The Louvre (Engraving)
Façade de la Galerie du Louvre
Artist/Maker: published by F. Chereau
Created: 18th century
Origin/Purchase: Paris
Materials: engraving
Dimensions: 24.8 × 130.8 (9 3/4 × 51 1/2 in.)
Location: Bedchamber
Provenance: Thomas Jefferson; by descent to Thomas Jefferson Randolph; by descent to by descent to Olivia Taylor; by gift and bequest to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation
Accession Number: 1969-8
Historical Notes: No longer a royal residence, the Louvre served multiple purposes during Jefferson's time in France. There he visited the studios of the artist Jacques-Louis David and the architect Clérisseau, met with members of various royal academies, and attended the Salon of 1787. The "new" east façade of the Louvre (designed by the architects Louis Le Vau, Charles Le Brun, and Claude Perrault from 1667 to 1670) impressed Jefferson as one of the "celebrated fronts of modern buildings, which have already received the approbation of all good judges."[1] He recommended it many years later as a model for buildings in the United States capital.[2]
-Text from Stein, Worlds, 180
References
- ^ Howard Rice, Thomas Jefferson's Paris (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 22-35.
- ^ See also Saul Padover, ed., Thomas Jefferson and the National Capital (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946), 58-59.