Had a couple hours to kill and rain to take shelter from, yesterday in the afternoon... So stepped in for a stroll...

La martyre (second one above) used to be my favorite painting there... Somehow always made me think of Shakespeare's Ophelia (she is not)...

I had never noticed this small portrait by Guérin before, but was entranced... Behind an apparent demureness, the model's pose is incredibly erotic for paintings of the time, and of course, there is the awesome pixie hairdo that gives the ensemble an odd feeling of modernity... It hung just opposite one of the more remarkable painting in this particular room (also, as I only realised yesterday, one of the very few, if not only, painting by a female artist in that entire section).

A couple rooms in the back of the French 19th Century painters gallery were closed, as they now seem to be on every Sundays ("not enough personnel", wtf?)... So I didn't get to see any Ingres, except for a lone Odalisque, hung separately in the main Denon gallery. Anyway, the crush of my high school years has been moved back to Musée d'Orsay already.

By the way, I had to sneak those phone pics away, as it is officially forbidden now to take any picture (regardless of flash use) in certain areas of the Louvre. Which is total bullshit, but we'll leave that rant for another day.

I think if there is one thing I might one day miss about my time here, it is living a couple minutes walk away from that museum.