The Musée du Louvre and Pathé Live have partnered to release an exclusive filmed private tour of the landmark exhibition “A Night at the Louvre: Leonardo da Vinci”
Filmed especially for the cinema, this visit is a unique opportunity to contemplate the most beautiful works of Leonardo da Vinci up close. It takes the viewer on a nocturnal stroll through the Louvre in the company of the exhibition’s curators, Vincent Delieuvin and Louis Frank, whose commentaries provide precious insight into Leonardo’s artistic practice and pictorial technique.
This major and unprecedented retrospective devoted to the artist’s work in its totality demonstrates how Leonardo elevated painting above all other pursuits, and how his investigation of the world – the “science of painting” as he put it – was at the service of an art whose supreme ambition was to give life to his paintings.
The exhibition welcomed more than 1 million visitors, setting an all-time record for the Louvre Museum. This initiative extends the event by making it accessible to an even wider audience worldwide.
This is the first time that the Musée du Louvre will be featured in a documentary film screened exclusively in cinemas in more than 60 countries with translations into 30 languages.
Four nights of filming and a team of 30 technicians went into the making of this film shot with 5K cameras especially for the cinema, under the direction of Pierre-Hubert Martin. The texts are written by Catherine Sauvat and Pierre-Hubert Martin, under the supervision of the joint curators. The narration has been entrusted to Coraly Zahonero, a member of France’s historic national theatre, the Comédie-Française.
Teachers will be able to organise school screenings in nearby cinemas of their choice throughout the 2020/2021 school year.
Educational materials relating to the exhibition will be available free of charge for teachers on the platform dedicated to the event www.anightatthelouvre.film/education/
These materials will provide them with keys to better understanding Leonardo da Vinci’s work and help them carry out activities with their pupils before and after the screening.
“It is a great honour to be associated with the Musée du Louvre,” said Thierry Fontaine, President of Pathé Live. This exhibition was such a huge success that many people didn’t have the chance to enjoy it in person. The cinema screening will extend the extraordinary and fascinating work accomplished by the exhibition’s curators, in what has been a long-term project, and further broaden its impact on the general public around the world. I would like to acknowledge and thank the teams at the Louvre for their passion, dedication, and unfailing support, all of which made this ambitious cultural project possible.”
“The exhibition devoted to Leonardo da Vinci closed its doors at the end of February 2020, and we all felt a twinge of emotion when this exceptional gathering of works had to be broken up,” said Jean-Luc Martinez, President-Director of the Louvre. “Pathé Live suggested that we keep a cinematic record of it and I was immediately enthusiastic about the idea. The popularity of the Louvre’s website and social media during the period of lockdown confirms that there are multiple ways of making art accessible to the greater public. The primary mission of museums is to encourage live encounters with works, but it is also our role to prepare or extend visits, to encourage people to deepen their knowledge and learn how to look at art. This film makes that possible. It reveals the wonder of the pieces on display and celebrates the work of Vincent Delieuvin and Louis Frank, two of the world’s leading specialists on Leonardo da Vinci. It is also extraordinarily beautiful, and I am delighted that it can bring the pleasure of admiring this great painter to so many people around the world”.
