What are a Venezuelan, a Cordovan, and a Westphalian, doing at the house of a Gaditan and a Saxon in Paryż? No, it is not ‑yet- a joke.
In a small world, a relative of a friend of a relative of a friend of my mother ‑was it like that?- whom I haven’t seen in ages, a Gaditan guy who back in time showed me Madrid and infested me with the hunger for the city’s history, a guy who we almost meet last year in Berlin just to find out he actually moved to Paris, hosted us this year in Paris. And to what extent we have just enjoyed the stay, I’m speechless. Remarkable hosts!
Paris, the city of the toy tower. The city where we stayed for five nights. And it was just not enough. As Jorge already knew the place, he sought for more specific places he couldn’t be before, like the Catacombs and the Moreau museum ‑what a paintings he has, it deserves coming back to the city just for that alone! On the meanwhile, Leon and me went to places whose beauty has been forgotten behind a banalisation of pictures. Just to mention the first one for today, the Louvre.
It must be admitted, not without a small bitter taste, that there were big pieces of the Louvre not visited. To excuse us, the museum is too large, too much for just a visit, and the city is too large, too much for just anything less than several, if not many, weeks. Or months.
We started at the greco-roman sculptures just because it casually was the first one we found after entering, but which casually was one of the pieces I’m usually interested the most, interest that was satisfied by the most perfect human proportions and delighted by their movement impressions. Oh that gladiator whose posture was just the same I would have taken in his place. I must say, I’m a sculptures lover: I must be please reminded of two things:
- To look for some cheap, perhaps small wooden, way of learning a personal bit of that topic.
- To send to an autodefé those who dare to disrespect a Roman or any ancient sculpture by caressing his hair.
We skipped almost on purpose the oriental halls of the museum ‑Egyptians, Assyrians, Islamics, etc‑, just to have time for a part of the painting halls. Say that it was just for an excuse to come back to the city, for example.
Mona Lisa, as stated by Leon, did a marvellous job at distracting the phone storm from the rest of paintings, and even though still remarkable, we have just an original copy of Leonardo himself at Prado, Madrid. But the three David’s: Leonidas, Napoleon, and the Sabines, where nothing but a delight; two stories I used to know quite well, plus a Napoleonic one Leon just introduced me to detail, remarking how big of a statesman this Napoleon was, who were all the people around him, and whatfor they were there. And just when we were leaving, a small room dedicated to the seaside sunsets of Claudio de Lorena, whose water I could hear roaring just by the tone of his colours, marvelled me like that of the Prado.
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