Thread by @artcrimeprof

When you’ve made it to the Louvre and it doesn’t close for another ten hours HELL YES

Wait, how did the Louvre purchase these objects in 1929 as only maybe from the royal tombs of Ur?

Napoleon in funerary Snuggie.

Zainab Bahrani always pointed out that the ANE collections were originally put in a an entrance hallway in the British Museum, signifying their primitive, not-quite-art status. Welp, here’s an Ougarit exhibit crammed into a hallway next to the fire doors...

Now that’s a lovely excavation sketchbook.

Interesting focus on the logistics/legalities of the partage agreement for this excavation.

Another insistence on the legality of the museum’s acquisitions, here on the entrance panel to the ANE collections.

Questions about the Stele of Naram-Sin. How was it intended to be displayed? Was the obverse ever carved? I’m noticing the thick, I carved (but smoothed) sides.

The Stele has moved since last time I saw it, so now you can get closer. I’d never noticed the details on these standards carried by Naram-Sin’s soldiers.

Look at the anatomy of the defeated ruler - try twisting your arms that way and you’ll understand he’s shown not just dead but utterly broken, all power gone, all tendons snapped.

Such complex play with form and time, as the bodies of the defeated ruler, slipping down the mountain, and Assyrian solider, marching to the battle that will defeat the ruler, reverse-mirror one another.

Showing he’s conquered both rulers and land, Naram-Sin steps on both.

I love this contrast - how a chisel can both sharpen and obscure (where the conquerors of the Assyrians added an inscription and effaced the features of the Assyrian’s puppet king).

So hard to capture how much the surface of the stele roils - here, tufts of rock lump out to meet the feet of climbing soldiers.

In other news, ten hours at the Louvre might seem like a long time, but I’ve been here an hour and made it through four rooms, so...

Ain’t no party like a Gudea party, ‘cause a Gudea party is made of diorite, which don’t stop in the sense that it is very resistant to breakage.

Any assistance in preventing myself from getting Gudea’s architectural plan as the most obscure tattoo ever would be highly appreciated.

A++ lighting on these Gudea statues - in reproductions they look like tubes, but here you can see their sinuosity.

Ok, ok, usually I’m Team Ashurbanipal when it comes to Assyrian palace sculpture, but this Sargon II piece got me with the way the body of the lion melts into and completes the torso of the hero.

And I know it would have been painted but damn, the way the granulation of the stone looks like veins peering through the flesh.

I think the thing I love most about ANE art is its combination of regularity and irregularity - like here, with the straight lines of Hammurabi’s law code imposed on and yet accommodating the wiggles and curves left in the stone.

Did Botta just... get tired of excavating entire figures?

Ooooh, Orientalism about orientalism!

I’m appreciating that Pazuzu is positioned facing a window, presumably to prevent the entrance of evil influences.

Yeah, we get it, you swiped a stone from Babylon. Chill, Monsieur Lottin de Layal.

Four hours into my Louvre marathon. Took a water break (also consumed: sugar, caffeine, and @believermag).

#mood

Seriously, I could pull off that haircut, right? Then they would let me fondle all the statuettes.

Nice pairing of this studio of David version of the Death of Marat with this Sleeping Endymion, both of whom are all “it’s so hot that I’m dead.”

I only went through Decorative Arts to get to the least crowded bathroom (pro tip!), but look at these freaking adorable 12 Caesars I found there. 💯 would collect them all.

The Louvre has installed a credit card machine in the galleries to help raise funds to buy... this. tousmecenes.fr/en/

There’s no record of this statue from before 1922. Its perfectly preserved coiffure, stretched proportions, and what I’m going to have to call man boobs seem a lot closer to 1922 than ancient Pompeii to me, but what do you think, Romanists of Twitter? @ElizMarlowe @DrKillgrove

That contrast of sculpted and painted foot on Mantagna’s St Sebastian gets me every time. And look at the fig growing through the pile of ruins.

Just noticed how the inlay(?) on the archer’s bow is flaking, but the cordage is wound perfectly taught - must have been what an actual archer’s equipment would have looked like.

Every time I sit in front of The Raft of the Medusa, it’s at least an hour gone of just thinking “wooooooooah” (don’t know how id explain it to a bunch of elementary school students like this lady, though).

It’s such a dommy painting. “Your eye will now follow this diagonal. Now that one. Don’t you dare turn away - there’s a vertical to bring you right back to the center. Now feel the pain of thwarted hope! Feel it!”

And I’m all “Yes, sir, Master Géricault. I’ll sit here, blast some Dirty Projectors on my headphones, and wonder how it’s possible for all these people to just walk past like nothing is happening.”

Dad bod.

Not sure why the provenance is only in French, but is kinda rad to know this Parthenon frieze panel was a “Revolutionary seizure.” And check that rhythm of hands hanging over an eroded flaw in the marble...

I’m nearly to hour eight of Louvre marathon so it might just be me, but... is that supposed to be really styling nipple hair on Poseidon there? Or, like, starfish pasties? Either way I’m into it.

I like when museums just break down and stuff a case full, like, “yep, we’ve got a shit-ton of whatever this is.”

Portrait of me when I get a glass of wine after I leave.

This display reminds me of once asking for directions @metmuseum, and the guard telling me “go down the hall and turn left at the busts -
I mean, at the heads” as if I was going to come storming back, shouting “I didn’t see any tits!”

Caption this.

When your idiot friend keeps talking away when you’re just trying to scroll through your timeline (get it? cause he’s holding a scroll).

Fragments of a late antique porphyry emperor statue “cut into plaques in the 19th century.” Christ, really? You just had to make a 1,500 year old statue into a side table?

(I know that last statue is hard to see, but that’s because the Louvre may be open late, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to turn on the lights...)

Nine hours and I’m calling it, since I just loopily museum-texted* an ex I am definitely not on texting terms with (*when you send a picture of an artwork that looks just like the person you’re sending it to, aka doppelärter). Thanks for reading, friends!