Monthly Archives: November 2008

The Louvre

Updated on November 8, 2008 by Amanda McCabe/Laurel McKee

While looking for post topics for today, I found out that today is the anniversary of the opening of the Louvre as a public museum in 1793. Since I visited there on my recent trip (and got hopelessly lost in their majorly twisty corridors, but that’s another story…), I thought it would be fun to find out more about its development from palace to vast museum! (FYI, the Louvre contains more than 380,000 objects, ranging from the 6th century BC to the 19th century, with 35,000 on display in more than 650,000 square feet. It averages 15,000 visitors a day, and employs more than 2000. In 1986, with the completion of the Musee d’Orsay, objects from after 1848 were moved there and the collection was split)

The Louvre started in the 12th century, as a fortress built by Phillipe II. Remnants of the fortress are still visible in below-ground galleries. The building was then extended several times, until in 1674 Louis XIV moved his court to the Palace of Versailles, leaving the Louvre mainly as a place to display some of the royal collections. During the Revolution, the National Assembly decreed the former palace a museum of the people (“a place for bringing together monuments of the arts and sciences”). It opened with an exhibit of 537 paintings, most of them seized from royal and Church property.

The public was given free access three days a week, but the building was closed in 1796 due to “structural deficiencies,” and not re-opened until 1801, with displays now arranged chronologically and organized with new columns and lighting.

Under Napoleon, the collections expanded greatly, thanks to works sent back from Egypt, Spain, Austria, Holland, and Italy. After his defeat at Waterloo, many former owners sought their return, which the Louvre’s administrators were, er, reluctant to comply with. In response, many of the restored foreign powers sent diplomats to seek out these works and secure their return. (An echo of this was seen just before World War II, when, on August 27, 1939, a long truck convoy left Paris taking countless objects and paintings to new hiding spots. By December, the museum was entirely cleared except for items too heavy or “insignificant” to be moved. In 1945, the art came back).

The Louvre is best known for objects such as the Venus de Milo, Nike of Samothrace, the Apollo Belvedere, Michelangelo’s “Slaves” sculptures, David’s Coronation of Napoleon (I stood in front of this for a long time studying the gowns!), Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People, Vermeer’s The Lacemaker, and of course Mona Lisa.

Some good sources to read more about the Louvre are Andrew McClellan’s Inventing the Louvre; Bette Wynn Oliver’s From Royal to National: The Louvre Museum and the Bibliotheque National; and Alain Nave’s Treasures of the Louvre.

What are some of your favorite museums, or works of art? What would you do if you were lost in the Louvre???

And be sure and join us tomorrow, as we discuss the Harlequin Historicals anthology One Candlelit Christmas, just as the holiday season gets started!

(And also don’t forget that the Harlequin Historical Undone stories are only .89 at eharlequin for November!! Check The Good The Bad The Unread for reviews of all 4 stories…)

Fame, Scandal and Our Inquisitive Nature

Updated on November 7, 2008 by megan

Is demum miser est, cuius nobilitas miserias nobilitat.

(Indeed, wretched the man whose fame makes his misfortunes famous.)

Lucius Accius (170 BC – 86 BC)

When did we start getting so fascinated with other people? Is the obsession with famous people one that is only a modern conceit? Well, of course not–people have always been interested in other people, and we know from our own books that scandal, chatter, talk and tittle-tattle can make or break a person’s reputation.

And, according to one researcher, the cult of personality didn’t start in the 19th century, but even before that, in the 18th.

Elizabeth Barry of the University of Warwick in England says the phenomenon of celebrity “can be traced back to the rise of newspapers and magazines and the popularity of obituaries of unusual people, published in what served as the gossip sheets of the era.”

Begging the question, who would write these obituaries? That would probably be a good living for a creative hero or heroine, hm? And deciding which to spotlight, would that prove to be a position of influence?

“Obituaries were one of the most-read sections of newspapers and magazines of the 1700s. They were intended to provide an account of the life of someone who had recently died as a way of illustrating how the life you led would be rewarded or punished in death.

However, the rise in popularity of obituaries actually came because the deceased were regarded as objects of scandal and public fascination — in other words, Great Britain’s first celebrities.

For instance, the Gentleman’s Magazine in 1789 gave an account of the life of Isaac Tarrat, a man known to hire himself out to impersonate a doctor and tell fortunes in a fur cap, a large white beard and a worn damask night gown. Another subject, Peter Marsh of Dublin, was made famous by his convictions about his own death in 1740. After being hit by a mad horse which died soon after, Marsh convinced himself that he would also go mad and die. The Gentleman’s Magazine reported that he duly died “of a conceit that he was mad.”

Are you fascinated with certain celebrities? Which ones? Which of the Regency-era public figures are most interesting to you? Do you like it when those real people end up in our fictional books?

Thanks!

Megan

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Megan | 8 Replies

Living History

Updated on November 6, 2008 by Janet Mullany

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive
But to be young was very heaven!
Wordsworth

We had an election here two days ago and I’m a registered Democrat who voted for Obama/Biden.

I’m thrilled and proud and can’t think of it without tearing up. I voted early in the morning, with a wait in line of over an hour, a great convivial atmosphere, and donuts and coffee sold by our enterprising local Girl Scout troops. Then I parked myself in front of the tv that evening to watch the returns, expecting a long, long night. And there’s this wonderful, breathless, exciting feel that history has been made, and we’re witness to it. Will the election of 2008 be considered by future historians as the great turning point in American history?

Yes, but what has this to do with the Regency?

I’m getting there.

The great turning point for the Regency was the French revolution. Just as we feel now, that history has been made and a new era is beginning, people then might remember where they were when they heard about the fall of the Bastille. The French revolution was the wakeup call of its day, a source of inspiration and hope.

It’s hard to reconcile this with the later terror and despotism, but you have to remember that the revolution was not, in its early days, about beheading aristos. The three colors of the tricoleur included white for the Royal Family of France and red and blue for the city of Paris. It was to be a new age of reason and of liberty, fraternity, and equality.

The year 1788 may be assumed as the epoch of one of the most important crises produced by this feeling. The sympathies connected with that event extended to every bosom. The most generous and amiable natures were those which participated the most extensively in these sympathies.
Shelley

You have to remember that at this time, about one in ten men in England could vote, and the right to vote was based on property ownership. It’s no wonder that the possibilities raised by the the ideals of liberty, fraternity, and equality resonated over the Channel and around the world.

Voting reform was one of the hot issues of the first few decades of the nineteenth century, and the government clamped down severely upon radicalism or attempts to form unions. It wasn’t until 1832 that the Reform Bill expanded voting rights (some) and cleaned up some of the worst abuses of the system. This uninhabited hill, Old Sarum, abandoned in the thirteenth century when the city of Salisbury was built, was a “rotten borough,” represented in Parliament, when the huge new industrial cities like Manchester or Liverpool were hardly represented at all. For more about the Reform Bill, see this entry in Wikipedia.

How do you feel about the election? What was your voting experience like?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 1832 Reform Bill, election, French Revolution, Obama/Biden | 10 Replies

Sharpe News!

Updated on November 5, 2008 by Elena Greene

“He’ll fall in love with anything in a petticoat. I’ve seen his type before. Got the sense of a half-witted sheep when it comes to women.”

This is what Richard Sharpe’s friend, Pat Harper, says about him in SHARPE’S RIFLES, which I recently re-read in my quest to read all the Sharpe series in order. I’ve also just read SHARPE’S HAVOC so according to Bernard Cornwell’s website, the next will be SHARPE’S EAGLE.

Sharpe certainly lacks judgement where women are concerned, but I suppose he can’t help it, since there is always at least one intriguing beauty in each episode. The women in the series are a bit like Bond girls, though. One can’t invest too heavily in their relationships with Sharpe because they inevitably get killed off, betray him or marry someone else to make room for the next one. But some of the film heroines have left an impression on me, among them Teresa, the Spanish guerillera who’s a match for Sharpe’s bravery and toughness; the wily Marquesa from SHARPE’S HONOR; and of course Lucille, with whom he briefly finds happiness.

I was sorry to see Lucille killed off so that the series could continue as Sharpe returns to India. In my earlier post on Sharpe in India I mentioned that I had mixed feelings on the success of translating elements from the book SHARPE’S TIGER (which occurs when Sharpe is a young soldier in India) to SHARPE’S CHALLENGE which is set post-Waterloo. I still found it worth watching.

I’ve just discovered there’s a new Sharpe adventure, Sharpe’s Peril, also set in India, with a new “Sharpe Girls” played by Beatrice Rosen and Nandana Sen. You can learn more about the new episodes at ITV. Part 1 already aired and Part 2 airs on Sunday. Unfortunately you can only watch the videos online if you are in the UK. Boo!

I couldn’t even run the trailer at ITV though I was able to watch one at www.sharpefilm.com. I can’t tell if BBC America plans to run it, so I may have to wait until it hits Netflix. I find it hard to judge a film from its trailer; of course I will have to see it anyway, sooner or later. I can’t miss the chance for a Sharpe fix!