With her diaphanous skin, round face and distant gaze, Titian's "Jeune femme à sa toilette"(around 1515) has all the hallmarks of the Renaissance beauty canon. In the Louvre's Salle des Etats, the curious admire her proud splendor, silky Venetian-blonde hair and perfume bottle in hand. The stream of tourists, alas, always ends up scurrying off to photograph her neighbor and contemporary, the Mona Lisa, majestically poised in the center of the room.

For the past few days, however, a brushed, copper-plated label entitled "De toutes beautés!"("Of All Beauties") has been dedicated to the former, along with 107 other works. A new selection designed to enable visitors to explore and discover exceptional paintings, sculptures and objects which question our aesthetic practices and criteria – skin color, slimness, musculature, hair, make-up, gender. All this, as each label reads, "created with the support of the L'Oréal group," the Louvre's new patron.

Their respective directors, Nicolas Hieronimus for the cosmetics group and Laurence des Cars for the museum, both appointed in May 2021 to head these two sprawling institutions which, each in its own way, convey the image of France, had already established a partnership in 2023 between the Louvre and Lancôme, a L'Oréal brand. "A celebratory lunch, to mark the success of this first collaboration, was an opportunity to reflect on the next step," they recalled in chorus beneath the gilding of the Pavillon Mollien, the Louvre's presidency wing.

This time, neither lipstick nor eyeshadow in the style of spin-off products, but a purely cultural project that they loudly assert is "a co-creation." "We have beauty in common," said des Cars. "And we know just how much it is not immutable: its perception changes over time, and the works in the Louvre capture this impermanence."

Two days to contemplate them

108 were selected among them by "some 20" specialists, including 15 from the world's most visited art museum. "Whereas up until now, the Louvre's approach has been to collaborate with Uniqlo or Airbnb, for example, to promote its name, this is the start of a new phase: that of an almost hybrid content, hand in hand with a private player. A movement that further reinforces the convergence between luxury and museums," said Christophe Rioux, a professor at Sciences Po, specializing in alliances between luxury and the cultural industries.

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