An Eye for Detail

Paris Muse docents describe some of their favorite details from the tours they offer. Get a feeling for what's in store for you when you reserve with us.

Eiffel's "72"

From "Understanding Eiffel" docent Dennis:

Everywhere on the facades of the Palais du Louvre, you’ll see authoritative initials belonging to French rulers who reigned from inside its sumptuous interiors. At the Eiffel Tower, however, a more modern story emerges through its inscriptions. At the level of the first platform, just above the cross-braced latticework where the curved legs come together, 72 names wrap around the entire tower. And not one of them is Louis, Charles, or Napoleon!

These names—embossed into iron rather than stone—belong to the great men of modern French engineering, mathematics, and science. This fact alone tells us quite a bit about what the tower was designed to represent. Constructed exactly 100 years after the French Revolution, the tower was conceived as a symbol of Republican France, where science and savoir faire were celebrated over nobility and aristocracy.

Some of the men listed here were born noble, and some were not. Nevertheless, they are listed side by side for their achievements, irrespective of birth or social position. In a 19th century Europe still dominated by royal dynasties, to commemorate meritocracy was a fairly radical idea. The spirit of these 72 names mirrors the story of the tower’s creator, Gustave Eiffel, a self-made man of humble birth.

There are a few household names among the 72: Antoine Lavoisier, considered to be the father of modern chemistry for developing the periodic table and metric system; André-Marie Ampère, the mathematician and physicist who measured electric current (the Amp is named after him); and Léon Foucault, who proved the rotation of the earth through his famed "Foucault’s Pendulum" at the Panthéon. There are also names that most people would not recognize: the inventor of margarine, the scientist who discovered the greenhouse effect, the designer of Paris’ sewer system.

A name you will not find among Eiffel’s 72 is Sophie Germain, whose work on the theory of elasticity was crucial to Eiffel’s calculations for the tower’s construction. Her biographer argues that Germain was not included on the tower because she was female. So, while in many ways the Eiffel tower was a symbol of modernity, it also represented a late 19th-century society that still had progress to make.

The Dazzle of Matisse

From our “Monet and More” Orangerie docent Kristen:

Matisse’s paintings often depict subjects, like the reclining woman at the center of this painting, which fool you into thinking his art is all about relaxation. His sensually posed model may be taking a breather here, but our eye sure gets a work out. It has to shuttle back and forth to take in all those marvelously complex decorative structures. One Matisse writer described this effect as “optical dazzle,” as if a flash bulb has gone off in our eyes.

Notice how the simple, boldly striped pattern of the North African blanket competes with the French-style red wallpaper surrounding it. Matisse was an avid collector of fabrics from around the world, and adorned his studios in Nice with them. His fascination with textile design was related in part to where he grew up, in Bohain, in northern France, a region dominated by the textile industry.

Other influences came from further afield. This painting also reflects Matisse’s travel experiences outside of France, specifically in North Africa. Throughout the 1920s, Matisse did a whole series of odalisque fantasy paintings, featuring his favorite model Henriette playing the role of a kept woman in a harem. This painting, for example, is only one of four odalisques paintings in the Orangerie's collection alone. While at the Orangerie, be sure to take a look at Picasso’s Woman with a Tambourine (1925) which hangs nearby. It is a deliberate, slyly provocative response to Picasso's rival Matisse, and his fascination with this voluptuous subject.

Mystery Doors on the Seine

From our "Historic Heart" walking tour docent Larissa:

Have you ever noticed those mysterious numbered doorways—like the one at the left in our photograph above—while you were strolling along the Seine? Have you ever wondered where they might lead?

Some of these doors, now blocked up, used to connect the river with the houses built along its banks. Others led to shops built into these embankment walls themselves.

Just in the shadow of Notre-Dame cathedral, there was a door leading directly into the city’s oldest hospital, Hôtel-Dieu. (You can see the chimneys of today’s Hôtel-Dieu jutting just above the wall in our photograph). 17th-century crowding at the hospital (by then already over 900 years old) led to an unusual idea for expansion. Additional hospital wards were built over a nearby bridge, the Pont au Double!

The nuns who worked at the hospital used passageways to go directly from the wards down to the river. Every day they emerged from these doorways to wash their patients’ clothes in the less than clean river water, earning them the nickname les petites laveuses or “the little washerwomen.”

For a full description of this walking tour, click here.

Renaissance Gem

From our "Hidden Masterpieces of the Louvre" docent Amy:

One of the most beautiful Renaissance paintings in the Louvre— Jan van Eyck's Chancellor Rolin Madonna c. 1434— is also the most difficult to find. You won't find it in the more crowded Italian galleries, where everyone is heading to see the Mona Lisa. It's in the Netherlandish rooms (Richelieu second floor, galleries 4 and 5), where a whole other equally fascinating Northern Renaissance unfolds.

Look at how van Eyck's painting balances scrupulous attention to earthly details with spiritual symbolism. In the walled garden in the background, for example (itself a symbol of Mary's virginity), the minutely-detailed white lilies symbolize her purity; the red roses, the Passion of Christ. The two birds (magpies) on the garden's path allude to death.

In this one tiny devotional image then, we have both a meditation on the awesome powers of the divine and on the human ability to make sense of its creation.

For a full description of this unique painting tour in the Louvre, click here.

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