This is my attempt at Andrea del Sarto's Head of a Man in Front View which Michelle and I saw in the Louvre in Paris back in 2001. Although I was blown away by all the usual suspects as expected, one of the things I liked the most about going to the Louvre (hehe! ... "going to the Louvre"! tee hee hee!) was that the most memorable things we saw were obscure and unexpected, like some of the amazingly alive sculpture, da Vinci's Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and this wee del Sarto. This really stuck in my mind because, even although it was drawn in Fifteen Hundred and something, if someone said that it was a sketch of a surfer dude who was down at the beach last friday, it would be totally believable.
One of the other memorable sights that day was Venus de Milo's bottom! I wanted to see the Venus de Milo, but we got pretty lost trying to find her and, when we finally were in the right hall, we caught our first glimpse of her from the back. We didn't realise at first that it was her, because you hardly ever see a picture of her back - only ever of her front and face. It slowly dawned on us, from the very recognisable shape, that it was her and I remember thinking..."wow. nice bottom!"
