Last month, the news of the Louvre heist was all over the media – as a recap, four thieves used a truck-mounted ladder to reach a second story window, where they used a disc cutter to break through the window and entered the Louvre in the “Apollo Gallery.” They proceeded to smash two display cases and stole various French Crown jewels in just a matter of minutes. They raced back out and down their ladder and drove off on scooters.
As I read continued coverage of this and saw pictures of the Apollo Gallery, I felt pretty certain that I had visited this part of the Louvre in 2012, as it’s a very ornate and dramatic gallery and the current news pictures of it looked familiar. I looked back at my photographs from that 2012 trip, and sure enough, I did visit the Apollo Gallery. Looking over my pictures now, I see that the Crown jewels were not what I found most interesting in this room. I was drawn to the 41 paintings and 36 stucco figures the decorate the ceilings and walls instead. As you can see in both the picture above and this picture below, almost every square inch of the walls and ceiling are covered in art and fascinating details. I’ve always been drawn to the small details of a big visual, and this Apollo Gallery was no exception.
Speaking of details, I’ll share some of the visual details that caught my attention much more so than the crown jewels. You can see the carved figures just above the molding, either resting on it (like the guy at the bottom right) or standing on top of it (the guy at top left). We’ve got lions with interesting expressions and hybrid men-serpants who are struggling to hold onto fish … can you see why I was distracted from the jewels?
How about this snarling Doberman? It’s a detail of painted wood paneling by the French designer Jean Bérain the Elder from the 17th Century. The dog is integrated into a vague space with no ground, but rather filled with ornate, flowing acanthus leaves and scrollwork on a gold background.
Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I was oblivious to the crown jewels in this room – I did take these pictures of crowns (below), and it looks like the one at the bottom of the left side of my picture is indeed one of the pieces that was stolen …? It seems to match what is reported as being the crown of the “Empress of the French,” Eugénie de Montijo, who was married to Napoleon III. I’m not sure what the other crown was, but it doesn’t match any pictures of the stolen items, so I guess the thieves skipped over that one.
Again, please keep in mind these photographs and my recollections are from a trip in 2012. One other thing to note, as far as describing this room: a wall tag (that I photographed) at the entrance to the Apollo Gallery explains that it was designed and built in 1661 by the architect Louis Le Vau and the painter Charles Le Brun and decorated by a number of artists considered the best in France at the time. But even this detail – the idea of the Apollo Gallery being built 364 years ago – made me wonder, how old is the Louvre itself? I see now that it was not built all at once, but rather developed over a number of centuries, starting as a fortress in 1190, converted to a royal palace in 1546, and finally becoming a public museum in 1793.
It’s called the “Apollo Gallery” because of the central painting in the space is “Apollo Vanquishing the Serpent Python,” by Eugene Delacroix, which you can see in my photo here below (although the angle at which I took this shows the painting upside-down).
