postcards from paris: Beauty Above All Other Things

Good news, I found a backup home in case anything happens to the Princess Palace. It's called the Musée Jacquemart Andrée, and it is crazy beautiful.

It used to be the home of Édouard André, the heir to a banking fortune, and his painter wife Nélie Jacquemart, whom he met when she painted his portrait. They would travel to Italy often to amass their incredible art collection, not to mention impressive ceiling murals.

Right now they're having a superb exhibit called "Désirs et Volupté" featuring Victorian masterpieces from a single collector, Perez Simon of Mexico, highlighting a period of art cultivated by painters like Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema and Sir Frederic Leighton that was dedicated to aesthetic idealism and, better said, beauty above all things.

And it really lived up to its theme. I nearly died of beauty.

This painting, called "The Roses of Heliogabalus," is breathtakingly, ridiculously gorgeous, and massive - nearly life-sized. Yet its theme is quite sobering - it depicts a Roman emperor who, for fun, suffocated his party guests in rose petals.

(not a bad way to go, if you ask me)

Lawrence Alma-Tadema was said to have had thousands of roses flown in from all around the world to his studio in order to be able to depict the flora in the most realistic, vibrant way possible

The rest of the exhibit was equally beautiful, full of contrasts and sculptural details.

I feel like the painting below is really familiar - maybe my mom had it somewhere in our home or her classroom? Not sure. Either way, I'm sure my mom would have fainted with joy at this exhibit.

Every piece was full of detail, like this woman's delicate veil and jewel-encrusted bodice.

The painting below didn't seem that interesting to me at first, but upon closer inspection, the level of intricate attention paid to every millimeter really blew me away, and kept me looking at it for several minutes. Each feather and fold in the drapery, every line of each nose was held sacred.