The Louvre and the ass of a horse

The first time someone visits the Louvre, they either go to see the famously cryptic smile of Monalisa or Venus de Milo or Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss and even Liberty Leading the People. There are, of course, also the magnificent remains of the palace of Susa and the Caryatids. Then there are the Italian frescoes and Renaissance paintings. There is much to see and unsee in the Louvre. The other day, however, I came across a painting that I can’t seem to stop thinking about. 

In an almost empty room is Charles Le Brun’s Alexander Entering Babylon, or the Triumph of Alexander painted in 1665. Le Brun, who served as a court painter to Louis XIV, painted the tableau as a model for a piece of tapestry woven at the Gobelins manufactory in Paris. The painting’s description reads, “The triumphant Alexander, standing on a chariot pulled by two elephants, enters Babylon in 331 BC. The city’s terraces and hanging gardens are visible in the background.” The painting depicts Alexander the Great’s ceremonial entry into Babylon after his victory over Darius III at the Battle of Gaugamela but, in the painting, it is rather easy to miss Alexander or his elephant chariot or the hanging gardens of Babylon as right in the centre of the painting is not the great king but, golden and vast like the Sun, the ass of a horse. I sat in front the horse’s ass for several minutes, bemused, sometimes laughing by myself, wondering if that’s exactly what Le Brun intended. There’s something charming about sharing a joke with a dead 17th century painter. Maybe there’s a symbolic meaning behind putting a horse’s ass right in the centre of a painting about a great victory of a great king but I do not know any such meaning. For me, a horse’s ass is the ass of a horse.