I talked about a couple of paintings in my first post on Louvre last year but there were so many other amazing ones I wanted to share. I think the freedom to take pictures is one of the best gifts the museum has to offer to its visitors, not so much as to take photographs of everything single painting one sees, but as a quick way to note down painting and artists names for later identification and studies.

(above and in detail below) Madame Récamier by the champion of Neoclassicism. Jacques- Louis David. This was one of the earliest paintings I studied as an art student and so left a really big impression on me. And also because it’s incredibly beautiful too, of course. Two other important works of David on display in Louvre are Death Of Marat and Oath Of The Horatii.

(above) The Mona Lisa room, where the world’s most famous painting is displayed. It’s perpetually surrounded by a mob of excited visitors, so we actually steered clear of the area completely. No disrespect to Leonardo, sir, but there are many, many more outstanding paintings in the Louvre that warrant your attention just as much.

(Above) One of the many astonishingly beautiful dome ceilings found throughout the Louvre; if you look at the image below you can get a sense of just how big the galleries are.

(above) An eerily life like portrait of Louis-François Bertin by yet another hero of the Neoclassicism movement, Ingres. The stories of the creative rivalry with his nemesis Eugene Delacroix, master of the Romanticism movement are the stuff of legends !

(below) Close-up of a painting by Louis Hersent ( student of Jacques ) so three-dimensional in quality it seems to pop out from the canvas.

(above) Close-up of Madame Charles-Louis Trudaine by Jacques. The (relatively) looser brushstrokes, color palette and painting style reminds me more of modern comic artists like James Jean. ( This was painted more than 200 years ago though…shocking. )

(below) Another piece that looks ahead of its time – Le Retour De Tobie by painter Eustache Le Sueur. The color palette and somewhat cartoonish painting style look like something from out of a Disney film.

The Astronomer by Jan Vermeer. The photograph can do the real painting little justice; looking at the original piece was like been sucked into a different reality.

(below) A wall of Rembrandts. This guy practically invented Chiaroscuro. Ok, ok, that should be Caravaggio.

(above) Bathsheba by a disciple of Rembrandt, Willem Drost. His execution of Chiaroscuro in this piece is flawless.

In short, waay too many awesome paintings, too little time. I most certainly hope to visit Louvre again in the near future.