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The Louvre is a replete with history, and is sits imposingly along the banks of the Seine.  Its size is overwhelming, inside and out, as is the name.  Walking around the south end of the structure to the glass pyramid that is the entrance, one can’t decide whether to say “Loov” or “Loov-ra.”  Walking down to a well-lit, and surprisingly uncrowded atrium, I purchased tickets for my wife and three kids, and found that there were pictorial directions to the most famous works of art.  It’s impossible to miss Winged Victory at the top of the main set of stairs, although what is so victorious about being armless and decapitated is beyond me.

I have a confession to make, although I suspect I’m not the first.  The museum is so very large, and knowing that one can easily spend days there and not begin to see all of it, we quickly determined to see how long it would take to find and see the Mona Lisa and then gauge our collective energy level to see if we wanted more.  I had last been to the Louvre when I was about sixteen, and I mostly remember it sheer size.  Toting around three kids quickly makes a parent aware that a child’s attention reserved for museums can be limited, yes, even when it is the Louvre in Paris.  So off we trudged, moving fairly well through the manageable crowd, looking for the intermittent little Mona Lisa logos on the wall with arrows pointing the direction, like the treasure hunts of my own youth.  We knew we were getting close as the logos became more frequent, and I tried not to feel too guilty as we breezed past priceless Rembrandt’s and Rubens, telling myself we’d be back someday.  We turned a corner, having navigated through a large portion of the museum toward our goal, when we came smack against a long gallery filled with people who were inching through a tangle of roped walkways reminiscent of the security area of any airport.  So this is where everyone was hiding — at the same place we were.  I’d never felt like such a tourist.

It was a blessing of sorts.  It gave me a chance, as we crawled toward Leonardo’s meisterwerk, to explain what little I remembered of a university art course about Botticelli, El Greco and Rafael.  We had to be careful, though.  If we weren’t constantly attentive as we looked at other works on the wall of the gallery, people and sometimes entire tour groups would attempt (sometimes successfully) to squirt past us in line.  Eventually we turned a corner and there, on the wall to the right, was the most famous smiling countenance in the world.  I was shocked by the small size of the painting, particularly since it commanded the entire wall.  There was a crowd of people, not unlike on the main floor of a rock concert, pushing up to the retaining rope to gaze at the Mona Lisa.  Slowly, those at the front would turn away and make room for the next rush to the front.  We, at long last, found our way to the rope and spent our time admiring Leonardo da Vinci’s work.

When we made our way out of the room, and not a little relieved to escape a mild feeling of claustrophobia, we asked the kids what they thought.  They asked, “Why is it so famous?”  Why, indeed?  One could give a dozen reasons to assure the tots of the painting’s place in the pantheon of enduring art, from the legend of the painting’s feminine subject, to the journeys the painting has made, illicitly and otherwise, around the world.  For our brood, though, it was one very nice painting in the midst of a very big building full of very nice paintings.  So why the hoo-ha over one more than another?  Luckily, I didn’t have to grapple with the question too hard, because as I was leading us out I became hopelessly lost in the Egyptian exhibit, and soon had the whole family occupied with the prospect of spending the night in the Louvre.  After an embarrassing amount of time, I broke the ancient man-code and asked – forgive me – a young lady in uniform for directions out of the building.  After several turns through a few more galleries, we found ourselves back in front of the same young lady who, with a healthy dash of exasperation, personally led us to the exit.  I prefer to recall the afternoon as the one we saw the Mona Lisa and lingered over the relics of ancient Egypt.  After so many exquisite paintings, it becomes as looking at the myriad constellations, but one can never see too many sarcophagi.

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