Le Louvre: The Collection & Palace
Sold Out		(Win95/Win98/Mac) (Retail) (LELOUVREDR)

Included in Topics Presents: Museums of the World

Montparnasse Multimedia

Reference/Art

Ratings:

5 stars from PC Entertainment

3 1/2 stars from CD-ROM Today

Awesome from New Media

An Interactive Visit to the Largest Museum in the World

In this new edition you will find everything you loved in Le Louvre, Palace & Paintings: eight centuries of the palace's history and 100 masterpieces of European painting from the 13th century to the beginning of the 19th century.

Now discover the other departments of the museum: Antiquities, Sculptures, Objets d'Art, and Graphic Arts.

Admire the greatest treasures of the ancient civilizations of Egypt and the Orient: the Seated Scribe, the Winged Assyrian Bulls from Khorsabad; Greek Etruscan and Roman masterpieces: the Venus de Milo, the Sarcophagus of the Spouses, the ideal statue of Marcellus; beautiful sculptures of the European schools: The Captives by Michelangelo, the Horses of Marly, the Milo of Crotona; magnificent objets d'art; and over fifty new paintings, sketches, and engravings by Leonardo da Vinci, Rubens, David, Delacroix, and others.

Study the works in their minutest details and discover the secrets of these paintings, sculptures, and antiquities with the help of the animated sequences. Voyage through 4,000 years of art history. Meet the artists, sovereigns, and personalities; the architects and scholars who have made their mark over the centuries and on the history of the palace.

New functions facilitate and enrich the navigation of your CD-ROM: an Album in which you can create your own collections, make notes, project slide shows, print and export texts and images. A smart guide proposes avenues of exploration of the collections which are adapted to your needs and constantly updated.

For the first time you can extend your visit to the museum via the Internet to discover new works of art.

This CD-ROM contains:

• 200 works of art, of which 160 have detailed commentaries
• 60 animated sequences on paintings and sculptures
• Nearly 4 hours of commentaries
• Personalized albums
• The possibility to print text and images
• A smart guide
• A path function which memorizes the route of your visit
• The capability of sending postcards by e-mail
• The chance of consulting new works of art on the Internet
• A Chronology for each department
• A general index

Requirements:

Windows 95: Multimedia PC or compatible, Pentium 75 with 16 Mb of RAM, a 14 inch screen with thousands of colors, a 4x CD-ROM drive, a Windows 95 compatible sound card.

Macintosh: PowerPC with 16Mb of RAM, a 14 inch screen with thousands of colors, a 4x CD-ROM drive, System 7.1 or higher.

Reviews:

PC Entertainment, April 1996

"The Louvre museum houses the greatest art collection in the world - and Montparnasse Multimedia's Le Louvre CD-ROM is the best, most comprehensive fine-art disc you can buy. While the 300 magnificent works of art from the museum's 6,000-piece collection provide a strong starting point, the well-thought-out design and detailed treatment are what really make the title shine."

"However you choose to browse, each painting is accompanied by a wealth of information; a general audio commentary; a zoom feature with detailed audio commentary; a scale screen that shows its relative size; a link to the artist's biography; and the Apropos text screen, which offers an interesting (and often humorous) anecdote about the work. Le Louvre enhances understanding by frequently illustrating the audio commentary with interactive bits. When Composition is the subject, for example, the program uses an electronic chalkboard to annotate the painting. The title's only limitation is a lack of search and print capabilities."

"Le Louvre is a multimedia masterpiece, perfect for both serious and casual art lovers."

CD-ROM Today, January 1996

"Le Louvre is divided into two main sections on on the art collection and one on the building. The disc's 100 paintings illustrate the history of the major European schools (French, Italian, Flemish, Dutch, Spanish, and English), from the medieval to the 19th-century masters. For all its breadth, the selection is tres skimpy..."

"The Louvre itself is as much a work of art as anything in it. Le Louvre gives this grandest of culture castles its due. Floor plans are included: Click on any room, and you will see a photo of it and a thumbnail view of relevant paintings. Still needed: more exterior views.

"Supplementing the main material are a time line, an index, a glossary, more than two-and-a-half hours of sound commentary, and 20 minutes of exceptionally well-chosen music from the likes of Lully and Guillaume de Machaut. If a soupcon of European high art will satisfy you, Le Louvre c'est magnifique."

Computer Shopper, March 1996

"The discussion of the Mona Lisa, for example, illuminates the subtle complexities in a painting that one might otherwise dismiss as a woman with a strange smile. Linked to certain paintings are supplementary stories about the Louvre's artwork, accessible in a feature called Apropos. For instance, we learn that Veronese's huge canvas, The Feast at Cana, was seized from Venice by Napoleon's troops in 1797; when it came time to return it, the Louvre traded a more easily transportable painting instead."

Bay Area Computer Currents, May 29 - June 10, 1996

"If you've ever been to Paris, you know a visit to the Louvre is a must. But even a 'quick' tour takes two days, and a serious art student can spend months viewing all 6,000 paintings.

"A practical compromise is a CD-ROM tour. BMG Interactive's Le Louvre, a hybrid Windows and Mac disc, is more than a simple collection of zoomable paintings and voice-overs. It also gives you a sense of the 800-year-old museum's architecture."

"A cyber-tour guide offers a brief biography of each artist and notes each painting's composition, influences, and historical context. Sadly, Le Louvre lacks in-depth discussions of the artists' lives. But its coverage of the Louvre's collections is exhaustive and detailed enough to satisfy a serious art student. An it's a lot cheaper than a trip to Paris."

New Media, June 24, 1996

"Putting one of the most famous museums on earth onto CD-ROM is a daunting task, but Le Louvre: The Palace and Its Paintings captures the mood, paintings and history of the former medieval castle perfectly. MilleMedias frames the beautiful art with a subtle and elegant interface that is extremely easy to navigate. It goes well beyond a coffee-table book with animated and narrated descriptions of the composition and construction lines of the paintings.

"Following the evolution of the Louvre from 1190 to the present, accompanied by period music, puts the museum's history into perspective. The more than 300 paintings are easily accessible by school, date or area of the museum, and many include artist biographies (with hyperlinked definitions) and self-portraits. In some ways, this disc barely scratches the surface of the enormous Louvre, but it is indeed a wonderful starting place."

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