This photo of the East facade of Louvre was taken between 1870 and1913. The picture is mostly different to the pictures we’ve seen in class in its viewing angle. We are looking at the east facade from a two-point perspective, which means we can see the whole facade and the side of the facade. This view indicates how the facade is connected to the whole Louvre complex, and shows the fenced lawn around the facade. In the pictures taken after1960s, we couldn't see the lawn garden anymore; because in 1963 the French Ministerof Culture, Andre Malraux, ordered the construction of the dry moat in front of Perrault’s Colonnade. Thus, what is left now is the balustraded moat.
These balustrades also suggest the path for visitors, and echo the balustrade built along the distinctly non-French flat roof. The Italianate roof line is only broken by the pediment of the central section, of which runs a stately colonnade of doubled, free-standing, fluted Corinthian columns, in the manner of Roman peristyle temple front. The rhythmical couple columns extended to the both wings of the facade, and transmuted into the flat and precisely-cut couple plasters on the end pavilions. This idea of coupled columns on a high podium goes back as far as Bramante.
In this picture, we can see the patterns of light and shade produced by the contrast between the surface of the columns and the recesses of the corridor between them and the rear wall, exhibiting the grand manner of 17th century Classical Baroque in France. The east façade of Louvre is a translation of Roman architecture into French. It is a masterpiece of the resonant and authoritative orderliness that was perhaps the defining aesthetic passion of the age of Louis XIV.
These balustrades also suggest the path for visitors, and echo the balustrade built along the distinctly non-French flat roof. The Italianate roof line is only broken by the pediment of the central section, of which runs a stately colonnade of doubled, free-standing, fluted Corinthian columns, in the manner of Roman peristyle temple front. The rhythmical couple columns extended to the both wings of the facade, and transmuted into the flat and precisely-cut couple plasters on the end pavilions. This idea of coupled columns on a high podium goes back as far as Bramante.
In this picture, we can see the patterns of light and shade produced by the contrast between the surface of the columns and the recesses of the corridor between them and the rear wall, exhibiting the grand manner of 17th century Classical Baroque in France. The east façade of Louvre is a translation of Roman architecture into French. It is a masterpiece of the resonant and authoritative orderliness that was perhaps the defining aesthetic passion of the age of Louis XIV.
