Day 3...

today we went to one of the most famous museums in the world... the Louvre. full of paintings, sculptures, furniture, and people; the Louvre is the home to many famous works, such as the Monna Leisa, the statue Venus De Milo (otherwise known as Aphrodite), and The Scream. it is also home to a collection of Jacques-Louis David paintings. David is author of several political paintings, such as the Oath of the Horatii, which depicts three brothers vowing to defeat their enemies or die, while their mothers, wives and daughters looked on in horror. David is also author of the rape of the Sabine women, which show the Sabine women trying to keep their fathers and brothers from killing their husbands, and their husbands from killing their brothers and fathers. David is also a political painter and is known for his painting The wreck of the Medusa. the painting shows a raft full of starving people who are slowly dying off. in the very very far right corner, yup can see the small outline of a ship sailing away. the story behind the painting is this; the Medusa was sailing with a bunch of aristocrats on board. well, the ship sprang a leak and began sinking into the ocean. the aristocrats decided that they needed to lighten the weight of the ship. since they believed that they were so important, they decided that they would stay on the ship. so, they made several of the crewmen get into a raft that they towed behind the ship. after a while, the aristocrats saw that the ship was still sinking, and they decided that it was the raft that was weighing them down. so the aristocrats on the ship cut the rope tying the raft to them, and they left the seamen on the raft drifting in the middle of the ocean to starve. the painting is painted to look like you are on the raft with the dying men...and David did this to prove a point. the whole purpose of The wreck of the Medusa was to warn the people that the aristocrats were going to cut off the people and leave them adrift in the ocean that is life.

also, i thought about how life must have been back then, and i wondered about the specific things that happened in the lives of the painters that provoked such beautiful, passionate, and insightful paintings. we as a younger generation may not understand why they were created, but i fully believe that if even one painting had been lost (as I'm sure many were) then we would have l0st a piece of the culture that creates and shapes us every day.

Day 2

Today we visited some of the palaces.

First was the Conciergerie & Sainte Chappell. The Conciergerie is a palace/ old prison house...the same prison where Marie Antoinette, Maximilien Robespierre, and several other famous people were held before their public execution. There was a women’s court in the middle of the structure, a place where all the women used to gather and wash clothes, bathe children, and (I’m sure) gossip about the royal family. the whole place was well protected, with spikes lining the roofs so the enemy couldn’t climb up, spikes on the ledges so they wouldn't be able to grab it to climb, and bars all over the windows.  It was a very neat place to see how the jail system used to work.

Next we went through the Sainte Chappell, which is a chapel built for the king and queen. The lower levels were magnificent, with brightly painted ceilings and stained glass windows. The pillars and statues were old and wearing down, but you could still see the beauty behind the years. The statue in the front looked over a large room used for concerts and other events. The actual mass would be held upstairs.

     Up the narrow stairs, we emerged into a room so breathtaking that you had to take a moment to take it all in. the room was huge! With stained glass windows so tall that they seemed to stretch on and on. Each stained window contained two stories; one from the New Testament and one from the Old Testament. They were supposed to show the people how the old verified the new, and how small we all were compared to God in all his might. And it worked! 

   The alter was lavish, all trimmed in gold and with the sacramental (?) alter below it. It’s said that when the sacrament is on the altar, the people are supposed to act as if they were in the presence of Christ himself. This is where the priest would give mass to the king and queen.

The next place we visited was the palace of Versailles. The palace was magnificent! The gate was all gold, and the palace itself was trimmed in gold. This is the residence of Marie-Antoinette, Madame du Pompadour, King Louis XVI, and many other friends of the court. The palace was built during the great famine, and many people were outraged by the splendor used on the rich while the common starved. Finally, a group of women dragging cannons walked from Paris to Versailles in order to bring the King and Queen back to Paris with them. After a little negotiation (and a few threats) they succeeded. Marie-Antoinette went back to Paris with them.

   The palace of Versailles is also home to the famous "hall of mirrors" that was built by King Louie XVI. It is a long hallway with large mirrors that are exactly opposite large windows. I believe there were fourteen in total. 

   The gardens at Versailles stretched on for miles and were intricately done with high shrubs walls, lavish fountains, shrub mazes, exotic flowers, and statues in various poses to guard it all. In order to see it all, we took the “petit Tranon", or small train; a train-like bus that was given to Marie-Antoinette by her husband, King Louie XVI. He told her that since she loved flowers so much, he was offering her a bouquet, the Petite Tranon. It took us past the vast gardens and past a few palaces as well, whose names I have regrettably forgotten.  

    After we rode the petit Tranon, we walked down to Marie-Antoinette's Hamlet. It is a small circle of buildings that were built in 1783 by Richard Mique. It consists of a barn, a fishery, a dairy, a mill, and a farm. They are not working buildings; in fact they are all built in smaller scale than everything else...kind of like large dollhouses.  The reason that spurred her to build these small houses was that she wanted to be closer to nature, and she believed that pretending to be a peasant, because peasants were supposedly "closer" to nature, was the way to do it.

 

as for what I thought about today....I thought that Marie-Antoinette had a lot of problems, true, but I think that maybe her being thrust into that world at such a young age had something to do with it. I also think it was wrong to execute her solely for the rumor that she was sleeping with her son, rather than for the excellent political reasons they could have executed her for.

 

And, on a funnier note, I never thought to mix the girls and guys bathroom into one! That was interesting.... :-)

Day one

 I chose to read "The Count of Monte Cristo" by Alexandre Dumas, and I believe that my favorite character from the book is Jacopo. I do not know, however, if Jacopo was a real person back in Dumes' time.
      

      I liked Jacopo because, even though he is  a lowly smuggler, he has more loyalty to his friends than anyone else in the book. he stays with Edmond through thick and thin, even when Edmond does not want him. he helps his friends in any way possibile, and loved Edmond with all his heart.and even when everyone abandoned Edmond, Jacopo was still there,refusing to leave.

      how we need more men with that kind of loyalty!!