When you get outside Paris, you will find Romanesque and Gothic churches of astounding beauty. In Paris, there's the Louvre, but make time for smaller museums, like the Musée Moreau and churches like Saint-Sulpice (where you can see newly-restored paintings by Delacroix).
Some background
videos + essays
Winged Victory of Samothrace with Laurence des Cars
While the movement of her body, buoyancy of her drapery and beating of her wings reflect the energy characteristic of the Hellenistic era, the artist and patron remain unknown. Learn more about this sculpture with Laurence des Cars, President and CEO of the Musée du Louvre.
The Catalan Atlas
The Catalan Atlas reveals how one 14th-century Jewish mapmaker understood the political and ethnic realities of his world.
Pont du Gard
The Pont du Gard is one of the greatest public works projects spearheaded in the Augustan age.
Baron Antoine-Jean Gros, Napoleon Bonaparte Visiting the Pest House in Jaffa
Napoleon masterfully manipulated his image, and this painting meant for Parisian audiences is pure propaganda.
Delacroix, Women of Algiers in Their Apartment
Delacroix's orientalist fantasy exhibited to great acclaim in the Paris Salon.
Marey, Joinville Soldier Walking
The title of the photograph suggests that this image of lines and dots in wavy bands represents a walking soldier. But how?
Nike (Winged Victory) of Samothrace
On the island of Samothrace, the wind whipped the clothing of this stone goddess of victory.
Théodore Géricault, Raft of the Medusa
Géricault’s massive canvas takes its format from history painting, but its subject is ripped from the headlines.
Amiens Cathedral
Above the entrance to Amiens, animated figures and flowing drapery attest to the increasing naturalism of Gothic sculpture in the 13th century.
The last work of Eva Hesse
Hesse proves that powerful, emotionally charged art doesn't have to be pretty.
A Byzantine vision of Paradise — The Harbaville Triptych
This ivory triptych was an object of prayer and a vision of paradise for Byzantine viewers following iconoclasm
Fashion and Politics in Franz Xaver Winterhalter’s Portrait of The Empress Eugénie surrounded by her Ladies-in-Waiting
Fashion's power to reveal the nuances of political power, gender, and ethnicity.
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