Museum Masterpieces: The Louvre

by Richard Brettell

74 pages, Unknown Binding

Reviews

[Yaaresse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps I should have read the description for this Great Course more closely. I thought the course would have much more information about the Louvre itself -- the facility, the history, how the collections were assembled or curated, etc. Instead, it is tightly focused on items in the Department of Paintings, and of those it focuses mostly on French works. The lecturer spends most of the time describing the works in a literal way rather than discussing technique or context. Many of these works have been covered in other, more recent, Great Courses, and the more recent offerings have much better quality production values simply because the technology for recording these lectures has improved over the years. The one positive to this GC over some of the other art history ones is that the lecturer does cover some of the lesser known French artists and works. There's not really a pattern to why he choose these particular lesser-known artists except that he personally favors them.