Wallpaper

Wallpaper

About twenty paintings are exhibited today in the Salon Carré (Denon, room 708). Imagine that a century ago there were more than three times that number, at least sixty paintings covering the walls frame-to-frame: all the museum’s masterpieces, mixing centuries and schools in complete disorder, including the Mona Lisa, Veronese’s The Wedding Feast at Cana, Perugino’s Madonna and Child, Titian’s The Entombment of Christ, Raphaël’s The Virgin and Child with Saint John the Baptist, and the Pastoral Concert attributed at the time to Giorgione, not to mention the Poussins, Rembrandts, van Dycks, Rubens, Murillos, Caravaggios, Memlings, Holbeins, Hyacinthe Rigaud’s Bossuet, etc. It was difficult for the eye to distinguish a work from the others, to see it alone and in detail, for it was itself a detail. And since there were no labels, each work had to be identified by the visitors as best as they could from a booklet. Our experience of visiting the Louvre has nothing to do with what it used to be. Only a few rooms still have walls covered in paintings, like these Flemish landscapes, to remind us of how the works were traditionally hung (Richelieu, room 851). In such a puzzle, pairing each painting with its label is a feat worthy of an art historian.