A View of Place Louis XV

Along the far side of the Seine, a row of grand colonnaded buildings runs across the horizon in this 1780 view by Alexandre-Jean Noël. The square he painted was called the Place Louis XV back then, though today we know it as the Place de la Concorde. Noël set up his view from across the river, so the architecture sits low and small beneath a huge, open sky. Those matching buildings that flank the Rue Royale are still there in Paris now, and they are still counted among the finest in the city.

Sky and light do most of the work in this picture. Trained as a painter of coastlines and topographical scenes, Noël clearly loved soft clouds and warm evening glow, and here they spread across the canvas and settle gently over the water. Down near the riverbank, tiny figures go about their day, among them a woman holding a parasol and a small group gathered by the shore. These little touches ground the scene in ordinary life, reminding us that people once strolled and lingered here without a second thought.

The calm carries a strange weight when you know what came next. Just over ten years after Noël finished this painting, this exact square became the place where the guillotine stood during the French Revolution, and where King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were put to death. What we see is the square in its quieter days, a pleasant riverside spot before history turned it into something far darker.