Pierre de Coubertin is, of course, the first protagonist of this major exhibition that the Louvre Museum is organizing in conjunction with the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris. A vast selection of iconographic sources from the end of the 19th century offer the possibility of discovering the origins of this event, to grasp its political context and universal ambitions, to reveal non-secondary characters in a great story that includes Émile Gilliéron (1850 - 1924), designer of Swiss origin, appointed official artist of the Olympic Games in Athens in 1896 and the subsequent edition of 1906, which was inspired by the discoveries made during the excavations of the main archaeological sites in Greece to invent the winners' trophies. Thanks to a loan from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, the famous Bréal Cup, the first Olympic cup, designed by the academic of the same name and then created by a French master goldsmith for the winner of the first Marathon, is also on display at the Louvre.
