Neither Steven nor I had been aware of St. Sulpice Church until reading Rick Steves' travel guide to Paris in which he wrote about the church on the Left Bank, i.e. the left side of the Seine River. In the square out front was this attractive monument and fountain.
A display of the Shroud of Turin:
Woman doing Tai chi in the Luxembourg Gardens:
As we walked, this picture on a building caught my fancy.
You may have thought after our already visiting Napoleon's Tomb at the Army Museum the previous day we might well have had enough of seeing the French honor their departed VIPs, but we were game to see also the neoclassical-style Panthéon in the Latin Quarter. There the nation celebrated its illustrious history and people and was where 'a panoply of greats' were buried as Rick Steves wrote.
As always, just click on the image to make a picture larger to see more detail. Attila the Hun and his army marched on Paris in this work or art.
This painting was of the beheaded St. Denis.
Three huge works depicted the life of Joan of Arc.
A staircase behind the monument led down to the crypt where we saw two famous French philosophers of the Enlightenment, Voltaire and Rousseau, face off.
Another cute mural on the side of a building!
Up to seven prisoners were held in cells this size.
The prisoners' chapel was also used as a shared cell during the Revolution.
Rodin's Monument to Victor Hugo:
Neither Steven nor I had known before visiting the museum the celebrated sculptor was also a painter of note!
I bet you figured out this was called The Kiss, right!
This was simply called Eve.
Another of his paintings showed his virtuosity as an artist. Isn't it amazing that Rodin applied three times to attend the École des Beaux-Arts, a prestigious art institution in Paris and was denied each time?
A self-portrait of the sculptor in his studio showed us yet again the breadth of the man we had only known formerly as a sculptor. What a delight to be exposed to so much more of the man and his art at the Rodin Museum.
The first chapel had three murals by Eugène Delacroix of fighting angels including one on the ceiling. Lil Red - as always, I think of you when taking ceiling shots in churches or any religious institutions!
I liked the silhouette of a statue of Joan of Arc against the stained glass window in another chapel.
The church was known for its Egyptian-style obelisk used as a gnonom, the part of a sundial that casts a shadow. I had to look that one up, too, as I hadn't ever heard it before!
St. Sulpice is the place to go in Europe if you're a pipe-organ enthusiast as its Grand Orgue has had a succession of 12 world-class organists going back 300 years.
Luxembourg Palace:
So many public spaces around Paris had the same pale green chairs for people to sit on and that could be moved about at will.
Sitting in front of the chairs poolside at the gardens admiring the Palace and especially the boundless energy of this young boy who ran, at his English-speaking mother's suggestion, around the pond about five times at a fast clip made me wonder if I ever had that much get up and go! I think we all should look out for this future marathoner in another decade or so!
Nancyanna: Thought of you when I popped into this Iranian shop right across from the Gardens and saw a picture very much like the one you admired that Steven brought back from Tehran decades ago when he was teaching there.
The interior was enormous: 360 feet long, 280 feet wide and 270 feet high!
Normally a pendulum swings gracefully from the towering dome as it was here that the scientist Léon Foucault first demonstrated the rotation of the earth.
This panel was in memory of the martyrs of the French Revolution from 1830-1848 who gave their lives in defense of their beliefs.
One room marked the tombstones belonging to the Polish-French scientists, Marie and Paul Curie.
The final resting place of the French writer, Victor Hugo, garnered much attention.
I think the jet lag was still catching up with Steven at the Panthéon!
We wanted to visit the Cluny Museum for its collection of Middle Age art. The ornate elephant ivory pieces from the 1300s did not disappoint us at all!
The Pentecost Altarpiece was made in the Meuse Valley around 1160-1170.
The exquisite series of six tapestries in one room called Lady and the Unicorn depicted a noble woman introducing an unicorn to the senses of taste, hearing, sight, smell and touch were, by themselves, worth the price of admission to the museum!
I only wish my camera could have caught the richness of the colors and the details in the wool and silk tapestries that were created about 1500 but the darkened room made it difficult.
In the last post, I ended with exterior photos of the Conciergerie, a French royal residence, Palace of Justice and later prison during the French Revolution between 1789 and 1799. It was from this corridor that carts took condemned prisoners, including Marie Antoinette, to the guillotine nearby.
Marie Antoinette spent her final 74 days in this small, windowless cell just behind the chapel.
The Women's Courtyard was bordered by two walls of dungeons and was where female prisoners were permitted to take daytime walks. The second photo is a view into the courtyard from the chapel.
In retrospect, Steven and I would have been fine skipping the visit to the interior of the Conciergerie altogether. It was one of those places that looked good from the outside but was far less interesting for us once inside.
Our visit to the Rodin Museum was anything but a bust, thank goodness, especially since it was quite a hike and then another metro ride to get there! Auguste Rodin, who lived from 1840-1917, was a modern-day Michelangelo best known for sculpting humans on an epic scale.
Probably the best known of Rodin's monumental works was The Thinker, copies we were lucky to see at Stanford several years ago and last year in Buenos Aires, Argentina. We thought then there were just the three casts of the piece in the world which was part of the reason we wanted to see what we thought was the last one here at the Rodin Museum. However, in writing this post, it seems there are other copies elsewhere of The Thinker. More to find on future trips perhaps!
It gave me shivers seeing the figure in sober meditation battling with a powerful internal struggle. I read that though Rodin first conceived the sculpture as a depiction of Dante, the image evolved to represent all poets and creators.
The statue of a small figure of a condemned woman, called Meditation, was first integrated into the Victor Hugo monument before being enlarged and set apart.
Ugolino and his Children was one of the darkest statues I've ever seen as Rodin depicted the starving Count Ugolino, in a scene from Dante's Divine Comedy, devouring his dead children.
In addition to the fabulous sculptures in the gardens, the museum also comprised a mansion, formerly the Hotel Biron, where Rodin had lived. He bequeathed it and his art collection in the mansion to the country provided a museum of his works be created there.
This gnome-like figure, so unlike any of Rodin's sculptures we'd seen anywhere else, made me smile which was so welcome as most of Rodin's works are anything but uplifting in my view.
Next post: More of iconic Paris sights: Arc de Triomphe, Champs-Élysées, Sacre Coeur, Père Lachaise Cemetery and my reflections on a brief foray to Paris.
Posted on August 19th, 2018, from Yerevan, Armenia.
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