Hotel Des Invalides

We were on our feet for more than seven hours today, walking around, visiting museums. The current show at the Fondation Cartier has been held over since September. The show is very small, nine pieces total, of an artist, Ron Mueck, who makes super-realistic human figures. Some of them are less than life sized, almost doll like, and some are much larger than life-sized. They are incredibly detailed, whiskers, warts, and all, and amazingly compelling. The first piece on the ground floor is Couple Under an Umbrella, one of the larger than life sized pieces. An older man and his wife are at the beach. He is lying with his head on his wife's lap under a brightly colored beach umbrella. My husband and I stood transfixed--the tenderness on their faces, the familiarity with each other, the time they shared with each other. These were inanimate and yet so animate that we felt all the human drama and emotion that long time couples know innately.

While that was the most intimate of experiences in the show, the other pieces are equally compelling--a mother and her baby, a young man who has been stabbed. None of the basic descriptions can begin to cover what this artist achieves. The museum prohibited photography so I am unable to show what these pieces are like but some are probably online and worth checking out.

We walked from there over to Les Invalides to see Napoleon's tomb.

Of course there are many other people entombed in the building but Napoleon's tomb is the focal point of the building now.

Directly under the dome on the lower level in the crypt is the massive stone sarcophagus.

The floor is all stone as well. As a quilter I was fascinated by the laurel wreaths and sunburst patterns. Those would be relatively easy to replicate in fabric. I wonder how many people would realize the source?

While we were there we went to the Museum of the Army. Some very good and very terrible stuff in there.We only had time for 1870-1954 so we didn't see the whole exhibit. The uniforms with the dirt from the trenches of WWI were especially poignant.