Grande Galerie

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Visitors in the Grande Galerie

The Grande Galerie, in the past also known as galerie du bord de l'eau (waterside gallery), is the largest room of the Louvre in Paris and one of its most iconic spaces. Initially built from 1595 on the initiative of King Henry IV as an elevated enclosed passageway linking the old Louvre Palace with the Tuileries Palace, it was used for various purposes until the creation of the Louvre Museum in 1793, when it became the exhibition gallery it remains to this day.[1] Originally 460 meters long, it was reduced to its current length of 288 meters following the remodeling of its western section in the 1860s in the wake of Napoleon III's Louvre expansion.[2]

Pre-museum history[]

Henry IV directed the building of the gallery, which started in 1595[3] and was completed in late 1607.[4]:69 It may have been inspired by the Vasari Corridor in Florence, designed and built in 1565 by Giorgio Vasari for Duke Cosimo I de' Medici, which connects the Uffizi with the Palazzo Pitti.[5] The gallery is 13 meters wide, and was originally 460 meters long.[6] Its architecture is traditionally attributed to Louis Métezeau for the eastern section up to the Wall of Charles V, and to Jacques II Androuet du Cerceau for the section further west which was decorated with a giant order of Corinthian pilasters. The building's ground and intermediate (entresol) floors were soon devoted to artists' dwellings and workshops, by royal authorization in 1608.[7]

On the southern side, Lemercier commissioned Nicolas Poussin in 1641 to decorate the ceiling of the Grande Galerie, but Poussin returned to Rome in 1642 leaving the work unfinished. In 1661, a fire destroyed the Petite Galerie that linked the Grande Galerie with the Cour Carrée, and the Grand Salon at the eastern end of the Grande Galerie. Louis Le Vau reconstructed the Petite Galerie as the Galerie d'Apollon and the Grand Salon as the Salon Carré.[3]:11-14

Engravings by Jean Marot (ca.1670) showing, from left to right, the south elevation of the Pavillon de Flore, the Galerie's western section designed by Jacques II Androuet du Cerceau, the pavillon Lesdiguières marking the former end of the Wall of Charles V, the eastern section designed by Louis Métezeau, the Salon Carré, and the galerie d'Apollon

In the 17th century the Grande Galerie was the theater of the "touching" ceremony, four times a year, in which the king was reputed to miraculously cure victimes of scrofula by simply touching them and pronouncing the ritual words "God heal you, the king touches you" (French: Dieu te guérisse, le roi te touche).[4]:70

From 1697 on, the French state's collection of plans-reliefs was stored in the Grande Galerie, of which it occupied all the space by 1754 with about 120 items placed on wooden tables.[3]:16 This was not intended as an artistic exhibition but served a military purpose, as the plans-reliefs were used to study and prepare defensive and offensive siege operations of the fortified cities and strongholds they represented. The plans-reliefs were removed in 1777 to the Hôtel des Invalides, where most of them are still displayed in the Musée des Plans-Reliefs.[8]

Louvre Museum[]

During the reign of Louis XVI, the comte d’Angiviller promoted the use of the Grande Galerie as a public museum, tasked Hubert Robert with preparing it, and had some paintings transferred there from Versailles in 1785. But the gallery was only opened to the public after the start of the French Revolution, as the Muséum central des arts opened on 10 August 1793. Together with the Salon Carré it became the core of the Louvre's exhibition spaces, soon enlarged to the Galerie d'Apollon (1797) and the ground-floor summer apartment of Anne of Austria (1800), and later expanded into the wings around the Cour Carrée.

Hubert Robert, after being appointed the museum's first "keeper of paintings",[9] projected to improve the lighting of the gallery, by sealing its windows and opening skylights in its vaulted ceiling.[10] This innovative plan was realized between 1805 and 1810 by Percier and Fontaine, albeit in altered form with lateral skylights at regular intervals. Percier and Fontaine also created nine subdivisions of the long room, separated by groups of columns arranged in the manner of Venetian windows as Robert had imagined.[2]

On 2 April 1810, Napoleon and Marie Louise of Austria led a procession from the Tuileries throughout the Grande Galerie on the occasion of their wedding, which was celebrated in the Salon Carré, temporarily converted into a chapel.[6]

  • Grande Galerie during the Louvre's early years, by Hubert Robert

  • Hubert Robert's 1796 project for the gallery's skylights

  • Grande Galerie in ruins, imagined by Hubert Robert (1796)

  • Another sketch by Hubert Robert for the gallery's skylights

  • Grande Galerie in the 1840s, by Thomas Allom

River façade of the Grande Galerie in an 1855 photo by Édouard Baldus

In 1849-1851, the exterior façade of the Eastern section of the Grande Galerie was renovated by architect Félix Duban, who replaced most of the stonework even though he scrupulously respected most of the original design. Duban replaced a former passageway, the guichet de la rue des Orties, with a monumental entrance initially called porte de la Bibliothèque, later renamed porte Barbet de Jouy.[4]:69

In the 1860s, the Louvre's architect Hector Lefuel remodeled the southwestern wing of the Louvre Palace and created a new venue for state ceremonies, the Salle des Sessions, close to the Tuileries Palace where Emperor Napoleon III had his Paris residence. Lefuel cut the Grande Galerie short, reducing it by about a third of its original length, to make space for the new room. Since that room was broader than the gallery, it resulted in a protruding structure on the northern side, the Pavillon des Sessions. The building was entirely demolished west of the Pavillon Lesdiguières, as was the Pavillon de Flore at its western end, and rebuilt to the new plan and new exterior designs that replaced the previous giant order, which Lefuel disliked, with a replica of Métézeau's façade pattern further east.[11] Lefuel also created the current skylight system at the center of the gallery’s ceiling.[6] The new ceilings of the gallery below the Pavillon Lesdiguières and Lefuel's new Pavillon La Trémoille were adorned with paintings by Alexandre-Dominique Denuelle and stucco sculptures by Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse.

The interior design was again streamlined around 1950 by Louvre architect  [fr].[1] in the late 1960s, designer Pierre Paulin created new seats for the Grande Galerie.[12] The room was refurbished during the 1990s as part of the Grand Louvre project, with no change of design but installation of air conditioning and other amenities.[13] In the current arrangement of the Louvre's collections, the Grande Galerie is entirely devoted to the display of Italian paintings.

Influence[]

The Grande Galerie inspired the design of the Galerie des Batailles in Versailles Palace, created under Louis-Philippe I for his Musée de l'Histoire de France. Pierre Fontaine advised Louis-Philippe's architect  [fr] for that project's zenithal lighting.[14]

Media[]

Since 2007, Grande Galerie has also been the title of a glossy quarterly magazine published by the Louvre.[15]

See also[]

Notes[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b Geneviève Bresc-Bautier (2008). The Louvre, a Tale of a Palace. Paris: Louvre éditions.
  2. ^ Jump up to: a b Eric Biétry-Rivierre (19 January 2015). "Le Louvre repense sa Grande Galerie". Le Figaro.
  3. ^ Jump up to: a b c Christiane Aulanier (1950). Le Salon Carré (PDF). Editions des Musées Nationaux.
  4. ^ Jump up to: a b c Jacques Hillairet. Dictionnaire historique des rues de Paris. II. Paris: Editions de Minuit.
  5. ^ Christiane Aulanier (1971). Le Pavillon de Flore (PDF). Paris: Editions des Musées Nationaux. p. 8.
  6. ^ Jump up to: a b c "Italian Painting in Perspective: The Grande Galerie". Louvre.
  7. ^ Yvonne Singer-Lecocq (1986). Un Louvre Inconnu : Quand l'Etat y logeait ses artistes 1608-1806. Paris: Librairie académique Perrin.
  8. ^ "Histoire de la collection". Musée des Plans-Reliefs.
  9. ^ Ken Johnson (27 June 2016). "Revisiting Hubert Robert and His Romantic Ruins". The New York Times.
  10. ^ Mark Ledbury (Fall 2016). "Art versus Life: A Dissenting Voice in the Grande Galerie". Journal18.
  11. ^ Georges Poisson (1994), "Quand Napoléon III bâtissait le Grand Louvre", Revue du Souvenir Napoléonien: 22–27
  12. ^ Rita Salerno (30 May 2019). "Pierre Paulin, the man who made design an art". Elle Decor.
  13. ^ John Rockwell (18 November 1993). "A Grand Opening for the 'Grand Louvre'". The New York Times.
  14. ^ "Louis-Philippe et Versailles: Exposition du 6 octobre 2018 au 3 février 2019". Château de Versailles.
  15. ^ ""Grande Galerie" The Louvre's magazine". Louvre éditions.


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