The majority of visitors to the Louvre dedicate their time to the Painting Section which holds over 8,000 paintings. One cannot leave without having seen such famous works as the Mona Lisa and Napoleon Crowning Josephine. Visitors are also enchanted by the beauty of works by Chardin, Rubens, Fra' Angelico, Rembrandt, Quentin Metsys, El Greco, Poussin, and Corot. They go out of their way to admire the canvases of Le Brun, Titian, Veronese, Vermeer, David, Ingres, Delacroix and come back to see the masterpieces of Leonardo and Raphael.
Lesser known, but still extraordinary, are works, such as Greek paintings, Mesopotamian paintings, paintings from Dura-Europas, works in glass and gold, boiseries, Egyptian antiquities, medieval paintings on parchment by Fouquet and the pastels that are too delicate to be placed on permanent display, such as those by Maurice Quentin de Latour. 1001 Paintings at the Louvre displays these works through a splendid panorama of painting history. This lavish gallery of paintings chosen to please and teach was photographed by one of the most celebrated art photographers of our time, Erich Lessing. Introductory texts and descriptive captions accompany these beautiful reproductions, spanning 4,000 years of painting history.
Vincent Pomarède is a head of the Paintings department at the Louvre Museum