With the focus on architecture finished, for now, and a quick glimpse of sculptures before that, I am ready to move into paintings. Though I’m unfamiliar with all the historical styles of Western paintings, I know enough that I like the more modern impressionistic artists. The pre-renaissance religious art holds very little interest. These painting styles fall somewhere in between.

Beyond the subject of the artwork, what impressed me was the scale of these paintings — they are gigantic. Perfectly sized to fill up a former royal palace and the Texas suburban McMansion. This section of the Louvre seems older and more traditional, and I see how it might have transitioned from a royal display of artwork into a public space. The tall walls are packed with art — seeming designed to overwhelm — instead of the subtle minimalist zen approach.

If you think the previous piece was large, take a look at this one — use the height of the visitors as a reference. The painting’s height is more than two people’s length, which means at least 10 feet tall.

These paintings were created before television, of course, and even movies. Is this the rich person’s equivalent of those technologies — visual storytelling on a grand scale? Many of the paintings were of heroic or tragic depictions, which might have been the catalyst for epic stories in an age before moving pictures.

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