Treasures of the Louvre Page #3

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of the French classical tradition.

You can see its expression in the

four sculptures by Jean Goujon,

which give the room its name.

These are the four caryatides.

They have a function as pillars,

but they are also

works of art in themselves -

beautifully sculpted forms,

every curve and fold capturing

a fleshy allure.

And they stand sentinel to an

elegant stairway that reveals to us

yet another treasure of the Louvre.

If we look around here, we see

images also sculpted by Jean Goujon.

And they give us pointers to the man

who commissioned this

passageway, between the first

and second floors of the palace.

He and his mistress have a

love of hunting.

And here, look at this letter H.

That's a royal monogram, a kind

of graffiti tag chiselled in stone.

And H stands for Henri II,

who succeeded Francois II.

Both within and without, every ruler

who wanted to use the Louvre

as a symbol of their power would

leave their mark in this way.

So, the walls read like an alphabet

designed for posterity.

The Renaissance Louvre

was a place of great culture

but it was also

the location for great violence

during the infamous

Saint Bartholomew's Eve massacre.

When religious war between

Catholics

and Huguenot Protestants threatened

to tear France apart,

the palace was witness to great

horror that began with

that most familiar of sounds from

the nearby church of

Saint Germain L'Auxerrois.

In the early hours

of the 24th of August 1572,

the sound of monks tolling

the bell for Matins could be

heard as usual throughout

the streets of Paris.

But this particular morning,

this normally reassuring sound was

the cue for slaughter to begin,

of Protestants by Catholics.

"Tuez-les tous!" was the battle

cry. "Kill them all!"

Writer on the Louvre, Daniel

Soulier, told me about the moment

the very heart of power in France

became a killing field.

SPEAKS FRENCH:

TRANSLATION:
'These windows were the

Queen's rooms.

'So all the key decisions surrounding

the Saint Bartholomew massacre

'would have taken place just

metres above where we are now sat.

'We know that many people were killed

here in the courtyards of the Louvre.

'They were slightly hesitant

to kill people

'in the actual royal apartments,

so we imagine that they

'dragged a lot of people out

here in order to kill them.

'There is another story

that people tell.

'The King at the time, Charles IX,

'sat in a balcony window

with a crossbow,

'firing down upon Huguenots who were

trying to escape on the River Seine.'

There was a survivor of this

terrible day in the Louvre,

a Huguenot prince of the blood,

Henri of Navarre.

Days before the massacre,

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