The name “Louvre” is instantly recognizable as the most famous art museum in the world. With collections numbering in the millions, it sprawls through a complex of buildings that dates from the 12th through the 20th centuries and covers acres in the heart of Paris—a city that is the art capital of Europe. Many of the millions of annual visitors to the Louvre make what amounts to a pilgrimage to this hallowed museum only once in their lifetimes. They stand in line, negotiate the signs, follow hired guides, listen to a veritable Babel of languages, and leave—a few hours or a few days later—both amazed and exhausted, knowing that their quest to see all that is great in the Louvre is far from complete. Returning to their homes, they nurture memories that are a confused blur of aesthetic sensations that are often difficult to sort or evaluate. This series of lectures introduces the greatest of universal museums. Its aim is not comprehensive. The focus is narrowed to just one of the seven curatorial departments of the Louvre: the single most famous, the Department of Paintings, which is responsible for European paintings from the Middle Ages until the mid-19th century. These works of art form an encyclopedic summary of the achievements of painters that can be called the single most important such collection in the world. Alone, they require a day of walking to survey adequately; the aim of these lectures is to both prepare new viewers for this visit and to be a “study aid” for those who have been and gone before. European painting has been considered for centuries to be among the most glorious and complicated modes of expression in the long history of the arts. The Louvre treats that history by dividing the works by national tradition and, within those traditions, by region, school, style, and major master. Each lecture will focus on a small number of major paintings that form a canon of European painting from the 15th through the 19th centuries.
