Get the latest tech news

The Ecstatic Swoon

As Stendhal knew, the reason for art is to make you feel. Do not try to grasp the artwork: allow it to grasp you instead

By the time these legions of culture warriors finally reached the end of the 1,500-foot-long Grand Gallery, punctuated by nine bays whose walls were plastered with paintings from Flemish, Dutch, French and Italian painters, and whose floors sagged from sculptures like the Apollo Belvedere and Laocoön and his Sons, they could barely walk: Not surprisingly, Beyle rebelled against the crushing abundance of paintings at the Louvre, and instead believed its holdings would be better distributed among dozens of smaller museums where people might stop and engage deeply with these great works of art rather than glance at them over their shoulders as they passed at a slow walking pace. As Beyle notes, he had to travel to Dresden, where the painting had gone, to see this example of ‘the rarest shades of emotion, which lie forever beyond the range and scope of poetry.’ He stood in front of the tableau, transfixed by both the technical brilliance of Correggio’s subtle use of chiaroscuro but also deeply moved by this depiction of a mother and child, bathed in a golden light – it left him wordless.

Get the Android app