Elsien's Traveblogue

Paris, Thursday 11th February 2010
Weather still pretty bad, but better than yesterday. Snow flurries, but nothing more than a dusting of snow on the road. Cold, though.
However, sent a load of emails to various studio owners, checked my own and went off to the Louvre again, aiming to catch the lunch hour. I was indeed lucky: lunchtime was quiet. When I left around 2.30, large crowds started to arrive ... I went to the Richelieu Wing, to see some Dutch and Flemish paintings and finished off with a room full of Poussins and Claudes, with little French schoolkids seated on the floor, trying to draw their national heritage. Saw the amazingly impressive and enormous panels that Rubens painted for Maria de Medici, for the Palais de Luxembourg. The colours are especially stunning. Their size is beaten by the gigantic paintings produced by Charles LeBrun, the first President of the Academie Francaise des Beaux Arts. He painted battlescenes with Alexander the Great as subject, a thinly disguised metaphor for the Sun King, Louis XIV.
I also saw a tiny little delicate Vermeer, the Lace Maker and a beautiful Memling, amongst others. Did some shopping and am now back in my little studio. More Vasari, I fear! Little coffee at the Place d'Abbesses later, perhaps, watch the world go by!