A friend has asked me "what artwork moved you the most in the Louvre?" How to summarize centuries and miles of art?
If I could pick anything for now, my theme would be the Madonna and Child.
I really loved all that I saw by Raphael ( the sketch above is from "The Virgin and Child with Saint John the Baptist", but I left out the John figure) (also called "La Belle Jardiniere) and of course, the incredible faces of women by Botticelli.
There were two masterpieces by Leonardo Da Vinci of the Madonna and Child.
"The Virgin, the Child Jesus and Saint Anne" was really dark and sort of weird, and I mean that both literally and figuratively.
Next to it was the even more famous, "The Virgin of the Rocks".
This was so beautiful, I was moved. I wanted to stand and sketch it and give it concentrated attention but it was one of the stops on the official tour guide route. You know what that means, every few minutes, like trains pulling into a busy terminal, a huge group of tourists rushed over to crowd themselves about, listen briefly to a tour guide, snap photos, and stand in front of it to document themselves with this work of art.
