Re-Air: Uncovering the Louvre’s Hidden Stories

0:04Hey, Kate here. You've been hearing a lot about the Louvre lately. Last month, thieves broke into the Paris Museum in broad daylight when the museum had just opened and made off with eight pieces of royal jewelry. This spectacular heist captured the world news cycle and the imagination of the internet. But why are people so obsessed with the Louvre in general? What is it about this museum in particular? We decided to re-air a recent episode where we look at the enigmatic institution and dive into the many secrets and stories that it holds.

0:37I found out that there was a secret memo put out about my project saying that it could be risky to talk to me and that no one was authorized to talk to me except if I was accompanied by what I call my Louvre chaperone or minder.

0:57I'm Kate Brown and this is The Art Ankle, a podcast from Artnet News.

1:06the Louvre is among the largest most visited and best known museums in the world and for nearly too many reasons to count it's home to some of the most celebrated works of art from the Venus de Milo to the Mona Lisa its blended contemporary and historic architecture is quite simply astounding and it has a formidable past stemming back through time well before the building became a museum in 1793 An institution and collection that has been a quiet witness to so much history and change is bound to have stories to tell. Elaine Sciolino, contributing writer and former Paris Bureau chief for the New York Times, has captured many of these in her newest book, Adventures in the Louvre, How to Fall in Love with the World's Greatest Museum, which is out this April with Norton and Company.

1:52Sciolino is acclaimed for her chronicles of French history, and she's the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Only Street in Paris, the sin, and la seduction. And at the Louvre, she spoke to everyone, from the guards to the lead curators, and received unprecedented access to rooms that I didn't even know existed. I caught up with Elaine, who is based in Paris, to discuss the enigmatic and ever-enchanting Louvre and what she learned from her exploration of its many halls, back rooms, and basements. Elaine, it's great to have you on the show. Thank you so much for joining me on The Art Angle.

2:26Where am I finding you today? I'm in my dining room slash office in Paris, France, where I've lived for more than 20 years. And I'm so happy to be with you. Yes, I'm excited to speak with you. I mean, you are a true expert on Paris in so many senses. And your new book that is coming out in April is about the Louvre, which is a museum that everybody thinks that they know. But as your book very well proves to me, I didn't know it at all. And as you say at the top of the book, it's, you know, one of the least understood museums in the world. So I'm really excited to talk to you today. I learned so much from reading your book, and I'm excited to sort of get into some of these revelations that arise from it.

3:04I wanted to ask you, because you had pretty unprecedented access for someone who doesn't work at the museum. It was hard. It was hard. I went to the Louvre and I said, I'm going to write this book as a journalist. And the Louvre said, well, it could be a Louvre book. You know, the Louvre has its own publications. And I said, no, it really has to be an independent book. So I want to do it on my own. And the Louvre said, well, if you want to do any interviews in the Louvre, you have to do it with one of our officials who will be present at every single interview you do with any Louvre official or employee.

3:41I'm a former investigative correspondent. I used to cover the CIA years ago in Washington. So I found out that there was a secret memo put out about my project saying that it could be risky to talk to me and that no one was authorized to talk to me except if I was accompanied by what I call my Louvre chaperone or minder. So it was really hard. But you managed to gain their trust. And some of these figures actually become protagonists in the book now that I understand that they were sort of watching over you. But you sort of turn the lens back on them. Well, that's very kind of you to say, but boy, there were a couple of moments where I thought, you know what, this is a terrible project.

4:19Why did I ever start this book? And I even had friends of mine who for years worked in the French government because I used to be the diplomatic correspondent for the New York Times and I knew them from diplomacy and intelligence. And they just said, the Louvre is the toughest bureaucracy in the entire French government, even worse than the DGSE, the foreign intelligence arm. Wow. That's really saying something. It was a challenge. So let's get to the impetus. What inspired you to write this book? It really started during COVID where we were locked down in Paris and you could only go out for an hour a day and within a kilometer of where you lived.

4:57So I'm trapped at home and I decided to clean out all my books. And I found this rare two-volume work from 1913 that had these fabulous color photos of paintings in the Louvre. And they didn't used to have color photos back in 1913. So it truly was a revolutionary book. And I thought, you know what? I'm not an art historian. I'm not a tour guide, but I am a former war correspondent. So I know how to get in anywhere. So why not tackle the Louvre? And so I treated the Louvre like a battlefield that had to be understood and conquered. You certainly got around to a lot of its corners and locked away halls and everything.

5:34And as I learned, there's so many mysteries about this museum. And there are so many histories about the Louvre that I want to talk about. Let's start with the name. You explain in the book that experts you spoke with don't even know its origin. A natural question, if you're going to do a book on the Louvre, is to ask everybody, how did the place get its name? And nobody could give me a straight answer. One theory is that the word is similar to Louvre, L-O-U-V-E, which is the French word for she-wolf. So maybe the site was inhabited by wolves, or maybe the site served as a kennel where dogs were trained to hunt wolves.

6:08And there's all sorts of other theories, all of which were far-fetched, that maybe it was named after a Saxon castle or a leper colony or an ancient Roman signal tower or an oak tree plantation. But the most likely explanation, but even that is not at all identifiable or known, is that the Louvre was a word of Celtic origin that may have referred to a nearby tributary or river that could have fed into the Seine. But again, it's a complete unknown, which is kind of nice that there are mysteries in life. Absolutely. When did it acquire its name officially? Well, it sort of evolved over time. In fact, centuries before Philippe Augustus, the medieval king who built a fortress there, even decided to build a fortress, that plot of land was called Louvre with the current spelling so that it can't be pinned to one particular period.

7:07I see, I see. Well, you were shown this often overlooked courtyard, which is one of the oldest parts of the museum. And you talk in the book about how it was not always a museum. In fact, it was many, many different things. I had no idea how many different purposes this place had served over the centuries. Can you describe this courtyard and tell us what it reveals about the history of the Louvre and some of its original purposes? Well, the courtyard is the Courcarré, and it's the oldest part of the Louvre. In fact, you can go into this courtyard and you can see a hole in the ground around the stones that leads deep down into the 12th century foundation of the Louvre.

7:50And it was developed over the centuries, but to me it's one of the most magical places in Paris because you can sit in this incredibly large, beautifully constructed courtyard and not be intruded upon by the noises of 21st century Paris. You can even sometimes go and not even hear the sounds of the traffic outside. I call it one of my very special places in the museum. Sounds like it's trapped in time in a way. It is. And one of the most magical things to do in Paris is to come to the Courcarré just before it's ready to close and just sit on one of the benches and just imagine what life was like in Paris centuries ago.

8:35Well, we wouldn't have time to go through all of the centuries, which you tell in colorful detail in your book. But, you know, skipping over a few, it eventually did become a private picture gallery for royal family members. and after the French Revolution, it became a quote-unquote encyclopedic museum. And this is an interesting transition. Can you tell us about the story of this shift and what Napoleon's vision was when he enters the scene? And, you know, beyond this expansion, like how did this reshape the museum's role? Well, you're absolutely right, Kate. It started out as a fortress. Then it became a palace and the various kings found it a very difficult place to live in.

9:16Eventually, it became a private picture gallery for the royals. So it wasn't really open to the public. And it only was with the French Revolution that a museum, a public museum was created. I say in my book that it was created out of the euphoria and the terror of the French Revolution. It literally was on the first anniversary of the end of the monarchy. So that was in 1793 that the new Louvre opens its doors to the masses for the first time, inviting them in for one day to glimpse the art treasures that were there. More than 500 paintings and other works of art. But then this structure becomes a repository for works of art from Versailles, from other royal palaces, and from churches, monasteries, and nobility who had either fled or been guillotined and who left behind lots of works of art.

10:15So you finally have a museum. Then comes Napoleon, who decides to make the Louvre into the world's first global museum through force and through theft. He restored some of the buildings. He started a new wing. He renamed it the Museum Napoleon. He named it after himself. Of course he did. Well, of course he did. And I hope that Donald Trump and his team isn't listening to you because they might decide to name the Kennedy Center the Trump Center. Because this is what Napoleon did. He just decided, I don't want to call it the Louvre or the National Museum or anything else. I want to call it the Napoleon Museum.

10:48And he built this museum into an imperial museum by basically stealing works of art or he conquered territories. He actually had teams of art historians and art experts who went behind the troops and basically said, we want this, we want this, we want this for France because France deserves to have all these things. And it was only after Napoleon was sent into exile and defeated that about 5 ,000 of the artworks that he took were sent back to the countries from whence they came. But not all of them. There's still some works of art that are there from Napoleon's time. So some more restitution claims ought to be made, perhaps.

11:30Or bad deals were made, like the Italians made a very bad deal and gave up the Veronese painting, The Marriage Feast of Cana, which is the largest painting in the Louvre. Okay. Very bad treaty. So as you describe it, this is almost like an organic structure that is like expanding and contracting and transforming depending on who's in power and the moods of the moment and the eras. And it also came close to destruction a few times, which you talk about. I was also fascinated to learn that there's a permanent firefighting brigade of 52 firefighters that are like always there, which is great to know, you know, after the tragedy of the Notre Dame.

12:06Can you share a little bit about what you learned about these destructions? Maybe we can focus on one decisive moment. I know there are many. Well, before we get there, I have to tell you that using that word organic is the one key word to describe the Louvre. It is ever-changing. And it's only when you understand that that you can understand the Louvre. Yes, and you've got a whole team of sapper pompier or firefighters, and they belong to the French military. And they sleep there and they do everything from pick you up and send you to the emergency room if you fall on one of the marble staircases to send pigeons flying back out of an open window to taking care of when the fire alarms go on because there's too much dust in the air.

12:48But they're there for serious reasons, too. If there were a terrorist attack, the firefighters would be there. Right. So you want one moment when the Louvre was in danger of destruction. Well, let's go to 1871. It came close to being enveloped in fire. When Napoleon III, his empire had collapsed, there was a conservative provisional republic, there were utopian rebels, and there was the movement called the Commune, in which rebels drenched the walls and floors of the Tuileries Palace, which was a palace that was built alongside the Louvre, covered in tar in the building ignited and was totally destroyed.

13:29And the fire from the Tuileries started to invade the Louvre as well. And a curator and an officer in charge of the French army literally mounted a brigade to stop the fire so that the fire destroyed the Imperial Library, but the museum itself was saved. Wow, that's incredible.

14:01During World War II, at many points, it was also under threat, and the curators that were working there went to great lengths to disperse the collection into the provinces, which you speak about in the book. But I'd like to talk about the MNR, which is the Musée Nationale Recuperation collection, which you describe as these orphans of the museum, and there's more than 1 ,600 of them. I was astonished by this number. Could you speak about these quote-unquote orphans that exist since the war? If your listeners have seen the movie Monuments Men, you'll see how so many works of art, particularly from French museums, were captured by the Nazis.

14:41And after World War II ended, and when Germany surrendered in 1945, many of these artworks returned to France. Most of them were sent back to their rightful owners, but many of the works were left as what we call orphans, and the rightful owners were never found. And the Louvre, as you said, has more than 1 ,600 of these works of art. Some of them have been sent to regional museums. It's hard to find them within the Louvre. There are two small rooms in the Louvre that have some of them hanging. I think they are pretty pitiful because instead of highlighting the fact that the Louvre is the protector and receptacle for these works of art, there are just two rooms with some of the paintings.

15:33In fact, some of the works of art are so important that they haven't been put into these rooms and they sit with different collections. So, for example, if you go into a room with the paintings of Jericho, you might find this wonderful profile of a lion. And very few people would ever look to see that in the description on the little label, it says MNR and what MNR means. And that this painting doesn't belong to the Louvre. It's just being kept by the Louvre in the hopes that maybe a rightful owner could be found. Right. So they sort of see themselves as temporary custodians, even though it's been so long.

16:15Yes, they're temporary custodians, but it's hard for normal visitors to know about this incredible part of the Louvre's history. That really seems like something they should be developing in their upcoming programming. That's a huge absence. Well, the problem is with all these things, Kate, it's money and will. You have to have the money to develop this whole area of the Louvre. You have to have the will to decide that this is a priority. And all that takes a huge amount of time and a huge amount of dough. And then there's all kinds of different stakeholders. I was interested when I read about the copy of the Mona Lisa, which they can't decide whether to put on display or not because this is part of the MNR, quote unquote, temporary collection until it finds its rightful owners.

17:01But of course, the main star of the museum is the original Mona Lisa, which I do want to turn to because we cannot skip her. There's so much lore around this work. And, you know, just like the Louvre, everyone feels like they have a sort of understanding of the story of how this painting came to be. But I learned a lot from your storytelling around it. You speak to so many different people at so many different levels of the museum's hierarchy. And one of them is Mr. Mona Lisa, as he's called. So could you tell us a bit about what you learned from him? Well, he's the curator for Italian Renaissance, Vincent de L 'Huvin.

17:39And it's both a burden and a joy to work with the Mona Lisa every single day. And to have to talk about, can you imagine going to a dinner party if you're Vincent? People are going to ask you at a dinner party, why is the Mona Lisa so famous? Or what's so special about the Mona Lisa? But this guy has actually sat with the Mona Lisa out of her protective frame with all of the security glass and little sensors on her. And he's actually examined her up close. And it's something magical to come that close to Leonardo and what he was thinking when he painted this incredible work of art, which took him ages to do and layers and layers of paint and layers and layers of varnish now that kind of cover the painting or obscure the painting.

18:26But no one would dare to suggest that the Mona Lisa should be restored or renovated. But I love the fact that, you know, he was once sitting with her outside of her frame, eating his sushi dinner, just looking at her and staring into her eyes. And he will tell you how if you can come close to the Mona Lisa, you will find her magic. And he required me to come close to the Mona Lisa, although I had to see her behind her protective frame and just be alone with her and contemplate her and try to understand why she is so special. And do you feel like it clicked for you in that moment? It took a long time because most of the time I feel that I do not understand the cult of the Mona Lisa because, you know, she's not the Virgin Mary.

19:17She's not a saint. She's just a silk merchant's wife. But if you can be alone with her, even though she's only 20 inches by 30 inches with no one else around, which hardly ever happens, you can stare into her eyes and maybe she'll stare back. Well, you got up close to many artworks. thanks to these wonderful curators that were able to tour you around. And you got very close to Nike, who's maybe the second or third most famous work in the museum, this iconic statue. I love the story of you staring into her belly button and this anecdote about this feather. I mean, I was truly mind blown by this part of the book.

19:56Can you tell me about these two stories again? And also what they reveal to you about the tenets of Greek sculpture. It's probably the most famous ancient Greek sculpture in the world. And it's got this great position at the Louvre on the top of the grand Daru staircase that Audrey Hepburn made famous in the movie Funny Face. I was fascinated by the fact that she's got such a powerful body and it's clear that she's trying to land someplace. And there's a storm because her garment is pressed up against her flesh and you can see the outline of her navel. And I just call it the most beautiful belly button in the world because it's naked, but it's not naked.

20:39And being partially clothed is much more seductive and sexy than complete nudity. So she's got that. So she's got the most beautiful navel in the world. But she also has a feather that kind of sticks out from her left wing that wasn't there before about 2013, 2014, when she was restored and renovated. And Ludovic Logier, who is the ancient Greek curator responsible for Nike, was trying to figure out whether any of the little pieces that he had from the statue that were sitting in drawers could have been part of this sculpture. and one day there was this moment where he was looking at a marble feather and saying, it's kind of belongs someplace on her.

21:32And he went to study the arch of the left wing and he found a small space on its edge that was smooth to the touch. And he thought about this feather that was sitting in his storage drawers. And he literally took the feather and said, you know what, let's go try this feather and see if it works. He said it was kind of like finding a Lego piece that would fit, and it did change the silhouette of the sculpture. So now there is a feather sticking out of the left wing that kind of sticks up and doesn't really feel as if it belongs. And I think they should name it the Ludovic Logier feather because it's just so magical.

22:11And to do that with marble, to convey gauziness of a thin fabric blowing against the wind, it's just so incredible and so close to life. And I think having a flaw, that is also what brings a sort of life force into art. So it's just amazing. A hundred percent. If it were perfection, nobody would care. It's the flaws that create the beauty. Is there another painting or artwork whose story really moved you in your research? When I realized how famous the Mona Lisa was for everybody inside the Louvre, outside the Louvre, how she was a burden, I decided to ask the chief of paintings, who's a guy named Sebastian Allaire, about the Mona Lisa and other paintings.

22:56And I realized that he really hates the Mona Lisa. You're not supposed to say this, but he always makes a face whenever she's mentioned. So I said to him one day, I said, so are there other paintings in the Louvre that are more beautiful than the Mona Lisa? Are there other women? And he started listing some of the paintings that he loved even more than the Mona Lisa. And one of the paintings that we started talking about was a portrait of a man by a Sicilian painter named Antonello da Messina. It's a dark figure. The guy has a square jaw, 15th century, Sicilian, and it's known as il condottiere.

23:39Condottiere was a warlord or a mercenary. So he's a very deeply complicated, profound figure. He's got a scar over his lip. You can see every hair on his face, dark circles under his eyes. I mean, he reminds me of some of my Sicilian uncles, but he's beautiful. And I fell in love with him. And hardly ever anybody even goes and looks at him. He's in the big, huge gallery that's just outside the Sal des Eta where the Mona Lisa is. And hardly ever anyone goes and looks at my mercenary. but I've often said if I were stranded on a desert island, I'd want to be stranded with him because he's just so delicious.

24:23Amazing. And how did that work of art come into the collection? Do you know? Do you know, Kate, I knew you were going to ask me a question that would stump me and I have absolutely no idea. No, I think that's beautiful. Bravo. And now you've sent me back to the drawing boards, but this proves a point about the Louvre, is that you can never know the Louvre. Even Acri Loiret, who's the former director of the Louvre, said anybody who pretends to know the Louvre entirely is pretentious. So I come to you with great humility. I have absolutely no idea how the mercenary came to be part of the Louvre.

24:58There's room for a part two to this book then. Oh my gosh, your hardcover hasn't even come out and I'm already correcting it for the paperback. I mean, I just love this idea that you can never really get to know the museum and that it's constantly just offering you new things over and over again. It's kind of like a wonderful lover. You know, it's like if you've been married for 40 years, you have to find new ways to keep the marriage exciting. But if you don't live in the same city as your lover and you see him or her only a few times a year, there's always something new to discover. That's kind of like what the Louvre is like.

25:28Absolutely. Yeah. On that note, you know, the Louvre as a collection that has evolved over time has many overlooked perspectives, which you have delineated into chapters. You have this chapter called The Queer Universe. You look at women's roles, you look at the presence of Black figures and how they were spoken about over time, Persian viewpoint and the idea of Islamic enlightenment and how that exists there. These are massive topics that we cannot get into every single one of them. But is there one discovery in particular that really reshaped how you viewed the museum's history or how the museum sees itself?

26:00Yes, you can pick any subject and find it within the Louvre's walls. Say you're a fashion addict. You could go through the Louvre and just look at shoes. It sounds bizarre, but there are the most extraordinarily beautiful ribbon shoes, button shoes, tapestry shoes, sandals, boots, high heels in the Louvre. In fact, the whole book has been done just on the shoes of the Louvre. What I'd like to tell families who don't know what to do with their kids in the Louvre, because the Louvre can be just an exhausting museum for kids, is I say to them, bribe them and tell them, I will pay you a dollar or a euro for every cat or dog that you find in the Louvre.