A magnetic and sumptuous Parisian hôtel particulier
The grandiosity of august institutions such as the Louvre, the Musee d’Orsay, the Pompidou and their more diminutive siblings – strictly speaking in physical scale only – the Musee Rodin and the Musee Picasso overwhelmed my day-off planner while I was on my work trips to the City of Light. I was in my 20s then and could persevere through days of cultural sightseeing and cobblestones in high heels. Once in, this fashion choice made in the name of vanity, became a practical leg-up as my 5’2” self was most frequently found behind rows of bobbing heads, meters away from the coveted masterpiece.
One autumn day a photographer friend of mine beseeched me to visit a hôtel particulier (a privately owned urban mansion) in the 8th arrondissement before taking my plane back to Cebu the next day. As I turned the corner of another treacherous cobblestone street, the customary awe that is invoked by the aforementioned renowned museums was absent. In its place sprung a deferential wonder and curiosity for the treasures behind the stately, high stone walls of this grand home turned museum, the Musee Jacquemart André.
I whisper a merci beaucoup to my wise shutterbug friend every single time I have visited this jewel on boulevard Haussmann for the last two decades. The biggest swell of gratitude was felt when I brought my two children to Jacquemart André. Still in heels just with better calf muscle control, I had my daughter in one hand and my son in the other and we made our pilgrimage up to the perfectly symmetrical and sumptuous mansion.
Masterpieces from the renaissance era rarely travel and when they do they are typically received by outsize, magisterial institutions. But here, Jacquemart André hosted canvases on loan from the Borghese Gallery in Rome. Works from da Vinci, Raphael, Botticelli, Titien and their genius cohorts of the enlightenment were showcased on silk brocade upholstered walls. The visual presence of these pieces, as ever, was empowering. But it was intensified by the human proximity one had from gazing and studying four hundred year old brushstrokes at eye level, unobstructed by craning necks of fellow admirers.
Lunch at the Nélie, the hôtel particulier’s restaurant named after the 1841 grande dame, Nélie Jacquemart, is a luxuriant extension of the decorative art space. And the sensation of being ensconced in a velvet jewelry box equally continues as you take your seat amongst the tapestries that cover the restaurant’s walls. My children dove into the bread basket, their hunger awakened after being lost in awe and curiosity the past 2 hours. As we awaited our entrées, they took out their little notepads and started to sketch the painting they liked the most – a hack that I have realized keeps them engaged and deepens the experience. Crusted with breadcrumbs, they jostle to show me their renderings. Both imaginative and marked by their singular eccentricities, I give them each gold stars. Radiant, their hunger quenched and souls filled, I wondered as I watched them, whether as grown-ups will these monuments of art beckon to them as they do me. Another whisper, this time a wish, may the gift of enlightenment that comes from art captivate them, may it draw them as a lighthouse brings home pilgrims from sea to shining sea.
