Palaces and Paintings

We awoke to another beutiful morning and rode the bus to one of my favorite places, Versailles. The night before, Lisa and I had listened to the soundtrack of the French musical, Le Roi Soleil (the plot is based on the life of King Louis XIV who had Versailles built), so we were both even more excited to visit the palace.

Walking up to Versailles’ golden gates never ceases to completely amaze me. I can’t even imagine living on such expansive grounds, let alone having the means to create them! Each room was more fascinating and elaborately decorated than the next, but my favorites will always be the hall of mirrors, with its many chandeliers and Marie Antoinette’s bedroom, with its pink, delicately detailed bed coverings. The interior design here is a little too elaborate for my tastes, with intricately patterned fabrics often lining the walls, but the regal beauty of the rooms cannot be denied.

Although the palace itself is remarkable enough, my absolute favorite part of the Versailles experience is the visit to its gardens. The second time I visited Versailles was when I was studying abroad in London last year. When I visited then, it was February; the trees were without their leaves, there were no flowers planted, and everything looked stark and a bit sad. That was not the case this time around, and we stepped out onto the back steps of the palace for a tremendous view of the fountains and topiaries along with the palace’s truly expansive lake that seems to stretch on for miles.

In my opinion, it is one of the most beautiful views I have seen. We walked through the gardens to reach the bus, which took us back to the hotel to get ready for our second concert at La Madeleine.

To me, the façade of La Madeleine has never seemed to be what a church of its stature should look like. The building’s architecture lends itself much more to being a judicial building and is much more reminiscent of a temple than of churches commonly associated with European style. However, its interior speaks for itself, with its large altarpiece depicting Mary Magdalene being carried up to heaven by angels. The Renaissance art here is beautiful. What a gorgeous place in which to sing!

After our concert, we changed, had a quick dinner, and visited the Louvre, an Art History student’s paradise. The minute we walked into the main lobby, I began to recall all the essays and projects that my Academy classmates and I worked on in Art History. At the time, the artists and paintings were only words and pictures in a textbook. But since then, traveling with CCVA has allowed me to visit the very places where the artists stood, see and in some cases touch their work!

Before I knew it, I was again face to face with one of my favorite sculptures: the winged victory statue from the Hellenistic period of Grecian art.

I was thrilled to be able to share the story of the statue with my friends. Actually, the statue used to be a fountain, which created the first documented piece of dramatic art, involving all the senses to evoke emotion. I can’t exactly say why it’s one of my favorite pieces, but I think it’s stunningly beautiful.

We moved through a gallery of religious paintings and icons before reaching one of the most famous pieces of art in the Louvre, the Mona Lisa. In my opinion, the experience is rather anticlimactic, since the painting is so much smaller than many imagine. It is almost as if her iconic smile is one of taunting, watching the faces of semi-disappointed museum patrons as they realize that her portrait isn’t as glamorous as they had expected. Regardless, it’s an incredible feeling to stand so close to such an important part of Art History; perhaps it is true that great things come in small packages.

After seeing the Mona Lisa, I visited some of my other Art History favorites like Medusa’s Raft and The Coronation of Napoleon. After about an hour in the museum, a fraction of the time you truly need to see even the highlights, we went back to the hotel in the hopes of getting enough sleep before another early wakeup call!