Bahar Baradaran’s Reviews > The Louvre: A Guide to Art > Status Update

Elegantly shaped pen box in the name of Shah Abbas:
Its intricate decoration includes an inscription that highlights the link between writing and thought, virtue and the proper use of power. It belonged to the jeweler Louis Cartier: an illustration of how artists and artisans in the 19th and early 20th centuries took inspiration from Persian and Eastern arts.

The two [Greeks and Persians] were opposed not just in battle. The opportunity to view Greek and Persian masterpieces from the same period at the Louvre reveals differences in the two civilizations' conception of beauty.

Writing is the painting of the voice; the closer the resemblance, the better it is.
Voltaire, 1764

Clay is a noble material with symbolic importance, as it was the material the god Enki*used to create humankind. Thus, writing is as much a spiritual creation as a physical one.

*god of Sumer

In times of peace as in times of war, history has been written by the connections between peoples and civilizations. In its ambition to be a universal museum, in its determination to remain a window onto the world, the Louvre is a book whose pages are continually rewritten, a place to discover and rediscover, finding new enjoyment each time.