A Meticulous Visitor

A Meticulous Visitor

Today, I’ll be in the Sully wing for A Meticulous Visitor.

This gentleman in white pants and a pink shirt holds a sheaf of papers in his left hand, a ballpoint pen in the other, and a water bottle tucked under his right arm. He rushes from one wall label to the next in the French eighteenth-century rooms and checks off a line in his papers each time. He seems to have a list of all the paintings in the Louvre, printed out before his visit to be sure not to miss one. I did not know such a list existed and could easily be downloaded. I will ask about it. The visitor stops before each wall label, casts a quick glance at the work, or not, points at his list, and passes on to the next label. I follow him for a moment. This time, he stands before Nicolas de Largillière’s Study of Hands, between Claude Gillot’s commedia dell’arte scene The Tomb of Master André and a Fête Champêtre by Bonaventure de Bar (Sully, room 917). Above is a large Composition décorative by the same Largillière. Four Regency paintings that I have noticed thanks to him. Would I have stopped before them if I wasn’t shadowing him? I leave him as he climbs a few steps towards the room of the Louis XIV painters (Sully, room 916). For there is a detail that troubles me about this meticulous man: he is walking through the museum in inverse chronological order.