9/19/11

I have found my heaven. :]

Today we got to sleep in a bit and then we met with Canovas in le place de Tarraux. I hadn’t been there before but you can see it from Fourviere. It’s the square with the town hall and the opera house. It is also home to one of the most beautiful fountains in Europe. It was done by the same sculptor who created the statue of liberty. When we came up from the metro the first thing we saw was the opera house. It is a more modern building but you can see inside because the walls are almost all made of glass and the interior was BEAUTIFUL. Think phantom of the opera and how the statues looked and everything. It was so intricate and incredible. Then you walk up a little bit and you get to what Canovas told us is called the most beautiful town hall in France. I believe it. The front façade was so detailed. It had a huge statue of Henry the 4^th on the front on horseback in a roman breast plate to relate him back to the times of the Romans. Around the buildings were large circular bronze medallion type pieces of art depicting all of Henry the 4^th’s posterity, which includes Louis XIII and Louis XIV along with his parents and wife. On top were figures of Greek mythology, Hercules the symbol of strength and Minerva the goddess of wisdom. Canovas said they were put there because the government needs to have both of those things. When I went up to the fountain, I was literally in awe. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. It was so incredibly detailed and beautiful. It was four horses jumping toward you pulling a carriage type things with a woman (I’m not sure who it is supposed to be) and her child. It sounds dull, but look it up. Its incredible. The tension in the horses bodies, you swear they were alive and you could hear them tearing their way out of the water. They even had an effect where mist would come out of their noses like they were really living.

Then Canovas turned us around to a building across from the fountain that was equally as pretty as the others around it. We went into it and it had a large courtyard with beautiful gardens and bronze statues in it. This was the musee des beaux-arts de Lyon. (Lyon’s fine art museum) Canovas explained that it was a nun convent for a very long time until Napoleon decided it should be a museum. He brought back all his painting he took from his conquests and brought them back here, and to Paris. Interesting fact. Napoleon did a lot of bad, but he also did a lot of good. He was a visionary with a passion for art. He was the person who created museums. Art was either in private collector’s homes or in religious buildings until that point. So I for one and extremely happy he did that. Anyways, this museum is the second largest in France after the Louvre. It covers everything from ancient Egyptian art, to the turn of the 19^th century. You can imagine my excitement. Canovas explained the historic content of the building and showed us some of the more prominent paintings then set us loose. It was incredible. I saw 3,000 year old sarcophaguses and artifacts from Egypt, paintings by Poussin and other major French painters, and sat in front of some of Rodin’s most famous sculptures.

I think one of the things that got me the most was I was walking through a gallery full of Lyonaise painters through history. They were all very good. How cool is it to have people that lived in this city hundreds of years ago still influencing the artists here today? I was wandering through the gallery when one caught my eye. I stared at it for a little while, thinking that it couldn’t be what I thought it was. I looked down at the name and gasped, grabbed the other girls and covered the name plate and asked them if the picture looked familiar. They all agreed with me and then I showed them what the title was. The picture was of old roman aqueduct ruins that were tile and red and white and a landscape behind them. The title was simply ‘the roman aqueduct ruins on St. Just.’ I dunno you caught it, but that is where I live. The roman aqueducts are maybe 100 ft from my bedroom. I walk by them every day. The hill I live on is called St. Just. Someone had been sitting where I live now in the 18^th century and had painted the ruins I see everyday. It was surreal to me. The history of this city is intoxicating the more I learn and see. Where else in the world can you just run into a painting hundreds of years old where the artist was sitting where you walk everyday. Just. Wow.

I think my favorite will usually be classical or neoclassical sculpture. Its so incredible to me how detailed and beautiful it is. There was a sculpture by James Pradier called Odalisque that I stared at this girl’s hands for at least 20 minutes. They were so real. The tendons in her fingers that gripped her leg, the muscles in the fingers, her fingernails… I felt like if I were to touch her she would move. I wish I could do that. Being at that museum just made me want to run home and draw all day. It was like my experience at the Getty with aunt Carolyn and Emily. Although I don’t know if anything can compare to the amazing time I had there, this is a so close. It was so eye opening. The courtyard is open all the time and the museum is free to students on certain days. I am going to spend every second I have around that place. In the square next to the fountain, in the courtyard reading, sketching the opera house or the town hall. I loved it so much.

That’s all I really have today. Other than that, I went grocery shopping and now I’m huddled under my blanket (its been rainy and cold all day). Maybe I’ll try to draw something. :D

Bon soiree.