Day 2 in Paris with Arta and Bonnie. We had a fabulous day at the Louvre. we started early and stayed late! started off with Flat David (here, bonnie is just folding him up to carry him inside), and a morning of beautiful blue skies!
We decided that the strategy was to go small: just pick a small area, and stay there. so... today was greek and roman antiquity.
Good strategy, since things went slow (ie. figuring out where to put our coats and bags, and get the audio guides (on a 3DS), and the figure out how to USE them (no small thing for three generationally challenged adults!)
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| headless Athena Parthanos? |
Things I loved?
Lets see.
1. The room with the Venus de Milo. Then i really loved the Caryatid Room.
So many great sculptures in there. Must say, hanging out with Duncan and the Percy Jackson series has really helped me get a better handle on the characters.
Saw an Athena Parthenos with no head! :-) (which is only fun if you are reading rick riordan books with your kids).
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| Hermaphroditus Sleeping (son of hermes and aphrodite) |
Given that I got to hang out for the Transgender Workshop in Victoria a few weeks back, I particularly loved this statue!
Read more here!
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| looks a bit like Alex?! |
We also saw a statue of some dude who was marcus aurelius's good friend.
Can't remember his name, but we all decided he looked like Alex!
4. I kept being reminded
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| a serious ceiling detail |
The ceilings were really lovely.
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| detail of heads of a hydra |
Winged Samothrace was off visiting somewhere else, but there were other amazing sculptures to enjoy.
I liked the one of a hydra getting its head cut off.
Such simple pleasures!
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| Three tired women at the end of the day |
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| Louis XIV off on a jaunt.... |
I liked the immensity of the space in that room. Hermaphrodite was there among all the other amazing works that needed to be put in marble, for us to see centuries later -- no bigger, no smaller, no more or less important than other ones. Just collected there for us to see.
ReplyDeleteIt was interesting that centuries after it had been carved, one of its owners created a modern mattress for this person in "tortured repose".
Science unravelled some of the mystery of Hermaphrodite so many years after this statue was captured by an artist. Now, time for our second last sleep here.
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