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French Paintings from the Louvre Museum, Paris

From the original Art on Stamps archive

A medieval fortress, the palace of the kings of France, and a museum for the last two centuries, the architecture of the Louvre Palace bears witness to more than 800 years of history.

From the date when, under Louis XIV, most of its occupants left the Louvre, its vocation as a "palace of the arts" appeared a quite natural progression in the eyes of the resident artists and the academies. The idea of a Palace of the Muses or "Muséum", where one could view the royal collections, was born in 1747. The museum concept, which was quite new at the time, ran along the same lines as the Encyclopedia and the philosophy of the Enlightenment. From 1779, purchases and museographical projects demonstrate the imminence of its realization.

Divided into 7 departments, the Louvre collections incorporate works dating from the birth of the great antique civilizations right up to the first half of the 19th century, thereby confirming its encyclopedic vocation.

All stamps on this page were issued in 1993, in order to commemorate the Bicentennial of the Louvre Museum.