The Musée du Louvre in Paris stands as the world's largest and most visited museum, with nearly 18 acres of gallery space, more than eight miles of corridors, and annual attendance approaching nine million visitors. As France's most important cultural heritage site, the Louvre represents the nation's dominant cultural influence in the Western world over much of the past millennium.
Recent months have brought unprecedented challenges to the iconic institution. Last month, thieves broke into the magnificent Galerie d'Apollon in broad daylight and stole nearly 90 million euros worth of France's Crown Jewels, generating what can only be described as the worst publicity any major museum has received in recent memory. The robbery created a museological crisis for the Louvre and sparked a full-blown institutional crisis for France.
This embarrassing incident caps decades of mounting dissatisfaction with the museum. The Louvre began taking on its current, unwieldy form during the 1980s, and long before the humiliation of the recent robbery, it had become a steady source of doubt, complaints, and general unease among visitors and critics alike. With its overwhelming scope, frustrating lines, and shopping mall-like atmosphere, the Louvre can be difficult to appreciate.
However, recent weeks of negative press have also provided an excellent opportunity to remember how and why the Louvre can still claim to be the world's greatest museum, and why it remains worthy of admiration. With that perspective in mind, here are ten essential masterpieces that showcase the Louvre's unparalleled collection.
Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, painted between 1503 and 1519, tops any list of the Louvre's treasures. Leonardo spent his final years in France, but it wasn't until after his death in 1519 that this mysterious portrait, possibly depicting an Italian noblewoman, was acquired by his patron, French King Francis I. Now France's most famous painting and arguably the world's most recognizable artwork, it was for centuries simply one of many masterpieces in the country's royal collections. King Louis XIV stored it at the Palace of Versailles, and it arrived at the Louvre after the French Revolution. The painting was catapulted to international fame on the eve of World War I following a headline-grabbing theft by a disgruntled museum employee. Its permanent iconic status reflects deeper symbolic importance: the painting's Italian origins and French heritage serve as a powerful reminder of the great transfer of artistic prestige that saw France replace the Italian peninsula as Europe's creative superpower.
Eugène Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People from 1830 captures one of France's most pivotal moments. In July 1830, French King Charles X was overthrown when Parisian crowds transformed spontaneous street fights into a full revolution. In this massive allegorical painting, Delacroix commemorated the event with a scene from the barricades, featuring a determined and otherworldly Liberty leading Parisians into battle. The figure suggests the Roman goddess Libertas while wearing a cap popularized during the original French Revolution. Liberty heads a diverse crowd of eternal Parisian types, including a top-hatted bourgeois citizen, a street child, and a hopeful, downtrodden worker. A 2024 conservation treatment that removed decades of dirt and yellowing varnish revealed the halo-like sky behind Liberty and the full scale of violence at her feet. Regardless of its condition, the image has transcended its original historical context to become France's unofficial national artwork.
Michelangelo's Dying Slave, created between 1513 and 1515, represents one of the Renaissance master's most powerful sculptures. Originally commissioned in 1505 for Pope Julius II's tomb and completed shortly after the Pope's death in 1513, this seven-foot masterpiece reached France by the mid-16th century. After moving between various noblemen's estates, it finally arrived at the Louvre in 1794. The sculpture recalls the dynamic suffering found in Hellenistic art while seeming to anticipate the later Baroque innovation of combining ecstasy with death. Few works rival its depiction of male beauty, except perhaps the artist's own David, created a decade earlier.
The Venus de Milo, dating from the 2nd century BC, stands among the museum's most beloved ancient treasures. A farmer discovered this armless beauty on the Greek island of Melos in 1820. The statue, believed to represent the goddess Aphrodite, was presented to King Louis XVIII, who donated it to the Louvre. Contemporary restorers considered adding replacement arms, but their decision not to do so proved to be an ingenious choice. Without arms, the statue's face and torso are emphasized in such a compelling and distinctive way that it quickly became one of the Louvre's premier attractions and, in retrospect, a proto-Modernist icon. The Venus de Milo received its official Surrealist update in the 1930s when Salvador Dalí created his own version adorned with bizarre drawers.
Raphael's Portrait of Balthazar Castiglione, painted between 1514 and 1515, ranks near the top of most admired Renaissance portraits. This depiction of Raphael's friend, the Italian humanist and author Balthazar Castiglione, represents one of the few canvas works by the master and exudes remarkable refinement. The pyramidal composition emphasizes Castiglione's compassionate and inquisitive gaze, while the sumptuousness of his nearly monochromatic costume subtly complements the blue of his eyes. King Louis XIV acquired the painting in 1665, several decades after it arrived in France, and it now hangs in the high-ceilinged Grande Galerie, the Louvre's long corridor showcasing Italian masterpieces.
Nicolas Poussin's The Four Seasons (Spring), created between 1660 and 1664, represents French classical painting at its finest. Though he spent much of his working life in Rome, the Normandy-born artist Nicolas Poussin was the ultimate French classicist. During the ancien régime period before the French Revolution, he was the only French painter to compete with Italian and Netherlandish artists for prestige in his homeland. Many of his greatest works are now concentrated in the Louvre. While Winter, which depicts Noah's flood from Genesis, was long considered the most important of the four-painting cycle, Spring perhaps best demonstrates Poussin's signature fusion of classical and Christian themes. Together, the cycle of four paintings is regarded as the artist's supreme achievement.
Peter Paul Rubens' The Coronation of Marie de' Medici at the Abbey of Saint-Denis, May 13, 1610, painted in the first quarter of the 17th century, showcases royal self-glorification at its most spectacular. Self-promotion came naturally to French royalty, but it took an Italian newcomer to show the French exactly how it should be done. Born in Florence's Palazzo Pitti, Marie de' Medici came to France to marry French King Henry IV in 1600. After his assassination in 1610, she served as regent for her young son, Louis XIII, who later grew to despise and eventually imprison her. She died in exile in 1642 at age 67. However, in the early 1620s, during a brief break from her son's anger, she commissioned Peter Paul Rubens, then Europe's leading painter, to celebrate her life with 21 enormous history paintings and three portraits. The intact cycle transforms Marie's turbulent and even shameful story into an extended pageant of Baroque splendor and ranks among the museum's glories. Rubens' depiction of her coronation stands out, with Marie's alabaster figure, attended by winged representations of Prosperity and Wealth, outshining her own crown.
The Monzon Lion, created between 975 and 1100 AD, represents the artistic achievements of medieval Islamic Spain. This elaborate bronze lion from Spain's Al-Andalus period features intricate engraving in Kufic script, one of the oldest forms of Arabic calligraphy. Scholars debate its original function, though the wide mouth suggests it may have served as a water spout, while some believe its tail could be moved to mark time's passage. The glass-covered Cour Visconti, opened in 2012 to house the Louvre's Islamic art collection, promoted this rare and ornate piece as the new space's signature object.
Hyacinthe Rigaud's Portrait of Louis XIV from 1701 captures the Sun King at the height of his power. The Franco-Catalan painter, born Jacint Rigau-Ros i Serra, portrayed four generations of Bourbon royalty. Though he went on to paint numerous European dignitaries, from the Doge of Genoa to Augustus III of Poland, his supreme achievement remains this frequently copied depiction of Louis XIV at age 63. With his crown lurking in the shadows at left, Louis appears both royal and celestial through various elements, including a sumptuous fleur-de-lis cloak swept up to display his former dancer's legs and a lion-like wig that epitomizes royal grandeur.
Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun's Self-Portrait with Julie from 1789 closes this essential list with a masterpiece of maternal tenderness and artistic innovation. The leading female artist of the ancien régime painted approximately 20 portraits of Marie Antoinette, including one that shocked the Salon in 1783 when she depicted the notoriously extravagant queen in a simple muslin dress. Clothing again proved provocative in this later self-portrait showing the artist with her only surviving child. Dressed in stylized Greek fashion, wearing a costume from an infamous Neoclassical-themed party, Vigée Le Brun creates a stately pyramidal composition that also serves as a tender depiction of parental love. The late art historian and novelist Anita Brookner, who greatly admired the work, positioned it at the intersection of two great art movements, describing it as a Neoclassical picture filled with Romantic feeling.
These ten masterpieces represent just a fraction of the Louvre's extraordinary holdings, yet they demonstrate why the museum continues to attract millions of visitors despite its challenges. From ancient Greek sculpture to 18th-century portraiture, from Renaissance masterworks to Islamic art, these pieces collectively tell the story of human artistic achievement across cultures and centuries, justifying the Louvre's reputation as the world's greatest repository of art.
