art history

The Winged Victory of Samothrace has been recently restored and replaced at the top of the stairs, in the Greec sculpture Gallery of Le Louvre.

A room in the Louvre shows us the mystery and history surrounding this statue we often reduce it to a simple winged and beheaded figure amidst a grand staircase.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Parable of the Blind, 1568, distemper on linen canvas, 86 cm × 154 cm (34 in × 61 in), Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, Italy.

But he answering them, said: Every plant which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up. Let them alone: they are blind, and leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into the pit.

Matthew's Gospel, ch. 15 (13-14)

Click on the picture (only in French)

Poet of her face divine,
Curb this over-zeal of thine!
Doves wing frighted from the ground
At a step's too sudden sound,
And her passion is a dove,
Frighted by too bold a love.
Mute as marble Hermes wait
By the blooming hawthorn-gate.
Thou shalt see her wings expand,
She shall flutter to thy hand.
On thy forehead thou shalt know
Something like a breath of snow,
Or of pinions pure that beat
In a whirl of whiteness sweet.
And the dove, grown venturesome,
Shall upon thy shoulder come,
And its rosy beak shall sip
From the nectar of thy lip.

Théophile Gautier, "Odelet, after Anacreon", in Enamels & Cameos, from The Project Gutenberg

A Gérôme. (No available translation)

Là-bas, les muezzins ont cessé leurs clameurs.
Le ciel vert, au couchant, de pourpre et d'or se frange ;
Le crocodile plonge et cherche un lit de fange,
Et le grand fleuve endort ses dernières rumeurs.

Assis, jambes en croix, comme il sied aux fumeurs,
Le Chef rêvait, bercé par le haschisch étrange,
Tandis qu'avec effort faisant mouvoir la cange,
Deux nègres se courbaient, nus, au banc des rameurs.

A l'arrière, joyeux et l'insulte à la bouche,
Grattant l'aigre guzla qui rhythme un air farouche,
Se penchait un Arnaute à l'oeil féroce et vil ;

Car lié sur la barque et saignant sous l'entrave,
Un vieux Scheikh regardait d'un air stupide et grave
Les minarets pointus qui tremblent dans le Nil.

José Maria de Heredia, "Le Prisonnier", Trophées