Sculptures
French and European sculpture from the Middle Ages to the mid-19th century — masterpieces in stone, marble, bronze, and wood.
Esclave mourantBuonarroti, Michelangelo dit Michel-Ange; Italie · 1513 - 1515
Esclave mourantBuonarroti, Michelangelo dit Michel-Ange; Italie · 1513 - 1515
Stone, bronze, and wood — Europe arguing with antiquity for a thousand years.
uropean sculpture is largely a long conversation with the ancients next door: the Romanesque carver imagining their gravity, the Renaissance master matching them, the Baroque dramatist trying to outdo them in motion. The Louvre houses both sides of that conversation, sometimes in adjoining rooms.
Walk from a tender medieval Virgin in painted wood to Michelangelo's Slaves, still half-emerging from their blocks, to Puget's writhing Milo of Croton and Houdon's clear-eyed Voltaire. Two unbroken galleries, the Marly and Puget courts, were built around these works — sculpture meant to be circled, not glanced at.
