A richly detailed journey through a palimpsest of the past.
The evolution of the Louvre reflects the political, intellectual, and aesthetic history of France.
“Before the Louvre was a museum,” writes art and literary critic Gardner (Buenos Aires: The Biography of a City, 2015, etc.), “it was a palace, and before that a fortress, and before that a plot of earth, much like any other.” Drawing on scholarly sources that include the recently published three-volume Histoire du Louvre, the author offers a vivid chronicle of strife, wars, rivalries, and aspirations culminating in the present grand architectural complex, comprising nearly 400,000 objects, “a vast, indiscriminate cocktail of princely collections purchased or purloined over the course of centuries.” Gardner focuses on several of France’s rulers whose embrace of the arts shaped the future of the museum—e.g., Francois I, who brought the Italian Renaissance across the Alps as a patron and collector of works by Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian, and Leonardo, whom he lured from Italy. When Leonardo arrived in 1516, he had in his trunks three paintings, including the Mona Lisa, which has become the Louvre’s most coveted attraction. In addition to collecting art, Francois took up the challenge of modernizing the royal residence, beginning “the 350-year process that would result in the Louvre as we know it today.” The 17th-century monarch Louis XIII, though not particularly interested in art or architecture, assigned the renowned architect Jacques Lemercier to enact significant changes. As far as the art collection itself, Louis XIV, with “an unappeasable appetite for masterpieces,” filled the Louvre with priceless treasures as well as quadrupling its size. But when Louis decided to move the court to Versailles in 1682, the Louvre fell into disrepair. After the American Revolution, repayment of the Colonies’ debt to France funded considerable repair and reconstruction. A small portion of the palace opened as a public museum—the Musée Central des Arts—only in 1793, in the midst of the Reign of Terror. Gardner cites Napoleon III, who ruled France from 1848 to 1870, as decisive in transforming the Louvre into its modern iteration.
A richly detailed journey through a palimpsest of the past.Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8021-4877-3
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
The grand sweep of American history is writ small in this family history/memoir by humorist Frazier (Great Plains, 1989, etc.). Frazier undertook this effort after his parents died in the late 1980s, to ``find a meaning that would defeat death.'' But his project seems more complicated and self-conscious, if not pretentious: an attempt to somehow reclaim American history for himself, a white Protestant. His preoccupation with his own religious doubt, contrasted with the firm faith of his ancestors- -whether German Reformed, Old School Presbyterian, or, like his great-great-grandfather Simeon Frazier, a member of the antiauthoritarian Disciples of Christ—culminates in a strange, reductionist review of American history as an expression of the decline of Protestant faith. More broadly, Frazier shares indiscriminately with us every detail he has been able to root out: from the momentous (the arrival of Thomas Benedict on these shores in 1638 and his descendant Platt Benedict's founding of Norwalk, Ohio) to the trivial (his great-great-uncle Charles's first attempt at fly-fishing and his grandmother's showing family pictures to Tennessee Williams in Key West). The quantity of information that could have rendered full-blooded portraits of long-ago generations is lacking; the lengthy catalogs often offered (trite entries from a great-grandfather's school diary, quotations from his parents' rather ordinary love letters) seem like fillers. The histories of the Fraziers, Wickhams, Benedicts, and Hurshes do follow the outlines of American history: the push west (all his relatives ended up in Ohio); the Civil War (Norwalk was a stop on the underground railroad); industrialization (his father became a chemist for Sohio). But Frazier's prose is flat as a prairie and his humor dry as stone. Only at the end, in interviews with two colorful relatives, and with the description of the deaths of his teenage brother Fritz from leukemia and of his parents, does the tale reach emotional heights. An object lesson in the pitfalls of writing a family history for anyone other than your family. (First printing of 50,000; $50,000 ad/promo; author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1994
ISBN: 0-374-15319-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1994
Imagine a collaboration between Arnold Toynbee and R. Crumb and you get a pretty good idea of Gonick's clever and ambitious comic book series. This volume should not be taken as some kind of Mel Brooksish joke. Gonick does his research and interprets his sources with scholarly care. Inspired by the educational comic books of Latin American artist RIUS, Gonick makes world history a blast— literally, with his predilection for onomatopoeic word balloons. In this second collection—the last left us with Alexander the Great schlepping toward Persia—Gonick takes us on a side tour through India and China. He integrates myth and history to establish the origins of sectarian conflict in India, and attends to migration patterns from the Middle East to China in order to explain the development of Buddhism and Confucianism. Dynamic intrigue and the threat of northern barbarians compete with periods of prolonged peace. This highly selective version of Chinese history, though full of diverting stories, will be a bit confusing to readers unfamiliar with the main players. Back in Rome, meanwhile, after the death of Alexander, the republic enters its period of glory, followed by the building of the empire. Problems of succession lead to lots of lurid anecdotes about perverse and insatiable emperors, violent entertainments, brutal conquests—all of which Gonick records with Mad-like irreverence. He equivocates, however, in telling the story of Jesus, ending up with an uneasy mix of canonical fact and outright heresy. His account of the historical rise of Christianity is superb and demonstrates an interesting parallel with China: In both cases alien cults from the edge of the empires eventually captured the capital cities. Gonick's humor is mostly visual and relies on the juxtaposition of comical images with his relatively sober text. Despite his lefty, multi-culty inclinations, Gonick maintains the high level of sophistication, skepticism, and just plain fun established by the first volume.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-385-42093-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1994
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