What are the best exhibitions at the Louvre in 2023?

The Coronation of Napoleon by Jacques-Louis David is a must-see artwork when visiting the Louvre. However, if you like paintings, we recommend you visit the “Naples in Paris” exhibition.

The Capodimonte Museum in Naples is a palace where you can enjoy the rare privilege of admiring the entirety of Italian schools of painting in one place. Its collection of pictures, one of the most important in Europe, contributed to the fame of what is now one of Italy’s largest museums.

The Louvre’s temporary collection presents some 60 of the greatest masterpieces of the Neapolitan Museum in three different locations. In the great gallery where Caravaggio sits facing Masaccio, visitors can gaze upon Danaë, a painting on canvas by Titian. They will also find Antea, a portrait of a young woman by Parmigianino, known as the Parmesan.

In the chapel room, be struck with admiration by the Farnese Cassette. This work was acquired by the Farnese family, which we can thank – alongside the Bourbons – for the diversity of the Capodimonte collections. Finally, in the Clock Room, visitors can imagine themselves in Rome by examining the sketches of Groups of soldiers drawn by the hand of Michelangelo. They will also find Moses in front of the burning bush by Raphaël, another magnificent work of art created to decorate the Vatican.

This exhibition can be visited from June 7th, 2023, to January 8th, 2024, in the Denon Wing, the Salon Carré, and the Grande Gallerie of the Sully Wing in the Chapel room. From June 7th to September 25th, 2023, it will be held in the Sully wing in the Clock Room.

An encounter with the History of France and Paris awaits the visitor to this exhibition. As a matter of fact, the pieces presented here have found refuge at the Louvre while awaiting the completion of the restoration of Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral where they were previously kept. However, a few objects in particular, like the relics of the Crown of Thorns and the Wood of the Cross, were already remnants of a treasure kept at the Sainte Chapelle until Napoleon I. These pieces belong to a treasure that was desecrated during the Revolution and then later completely restored.

Aside from these relics, the exhibition presents the masterpieces of French metalworking designed by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc during the Second Empire. The architect felt that the decorations replacing those destroyed by successive revolutionary plundering were not in harmony with the style of the building. So, as early as 1850, he commissioned France’s best metalworkers and bronzeworkers to reconstruct a collection of decorations keeping with the architecture of the site. His investment went as far as designing new pieces of metalworking. This treasure was inaugurated in 1854 in the new sacristy built in collaboration with Jean-Baptiste Lassus.

The exhibition also attempts to mend the rift created by the Revolution and reconnect with the history of the treasures before 1789. The pieces on display, and the assembled archives, plunge the visitor back to the Merovingian times in a unique sense of wonder at the know-how developed in each era and at the beauty of a history that flourished over a thousand years.

The exhibition is held from October 19th, 2023, to January 29th, 2023, in the Richelieu Wing, level -1.

A bit of fantasy and free-spiritedness are always welcome. This levity can be found in the engravings and drawings of Claude Gillot, who was born in Langres, France, in 1673 and died in Paris in 1722. The illustrator was sometimes described as an undisciplined artist. This exhibition of about one hundred drawings offers recognition to Claude Gillot as an illustrator, if only by the diversity of techniques used.

By roaming this exhibition, the visitor joins the end of the Great Century and is immersed in the first rococo, where inventions made of poetry and originality abound. As in the previous exhibition, the audience is submerged in the Italian culture where fables, comedy, and theater are beloved. Thus the visitor discovers why the illustrator was so successful with the Parisian bourgeoisie of the era.

The exhibition is visible from November 9th, 2023, to February 12th, 2024, in the Clock Room.