Louvre Italian Masters

• PHOTOS

This in-depth three-hour walk takes place in the Louvre museum's Italian collections in the company of an art historian. The walk will focus on the collections in the Denon Wing, where you will trace the development of Western Art from the Early to the High Renaissance, and through the early stages of the Baroque and Mannerist movements.

Your walk will proceed in an essentially chronological manner, though the approach and focus will vary depending on your own and your docent's points of interest. Making your way into the museum through the Antique Sculpture galleries and past the Winged Victory, you will see examples of the sort of ancient works that Renaissance artists were studying firsthand, before continuing into the Italian wing.

Once in Italian galleries, you will begin with works of the early masters, among them Giotto, Paolo Ucello, and Fra Angelico. As you stroll through the Grand Gallery, past many of the most important masterpieces in Western art, you will begin to under

This in-depth three-hour walk takes place in the Louvre museum's Italian collections in the company of an art historian. The walk will focus on the collections in the Denon Wing, where you will trace the development of Western Art from the Early to the High Renaissance, and through the early stages of the Baroque and Mannerist movements.

Your walk will proceed in an essentially chronological manner, though the approach and focus will vary depending on your own and your docent's points of interest. Making your way into the museum through the Antique Sculpture galleries and past the Winged Victory, you will see examples of the sort of ancient works that Renaissance artists were studying firsthand, before continuing into the Italian wing.

Once in Italian galleries, you will begin with works of the early masters, among them Giotto, Paolo Ucello, and Fra Angelico. As you stroll through the Grand Gallery, past many of the most important masterpieces in Western art, you will begin to understand the aesthetic evolution of the Renaissance, not only as a linear movement, but also as a geographical and cultural phenomenom that grew as regional schools cropped up throughout Italy and eventually spread to the rest of Europe.

Continuing on to the masters of the High Renaissance, including Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian, and Veronese, you will discuss the groundbreaking innovations of artists whose work influenced generations to come. Finally, the walk will conclude with an analysis of some key Mannerist works and the revolutionary contributions of the early Baroque painter Caravaggio and his Bolognese contemporaries of the Counter Reformation.