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I think I'm similar in this regard, and the Louvre fell flat for me as well. It was difficult to connect with many of the paintings there; in spite of the clear dedication of the artists, many of them were relatively small in size and unintimidating, and I came away thinking that the overwhelming focus of these artists when painting these was primarily on the formal qualities of the work. I could appreciate it and the paintings were certainly beautiful, but they largely did not affect me. It sometimes feels as if artists can get interested enough with the microscale qualities of the art that they fail to make use of many simple and "primitive" tricks that can elicit emotion. When travelling Europe I much preferred many of the murals and stained-glass works in churches, since they were far larger and often made to dwarf the viewer with visions of religious awe. My favourite piece of art in Paris was not the refined Renaissance art in the Louvre, it was the gigantic medieval stained glass panels in Sainte-Chapelle.
Scale is something that really does affect your emotional perceptions of a piece of art. Hell, the Great Wall is just a fortification built for entirely functional purposes, and yet seeing it snake over the mountains for as far as the eye could see had a significant emotional effect. And as far as art goes, there isn't much of anything I've seen that can compare to something like, say, Cave 6 of the Yungang Grottoes. Standing deep inside the bowels of a remote, dusty mountain in rural China and gazing at this gargantuan 1,500 year-old cavern adorned with resplendent, colourful images of celestial figures spilling unbidden into every nook and cranny was incredibly stirring.
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