I'll have to count but I think I went to the Louvre seven times; and twice, I rented the 5 euro audio guide, which added so much to my visits. A few things from the audio guide were either new to me or caught my attention one more time.* I’m still impressed with Napoleon’s stables that he built and used for his horses in the Louvre. Every time I entered that room (from the up escalator in the Denon Wing), my eyes immediately rose above so many beautiful sculptures to what I consider the real “beauty” in those stables, the original ceiling.
* Ingres’ painting, La Grande Odalisque, is the museum’s most famous nude. (An odalisque was a virgin slave who could become a concubine or wife.) Rick Steves compares her to the “Venus de Milo” with a few more vertebra reclining on a divan.* Because of the thin veil that the “Mona Lisa” is wearing (how did I never notice that?), the mystery of her smile may be explained by the fact that she was mourning the death of her four-year-old child. 
* Gericault’s painting, “The Raft of the Medusa,” is a depiction of the actual shipwreck off the coast of Senegal of the French ship, Medusa. The raft had about 149-150 people aboard but when it was found two weeks later, only 15 had survived. The painting shocked the Paris Salon for two reasons: it brought up the taboo subject of cannibalism and Gericault made sketches of bodies that he visited in the morgue for the painting.
* Paolo Veronese’s painting, “The Marriage at Cana,” is the largest painting in the Louvre. And it sits in the same room as the “Mona Lisa.” The two look at each other across a huge but very crowded room. 
* The original fiery, raring Marly horses being restrained by naked grooms stood for almost 100 years (1795-1884) at the entry of the Champs-Elysees in the soon-to-be-renamed place de la Concorde until the Louvre offered them protection from the weather and pollution. 
Now concrete copies with skins of powdered marble stand in their place; and the horses and other statuary from King Louis XV’s “hunting lodge” at Marly are displayed in the Louvre’s Marly Courtyard. The horses symbolized Europe and America and the unrestrained power of nature. The artist, Guillaume Coustou, used living models to make his sculptures so realistic. He was the nephew of Antoine Coysevox, who sculpted the horses, Fame and Mercury, for Louis XIV (also for Marly) and which are now in the Louvre, too. Copies of Fame and Mercury are in the Tuileries Gardens overlooking the place de la Concorde opposite the copies of the Marly Horses. 
Now concrete copies with skins of powdered marble stand in their place; and the horses and other statuary from King Louis XV’s “hunting lodge” at Marly are displayed in the Louvre’s Marly Courtyard. The horses symbolized Europe and America and the unrestrained power of nature. The artist, Guillaume Coustou, used living models to make his sculptures so realistic. He was the nephew of Antoine Coysevox, who sculpted the horses, Fame and Mercury, for Louis XIV (also for Marly) and which are now in the Louvre, too. Copies of Fame and Mercury are in the Tuileries Gardens overlooking the place de la Concorde opposite the copies of the Marly Horses. 
* Jacques-Louis David, Napoleon Bonaparte’s painter-in-chief, took three years to paint “The Coronation of Napoleon” after the event took place in Notre-Dame in 1804. There were about 200 people in the painting and most were character paintings. To insure legitimacy to the crowning, Napoleon insisted that his mother be painted into the picture—even though she didn’t attend because she didn’t approve of him crowning himself emperor.
