The main chronological circuit of French painting begins on the second floor of the Richelieu wing, and continues right round the Cour Carré in the Sully wing. It traces the extraordinary development of French painting from its edgy beginnings through Classical bombast and on to ardent Romanticism, ending with Corot, whose airy landscapes anticipate the Impressionists. Surprisingly few works predate the Renaissance, and the preliminary Richelieu section is chiefly of interest for the portraits of French kings, from the Sienese-style Portrait of John the Good to Jean Fouquet's pinched-looking Charles VII and Jean Clouet's noble François I, who attracted numerous Italian artists to his court. Look out too for the strange atmosphere of the two Schools of Fontainebleau (rooms 9 and 10), which were heavily influenced by Italian Mannerist painting. Two portraits of royal mistresses are provocatively erotic: from the First School of Fontainebleau, Henri II's mistress, Diane de Poitiers, is depicted semi-nude as the huntress Diana, while in a Second School piece, Gabrielle d'Estrées, the favourite of Henri IV, is shown sharing a bath with her sister, pinching her nipple as if plucking a cherry.It's not until Poussin breaks onto the scene, in room 13, that a definitively French style emerges. As the undisputed master of French classicism, his profound themes, taken from antiquity, the bible and mythology, were to influence generations of artists to come. TheArcadian Shepherds, showing four shepherds interpreting the inscription "et in arcadia ego" (I, too, in Arcadia), has been taken to mean that death exists even in pastoral paradise. You'll need a healthy appetite for Classicism in the next suite of rooms, but there are some arresting portraits by Hyacinthe Rigaud, whose Louis XIV shows all the terrifying power of the king, and Philippe de Champaigne, whose portrait of his patron Cardinal Richelieu is even more imposing. The paintings of Georges de la Tour are more idiosyncratic. Card Sharp is compelling for its uneasy poise and strange lack of depth, though his Christ with Joseph in the Carpenter's Shop is a more typical work, mystically lit by a single candle. Moving into the rather less severe eighteenth century, the more intimate paintings of Watteau come as a relief, as do Chardin's intense still lifes – notably The Skate – and the inspired rococo sketches by Fragonard known as the Figures of Fantasy, traditionally thought to have been completed in just one hour. From the southern wing of Sully to the end of this section, the chilly wind of Neoclassicism blows through the paintings of Gros, Gérard, Prud'hon, David and Ingres, contrasting with the more sentimental style that begins with Greuze and continues into the Romanticism of Géricault and Delacroix. Ingres' exquisite portraits were understandably much in demand in his day, but his true predilection was for historical subject matter and the female form, the latter appearing throughout the whole of his career, in his bathers from 1808 and 1828 and in his Turkish Bath, at once sensuous and abstracted. The final set of rooms takes in Milet, Corot and the Barbizon school of painting, the precursor of Impressionism. For anything later you'll have to head over to the Musée d'Orsay.
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