairs lead down to the ground floor and the temporary section on the art of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas.