# Paris. Palais du Louvre, pavillon Mollien

- By: Gustave Le Gray
- Date: 1859
- Classification: Print
- Credit line: The Getty Center, Object 70191 This image was taken from the Getty Research Institute's Open Content Program, which states the following regarding their assessment that no known copyright restrictions exist: Open content images are…
- Museum: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gustave_Le_Gray,_Pavillon_Mollien,_1859.jpg)
- Rights: Public domain
- Picture: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/01/Gustave_Le_Gray%2C_Pavillon_Mollien%2C_1859.jpg/1920px-Gustave_Le_Gray%2C_Pavillon_Mollien%2C_1859.jpg
- Who can see it: Teens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

Standing opposite a newly built pavilion of the Louvre, Gustave Le Gray made this photograph when the sun's position allowed him to best capture the details of the heavily ornamented facade, from the fluted columns on the ground level to the figurative group on the nearest gable. Paving stones lead the viewer's eye directly to the corner of the pavilion, where the sunlit facade is further highlighted beside an area blanketed in shadow.

Though the extensive art collections of the Louvre had first been opened to the public in 1793, during the French Revolution, it was not until 1848 that the museum became the property of the state. Le Gray's image shows the exuberance of the architecture undertaken shortly thereafter, during the reign of Napoléon III, when large sections of the building housed government offices.