Hand Authenticated

Hand Authenticated

Here is a nook of the Louvre I had never explored: the stables of Napoleon III, in the basement of the Pavillon Mollien, with a clear view of the courtyard where the gentle slope of an impressive double ramp once led the horses to the little imperial prince’s Salle du Manège (Denon, room 169). Like that room, the stables are covered with a precious vault of stone and brick. And these sculptures from Northern Europe are, for me, a discovery. I linger over an altarpiece depicting the childhood and passion of Christ, made in an early sixteenth-century Anvers studio. In the nativity scene, the infant Jesus is missing from among Mary and Joseph, the ox and the donkey, the three wisemen peering over the crenellated wall. According to the label, handprints engrained in the oakwood were supposed to authenticate the identity of the maker. I look for the hands in vain. I cannot see them. I will ask a curator to help me.