This collection is entered by a separate door in the Cour du Louvre,
marked E on Baedeker’s plan. It takes up the development of French
plastic art at the point where the last collection leaves off. It is,
however, of vastly inferior interest, and should only be visited by
those who have time to spare from more important subjects. The decline
which affected French painting after the age of the early Renaissance
had even more disastrous effects in the domain of sculpture. I will not,
therefore, enumerate individual works in these rooms, but will touch
briefly on the characteristics of the various epochs represented in the
various galleries.
The =Salle de Puget= contains sculptures of the age of Louis XIII and
XIV, for the most part theatrical, fly-away, and mannered. They are
grandiose with the grandiosity of the school of Bernini; unreal and
over-draperied. Like contemporary painting, too, they represent official
or governmental art, with a courtier-like tendency to flattery of
monarchy, general and particular. A feeble pomposity, degenerating into
bombast, strikes their keynote. Few works in this room need detain the
visitor.
The =Salle de Coyzevox= continues the series, with numerous
portrait-busts of the celebrities of the age of Louis XIV, mostly
insipid and banal. The decline goes on with accelerated rapidity.
The =Salle des Coustou=, mostly Louis XV, marks the lowest depth of the
degradation of plastic art, here reduced to the level of Palais Royal
trinkets. It represents the worst type of 18th century handicraft, and
hardly contains a single passable statue. Its best works are
counterparts in marble of Boucher and Greuze, but without even the touch
of meretricious art which colour and cleverness add to the craft of
those boudoir artists. Few of them rise to the level of good Dresden
china. The more ambitious lack even that mild distinction.
The =Salle de Houdon=, of the Revolutionary epoch, shows a slight
advance upon the preceding (parallel to the later work of Greuze), and
is interesting from its portrait-busts of American statesmen and French
republican leaders. Some of the ideal works, even, have touches of
grace, and a slightly severer taste begins to make itself apparent. The
classical period is foreshadowed.
The =Salle de Chaudet=, of the First Empire, answers in sculpture to the
School of David in painting. It is cold, dignified, reserved, and
pedantic. It imitates (not always at all successfully) the antique
ideals. The best works in this room are Canova’s; but the intention is
almost always better than the execution. A sense of chilly correctness
distinguishes these blameless academic works from the natural grace and
life of antique Greek sculptors. They lie under the curse which pursues
revivals.
The =Salle de Rude= contains plastic work of the Restoration, the July
Monarchy, and the Second Empire. It answers roughly to the romantic
School of Delaroche in painting. Several of these almost contemporary
works have high merit, though few of them aim at that reposeful
expression which is proper to sculpture. Some, indeed, trench upon the
domain of painting in their eager effort to express passing emotion and
action. Picturesqueness and sensuousness are their prevailing features.
Nevertheless, the room, as a whole, exhibits the character of a real
renaissance, such as it is, from the mediocrity of the last century, and
the bleak propriety of the classical revival. Too many of the works,
however, are aimed at the taste of the Boulevards. They foreshadow that
feeling which makes too much modern sculpture attempt to catch the
public by flinging away everything that is proper to the art. The desire
for novelty is allowed to override the sense of beauty and of just
proportion: repose is lost; dignity and serenity give place to
cleverness of imitation and apt catching at the momentary expression.