PARIS.- This spring, the Musée du Louvre presents a season of profound artistic dialogues and historical rediscovery through three major exhibitions. From the late Gothic mastery of Martin Schongauer, the "Beautiful Immortal" who captivated Dürer, to a monumental pairing of Michelangelo and Rodin that explores the "living body" as a laboratory of the soul, the museum traverses the evolution of Western form. Complementing these sculptural and graphic masterpieces, Primeval Waters takes us back to Ancient Mesopotamia, investigating how the cradle of civilization navigated its relationship with the life-giving—and at times destructive—power of the Tigris and Euphrates.

MARTIN SCHONGAUER
THE BEAUTIFUL IMMORTAL
8 April to 20 July 2026
Mezzanine Napoléon

Exhibition curators: Pantxika Béguerie De Paepe, Director Emerita of the Musée Unterlinden, and Hélène Grollemund, Collection Manager, Department of Prints and Drawings, Musée du Louvre.

Nicknamed 'Beautiful Martin' by Albrecht Dürer, Martin Schongauer (Colmar, about 1445–Alt-Breisach, 1491) was a prodigious painter, draughtsman and engraver who remains relatively unknown outside of a small circle of experts and enthusiasts. He was, however, one of the most popular artists of the late Middle Ages – and one of the major figures of this period.

Through roughly a hundred assembled pieces, the exhibition looks to highlight his body of work and his remarkable legacy.

MICHELANGELO AND RODIN:
LIVING BODIES
15 April to 20 July 2026
Hall Napoléon

Exhibition curators: Marc Bormand, Curator, Department of Sculptures, Musée du Louvre, and Chloé Ariot, Curator, Musée Rodin.

Exhibition organised by the Musée du Louvre in partnership with the Musée Rodin.

Michelangelo and Rodin, in making the body the central subject of their artworks, showed that they both perceived it as animated by an intense inner life. Two unrivalled masters of Western sculpture engage in a dialogue across the centuries: Michelangelo and Rodin. Their works, emblematic of the strength of the body and the depth of the soul, are here brought together for the first time, revealing a continuum between the two artists, marked by clear divisions.

Calling attention to the connections, borrowings and reinterpretations to be found in the works of Michelangelo and Rodin, the exhibition gives a close reading of the myths surrounding these two masters and proposes a new perspective on sculpture not as the making of forms, but as a laboratory for breaking new artistic ground.

PRIMEVAL WATERS:
LESSONS FROM MESOPOTAMIA
20 May 2026 to 15 March 2027
Sully and Richelieu wings, within the Department of Near Eastern Antiquities (rooms 227–230)

Exhibition curators: Ariane Thomas, Senior Heritage Curator, Director of the Department of Near Eastern Antiquities, Musée du Louvre.

Co-curators: Barbara Couturaud and Grégoire Nicolet, Department of Near Eastern Antiquities, Musée du Louvre.

Crossed by the only two biblical 'rivers of paradise' known today, whose importance and danger may have inspired the Flood myth, ancient Mesopotamia was also the place where irrigation was first invented and developed.

Journeying through a bygone world where water was omnipresent, so unlike the same region that has become so arid today, the exhibition offers visitors the opportunity to draw lessons from the ancient Mesopotamians' relationship to water.