25-529: The Louvre-Lens is an art museum located in Lens , France , approximately 200 kilometers north of Paris . It displays objects from the collections of the Musée du Louvre that are lent to the gallery on a medium- or long-term basis. The Louvre-Lens annex is part of an effort to provide access to French cultural institutions for people who live outside of Paris. Though the museum maintains close institutional links with
50-639: A cafeteria, bookstore and museum boutique. To the east of the entry hall is the 3,000 m (32,000 sq ft) Galerie du Temps which houses approximately 200 items from the Paris Louvre collection. The items in the large, open hall are arranged chronologically, from 3,500 BC to the mid-19th century, regardless of style or country of origin. Beyond the Galerie du Temps is the Pavillon de Verre which exhibits works from neighboring museums. The building to
75-402: A horse's head", which had a resemblance to sketches of horses that Leonardo had made previously before drawing The Battle of Anghiari . Also revealed was a second sketch 6 1 ⁄ 2 inch–by–4 inch depiction of half a skull. A third sketch showed the infant Jesus playing with a lamb, which sketch was similar to that which is painted on the front side. The Louvre spokesperson said that
100-564: Is worth noting that in both versions of the composition (the Louvre painting and the London cartoon) it is hard to discern whether Saint Anne is a full generation older than Mary. On 7 October 2011 Le Journal des arts [ fr ] , a Paris art publication, reported that the restoration posed more danger to the painting than was previously expected. In late December 2011 and early January 2012 reports emerged that Ségolène Bergeon Langle,
125-604: The Canadian National Vimy Memorial in Vimy , approximately 15 minutes from the Louvre-Lens. The museum is built on a 20-hectare (49-acre) mining site that closed in the 1960s. The area is slightly elevated due to filling in of the mine. To make the building blend into the surrounding area, the architects designed a string of five low-profile structures; the central one is square with glass walls and
150-622: The Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus . Christ is shown grappling with a sacrificial lamb symbolizing his Passion as the Virgin tries to restrain him. The painting was commissioned as the high altarpiece for the Church of Santissima Annunziata in Florence and its theme had long preoccupied Leonardo. It is likely that the painting was commissioned by King Louis XII of France following
175-593: The French national average. "France abandoned us when the coal stopped, and we became a ghost town ", said Pas-de-Calais president Daniel Percheron . Officials took inspiration from the economic transformation of the Spanish industrial city of Bilbao , which was caused, in part, by the construction of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao satellite (dubbed the "Bilbao effect" , though some cautioned that
200-647: The Louvre, it is primarily funded by the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region. The Ministry of Culture and the Louvre Directorate launched a plan, in 2003, to build a Louvre satellite museum in one of the 22 Regions of France . Only the Nord pas de Calais applied for the museum and proposed six cities: Lille , Lens , Valenciennes , Calais , Béthune and Boulogne-sur-Mer . In 2004, Jean-Pierre Raffarin , then French Prime Minister , announced Lens as
225-488: The Minister of Culture Aurélie Filippetti , the director of Le Louvre Henri Loyrette , the mayor of Lens Guy Delcourt , and former prime ministers Lionel Jospin and Pierre Mauroy officially opened the Louvre-Lens. The following weekend, the museum welcomed its first visitors; three weeks after the opening, the museum welcomed its 100,000th visitor. In May 2013, during Long Night of Museums 2013 , 500,000 visitors viewed
250-467: The Virgin Mary clearly interacting with the infant Jesus. Upon closer examination of their positioning it is apparent that Mary is sitting on Saint Anne's lap. It is unclear what meaning this could have and what meaning Leonardo intended to project with that pose. There is no clear parallel in other works of art and women sitting in each other's lap are not a clear cultural or traditional reference that
275-535: The Virgin's garment reveals a vulture when viewed sideways. Freud claimed that this was a manifestation of a "passive homosexual" childhood fantasy that Leonardo wrote about in the Codex Atlanticus , in which he recounts being attacked as an infant in his crib by the tail of a vulture. Freud translated the passage thus: "It seems that I was always destined to be so deeply concerned with vultures – for I recall as one of my very earliest memories that while I
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#1732791004489300-582: The Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below. Request from 172.68.168.236 via cp1112 cp1112, Varnish XID 974956636 Upstream caches: cp1112 int Error: 429, Too Many Requests at Thu, 28 Nov 2024 10:50:04 GMT The Virgin and Child with St. Anne (Leonardo) The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne is an unfinished oil painting by High Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci , dated to c. 1501–1519 . It depicts Saint Anne , her daughter
325-531: The birth of his daughter in 1499, but it was never delivered to him. Leonardo probed into incorporating these figures together by drawing the Burlington House Cartoon (National Gallery). In 2008, a curator at the Louvre discovered several faint sketches believed to have been made by Leonardo on the back of the painting. Infrared reflectography was used to reveal a "7–by–4 inch drawing of
350-399: The comparison is limited due to the much smaller population of Lens, and its lack of other tourist attractions.) Some Lens locals were critical of the project; they felt that the project to bring culture to their city was "patronizing". Other critics pointed out that the museum makes no attempt to address Lens's turbulent history or its current economic difficulties. A worldwide design contest
375-440: The former director of conservation for the Louvre and France's national museums, and Jean-Pierre Cuzin, the former director of paintings at the Louvre, both of the advisory committee supervising the painting's restoration, had resigned over a painting cleaning controversy, with critics claiming that the painting has been damaged by being cleaned so it became brighter than the artist ever intended. Other experts spoke out in favour of
400-522: The greater age of Saint Anne that would otherwise identify her as the mother. The child is holding a lamb. We also see that Mary is gazing into her child's eyes, while Saint Anne is looking at Mary. As Mary is sitting on her lap and Saint Anne is looking at her, it is possible that Leonardo was trying to make a point about their relationship and personalities. Sigmund Freud undertook a psychoanalytic examination of Leonardo in his 1910 essay Leonardo da Vinci, A Memory of His Childhood . According to Freud,
425-669: The masterpieces displayed in the Louvre-Lens Museum. While 700,000 visitors were anticipated for the first year (while admission was free), the year's final tally was approximately 900,000. On Feb 7 2013, a woman vandalized a major masterpiece of the museum, Liberty Leading the People , writing "AE911" on it with a black marker, possibly a reference to a group calling itself " Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth ". The painting has been fully restored. Lens, Pas-de-Calais Too Many Requests If you report this error to
450-431: The others are rectangular with polished, aluminum facades that gave a blurry reflection of the surroundings. Altogether, the museum is 360 m (1,180 ft) long and contains 28,000 m (300,000 sq ft) of exhibition space. The design of a central building flanked by two wings mimics the Paris Louvre. The square, central building is the main reception area. It contains several curved glass rooms that contain
475-652: The recipient city. The museum site was chosen in hopes of reversing the fortunes of the depressed Lens mining community, which was devastated by both World Wars and the Nazi occupation , and suffered multiple mining catastrophes including the Courrières mine disaster , the worst in European history, and a 1974 tragedy killing 42 miners. The last mine in Lens closed in 1986, which caused the unemployment rate to rise well above
500-403: The sketches were "very probably" made by Leonardo and that it was the first time that any drawing had been found on the "flip side of one of his works". The drawings will be further studied by a group of experts as the painting undergoes restoration. Leonardo's painting is at once both pleasing, calm yet confusing upon closer examination. The composition of the three figures is fairly tight, with
525-545: The theory by incorporating the kite. Another theory proposed by Freud attempts to explain Leonardo's fondness of depicting the Virgin Mary with Saint Anne. Leonardo was raised by his blood mother initially before being "adopted" by the wife of his father Ser Piero. The idea of depicting the Mother of God with her own mother was therefore particularly close to Leonardo's heart, because he, in a sense, had "two mothers" himself. It
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#1732791004489550-467: The viewer can relate to. Additionally, although the exact sizes of neither the Mother Virgin nor Saint Anne are known, it can be extrapolated from the painting that Saint Anne is a significantly larger person than Mary. This subtle yet perceptible distortion in size was utilized by Leonardo to emphasize the mother–daughter relationship between the two women despite the apparent lack of visual cues to
575-596: The west of the entry hall is a gallery for temporary exhibits (the Exhibitions Temporaires) and, beyond that, an auditorium. The Exhibitions Temporaires is dedicated to exhibits which last 3 months. The first exhibition, titled Renaissance , included Leonardo da Vinci's recently restored The Virgin and Child with St. Anne . The second exhibit, Rubens' Europe , was dedicated to Rubens and included 170 of his works. On Dec 4, 2012, President François Hollande , alongside first lady Valérie Trierweiler ,
600-669: Was in my cradle a vulture came down to me, and opened my mouth with its tail, and struck me many times with its tail against my lips." Unfortunately for Freud, the word 'vulture' was a mistranslation by the German translator of the Codex and the bird that Leonardo imagined was in fact a kite , a bird of prey which is also occasionally a scavenger . This disappointed Freud because, as he confessed to Lou Andreas-Salomé , he regarded Leonardo as "the only beautiful thing I have ever written". Some Freudian scholars have, however, made attempts to repair
625-502: Was won by Japanese architectural firm SANAA in collaboration with New York firm Imrey Culbert, French landscape architect Catherine Mosbach, and museographer Studio Adrien Gardère. The Louvre-Lens Museum, SANAA + Imrey Culbert's first building in France, was awarded the Prix d'architecture de l'Equerre d'Argent for 2013. The Louvre-Lens is near several World War memorials , including
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