Assuring the Empire of the Future: The 1798 Fete de la Liberte

Assuring the Empire of the Future:
The 1798 Fete de la Liberte
By Patricia Mainardi
hen the procession of the Fete de
la Liberte bearing Napoleon's art
loot from Italy crossed Paris on a rainy
day in July 1798, its passage was accom-
panied by a song whose refrain went
"Rome is no more in Rome. It is now in
Paris"' (Fig. 1). But Rome in fact was
two cities, cultural Rome and political
Rome. Cultural Rome was the Mecca
for young French artists and the home-
away-from-home of the French Acade-
my; it was the destination of young
gentlemen on their grand tour and the
location of the most esteemed works of
art in the Western world-namely, the
sculpture of antiquity. But there was a
political Rome as well, the historical
Rome of Empire, of marching armies
and world conquest. Which of these two
Romes did the festival honor, and which
was now in Paris?
Art historians have looked at classical
art aesthetically and indeed have writ-
ten about this festival as a celebration of
"taste and the antique."2 Historians, on
the other hand, have viewed it politically
and have regarded the art primarily as
war trophies.3 Both views are correct,
for the art did embody a double authori-
ty, both cultural and political; through
the agency of these objects both Romes
were symbolically relocated in Paris. It
is my theory that the Fete celebrated
this alliance between politics and
antique art and that it symbolically
marked the transfer of the cultural capi-
tal of Europe from eighteenth-century
Rome to nineteenth-century Paris. His-
torians, while accepting that such a cul-
tural relocation took place, have been
silent on the reasons; I am proposing
that we look for an explanation in the
expressed French intention of affecting
this transfer through the looting carried
out by the Revolutionary armies
throughout Europe and the subsequent
display of the plunder in the Louvre. We
have in recent history witnessed a simi-
lar attempt by Hitler, whose plans for a
grand cultural capital in Linz, his home-
town in Austria, featured a museum
stocked with all the looted art treasures
of Europe.4 For Hitler, as for Napoleon
before him, possession of the world's art
treasures would legitimize his regime
and constitute the outward sign of
Empire.
Although looting had been a standard
part of military conquest from time
immemorial, it was brought to a new
level of sophistication during the Revo-
lutionary period. French looting of for-
eign, as well as domestic, art treasures
preceded Bonaparte's rise to power;
practiced as a kind of free enterprise by
the military, it had accompanied the
first French campaign in Belgium in
1793.5 In 1794, however, the Committee
of Public Instruction decreed that "its
President will write to the Committee of
Public Safety on the importance of
secretly sending artists and scholars in
the wake of our armies; in regions
secured by Republican troops they will
appropriate, with precaution, monu-
ments of interest to the arts and sciences
and have them sent to France."6 This
was soon done, and a steady stream of
Rubenses and Van Dykes began arriv-
ing in Paris.7 Despite some new rhetoric
about such works being "liberated" not
stolen, the legality of this procedure
depended on the right of conquest alone.
Had the Belgians been able to defeat
France, they, according to military pre-
cedent, would then have had the right to
recuperate their stolen treasures; this
Fig. 1 Fete de la Liberte, 9-10 Thermidor VI, Champ-de-Mars, Paris.
Summer 1989 155