Sunday, April 8, 2012

(MARTI’S) EASTER SUNDAY.

Today Marti and I attended the Easter service at her church, the American Cathedral. (My Easter – the Greek Orthodox Resurrection service – is next Saturday night.) The Cathedral was packed out. 95-year-old actress Olivia de Havilland (at lectern, lower left) read The First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians 15:1-11.


Marti donated to the Easter flowers fund in memory of our moms.


After church we enjoyed Easter lunch nearby at the Grand Corona in the Place de l’Alma.


Also at Alma: a nutty new boutique: La Pistacherie. An entire shop devoted to pistachios! Ya gotta love this town.


Because I’m a self-destructive claustrophobe, we decided to cab over to The Big Museum. Fortunately, our Friends Of The Louvre memberships allowed us to jump the long line and enter for free.


Marti and I shoehorned into the throngs of visually-fatigued tourists, made a swath through the Italian paintings in the Denon wing. We checked in with our favorites by Caravaggio and his followers and rivals: Orazio Gentileschi, Annibale Carracci and Guido Reni.


I always pay a visit to my fantasy mistress, Dona Isabel de Requesens, Lady Viceroy of Naples, a fashionista depicted by Raphael in 1518.


Our ultimate destination was the Spanish gallery containing four newly acquired copper engraving plates from Francisco de Goya’s Disparates series (1815-1823).


Many years ago a business colleague of mine, knowing Marti’s love of Goya, gave us an original engraving of Disparate No. 13 (Modo de volar).


The Louvre’s purchase of the engraving plates currently on exhibition was made possible via membership funds, so Marti and I have a proprietary interest. Shown here: the plate for Disparate No. 21 (Disparate de bestia) and its print.


En route to the museum exit your humble correspondent strikes a pose with Michelangelo’s Dying Slave (1513–1516). Humility aside, mine is bigger.


It was time for a café break. Marti and I dropped by the luxe Defender Bar at the Hotel du Louvre for a libation before returning home to 85 rue Blomet.

Across the street from the No. 39 bus stop: the classiest buskers in Paris.


Mozart – Symphony No. 27 in G I. Allegro
Classique Metropolitain

April 8, 2012
Place Colette
Paris, France

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