Graphic Design Prof and Painting Prof enjoying the little table in front of the store.
If you like books (and if you're reading a blog called Bookduck I think it's safe to assume you do), you should go there because the inside is a bibliophile's dream:
BOOK HEAVEN.
Ahem.
Signs asking visitors not to take new books to the upstairs library.
Me pretending to read (thoughtfully) in the upstairs library.
I could have spent all day in Shakespeare and Co. I didn't buy any books there (which I regret) but I did buy some French-language children's books at another store. One of them, Il Etait Une Fois. . . (or Once Upon a Time) by Benjamin Lacombe is a gorgeous pop-up book that needs no translation:
Beautiful, n'est pas?
*****
The Louvre is pretty, too. It's the world's biggest art-history-geek playground. See the painting below? We turned a corner and stopped dead in our tracks because we knew it was a painting from the earlier part of the Italian Renaissance by Cimabue, a Florentine painter.
Staci, Me, and Becca in front of Cimabue's The Madonna and Child in Majesty Surrounded by Angels.
Our faces when we found it. (Jaimie, our media major friend, is not sharing in the Cimabue excitement.)
Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People. We couldn't get closer because of the crowd surrounding the artist copying the painting.
La Jeune Martyr or The Young Martyr by Paul Delaroche (Image from the Louvre's official website.) This painting was new to me. It's hauntingly beautiful in person.
This appears to be an installation piece around the medieval walls of the Louvre that are now enclosed in the museum's lower level.
And (last but certainly not least) I found Creepy Uncle!!!
Readers of Stephanie Perkins's blog will remember him from last January's Hot Boys of the Louvre contest. He's not too shabby in person--just a little, um, menacing. And pale, very pale. I was probably near the Mr. Darcy painting but I didn't see it and didn't have time to go looking. I guess this means I just have to go back to Paris?
5 comments:
I love, LOVE that you found Creepy Uncle! And that is one of the best book trailers I've ever seen. It made me want to spend some serious time looking at the real thing.
And I loved finding him! Also, the pop-up book is gorgeous in person...that's why it had to come home with me.
I am taking an Art History class and we just studied some of Cimabue's work. That is really cool that you actually got to see it in person!
How exciting :) It was cool to see his work in person. What's even cooler, though, is we didn't study that painting but his style is so recognizable that we didn't need to read the nameplate. Art History makes museums lots and lots of fun.
AHHHH!!! Creepy Uncle! YESSS!
This makes me so so SO happy. :) Thanks for saying hi to him and taking his picture!
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