Musee du Louvre, 1

So we have been there before...

https://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2019/06/louvre-out-takes-2019.html
http://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2014/08/le-musee-du-louvre-une-derniere-fois.html
http://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2014/06/paris-scenes-vingt-trois-deux-jours-au.html
http://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2013/09/louvre-lens-museum.html
http://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2009/08/louvre-i.html
http://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2013/09/louvre-lens-collection.html
http://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2012/07/louvre-again-3-out-takes.html
http://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2012/07/louvre-again-1.html
http://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2009/08/louvre-2.html
http://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2014/06/paris-scenes-vingt-trois-plus-out-takes.html
http://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2014/06/paris-scenes-vingt-trois-out-takes-du.html
http://roadeveron.blogspot.com/2014/06/paris-scenes-vingt-troi-paris-et-le.html

and those are just the post-retirement visits I could find. The Louvre has a decent online presence and of course there's always Google Art and Wikipedia, and more, and thus individual pix of paintings and sculptures and such and virtual tours certainly are readily available. What I have hoped to present, mostly, is stuff that is not at those sites, stuff you would not ordinarily see, and stuff that is amusing or at least personally interesting to us.

We delayed visiting the Louvre this far into our 2021 September/October campaign in Paris in part because we were museumed-out after London and in part because we wanted to figure out the most reasonable approach to our usual multi-day visits to the Louvre. It's17€ p/p per day, and, at our present age and stamina, it will take several days. So we concluded it best for one of us to buy a Friends of the Louve membership (unlimited visits, additional perks, good for a year), and for the other to go as a guest on Saturdays. Vicki's interests in the Louvre are wider and deeper than mine, so she is now a Friend of the Louvre. Thus:

After the year is over I will make the membership card into a fridge magnet. The ultimate honor.

All that said and explained, I proceed now to a few pix from our September 25th visit.

Rubens' sister-in-law, Susanna Lunden, whom 
we last saw in the National Gallery of Art, wearing a
(non-straw) hat; see also Elizabeth Le Brun's
self-portrait; I'm not sure how we got started off with
Rubens...possibly the Great Courses video we're
watching; but there you go

A typically happy Franz Hals sitter, a young woman,
known as the Gypsy Girl; probably a prostitute

Rembrandt side of ox

Seriously impressive Rembrandt Bathsheba

Gerard Dou, Better Hold That One up to the Light, 1663

Extremely teenie-weenie Vermeer Lacemaker,
1669; the Louvre also has the Astronomer, which
I am sure I posted sometime previously

Steen's Bad Company; we love Steen's moralizing-lite; just learned
he was deaf and mute...yet so talented, and perceptive

Attempted and unsuccessful pano of the Marie de Medici hall; not even half the room;
a dozen or so enormous Team Rubens paintings, glorifying/legitimizing her roles as
queen and then regent of France; at her request and direction; in reverse chronological
order, sorry, and only a few

Apotheosis of her husband, Henry IV (jousting accident, as I
recall)

Coronation

Birth of her son, Louis XIII

Arriving in France to marry Henry

Education of the future queen

The Louvre has one (1) Turner; and no (0; nada) Valesquez's;
some museum...

An early Mr. Fruity Butt Pants (Michaelangelo de Merisi, aka
Caravaggio), the Fortune Teller

This space reserved for a Velasquez, if they ever get one

The mob in line to see Mr. Smokey's Special Lady Friend

We saw a great deal of Italian, northern, and Spanish paintings (my camera was mis-set, so I'll have to go back for several of the Spanish), had a nice 1/2 poulet roti et frites lunch at the restaurant, finally left after four hours or so, but knowing we could come back.