Place du Carrousel and Tuileries in Ruins

Place du Carrousel and Tuileries in Ruins (1882), now in the Department of Paintings of the Louvre, depicts a historically charged subject: the ruins of the Tuileries Palace, burned during the Paris Commune of May 1871. The palace had stood adjacent to the Louvre since the sixteenth century and served as the primary residence of French monarchs and emperors. Its ruins remained standing for a decade while political controversy raged over whether to rebuild or demolish — they were finally cleared by 1883, making this a document painted in the ruins' last months of existence. The painting captures the strange co-existence of modern Paris with the visible wounds of its recent political catastrophe, recorded by De Nittis with his characteristic eye for the specific and the historically resonant.

The ruined Tuileries presented a subject combining architectural grandeur with destruction: fire-blackened stone, roofless interiors open to the sky, ornate exterior facades intact while the interior was gutted. His paint handling distinguishes undamaged from damaged surfaces.