Petit Palais
I can’t quite get enough of art museums, though I freely admit that the Louvre, Orsay, and Orangerie were all superior to the Petit Palais. The collection is fairly small, and though everything is beautiful, nothing was new or notable enough to stick. The façade of the building is lovely, and within an enclosed space resides a lovely garden of green and white, sealed off when I went due to the cold. One hall of the Palais was full of vases, of all different colors, styles, and materials, while the next held sculptures and paintings. Below, past a winding staircase, was a hallway of fascinating medieval pieces, some colors fading, gold flaking from the halos. At the end of the hall was a vast room of ancient artifacts, such as vases from ancient Greece. Other halls held the works of French artists, such as Ingres and Delacroix.
At the foot of a staircase leading to a temporary exhibit by a contemporary Japanese painter sat the most intriguing work of all, a sculpture I saw again at the Musée d’Orsay of a starving man, his face contorted with horror, his children pleading with him not to eat them.
K.B.
