Museum Masterpieces: The Louvre

This course focuses on the most famous of the Louvre's seven curatorial departments, the Department of Paintings, which is responsible for European paintings from the Middle Ages and the mid-19th century. These works of art form an encyclopedic summary of the achievements of painters that can be called the single most important such collection in the world. Each lecture considers a small number of major paintings, which form a canon of European paintings from the 15th through the 10th centuries, and can serve to prepare new viewers for a visit to the Louvre or as a "study aid" for those who have already toured the collection. Lecture 1: Palace to Museum - The Story of the Louvre. Lecture 2: Leonardo and the Origins of the Collection. Lecture 4: Italiam Renaissance and Baroque Paiting. Lecture 5: Rubens and Flemish Painting: Early German. Lecture 6: Remrandt, Vermeer, and Dutch Painting. Lecture 7: De La Tour, Le Nain, and 17th Century Painting. Lecture 8: Claude and Poussin - French Painters in Rome. Lecture 9: Watteau and Chardin. Lecture 10: Boucher, Freagonard, and the Rococo in France. Lecture 11: Jacques-Louis David and His School. Lecture 12: Delacroix and Ingres - The Great Dialectic.