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

members, in the following year the Insti-
tut itself (which was, it must be remem-
bered, a government agency) wrote a
special report for the Minister of the
Interior expressing its support for the
policy.'8 It proposed, and even offered to
help to organize, a festival celebrating
the Italian convoy's arrival in Paris:
"What could be more appropriate to
revive and strengthen public spirit than
to exhibit ceremonially to the French
people this striking witness of its gran-
deur and its power?" Quatremere's bro-
chure, the artists' petition, counterpeti-
tion, the Institut's report, all set out the
arguments, pro and con, for looting the
eternal city. The interesting thing is that
here, for the first time, such arguments
were necessary. We might think of this
as the self-consciousness provided by the
Enlightenment, which extolled ideal
civic relationships.
he spoils of war could simply have
been distributed among the mili-
tary leaders as in that other classical
precedent, the Trojan War, or they
could have been quietly unloaded into
the new museum in the Louvre, opened
in 1793. And yet, when the works appro-
priated by the Treaty of Tolentino left
Italy in convoy in 1797, plans were
already afoot for a triumphal entry to
Paris, although no such entry had
greeted the convoys previously sent from
Belgium.'9 Everyone, it seems, recog-
nized the advantage to be gained from
the double authority of antique art. The
Commissioners from Italy who had
chosen it and supervised its shipment
kept up a steady stream of letters to the
Directory. Commissioner Thouin was
the most determined: "Will we let the
precious booty from Rome arrive in
Paris like charcoal barges and will we
have it disembarked on the Quai du
Louvre like crates of soap?," he asked.20
In voluminous correspondence he out-
lined every aspect of the proposed festi-
val: for the first wagon of the cortege, he
proposed a banner reading "Monuments
to the Victories of the Army of Italy";
Bonaparte, he hoped, would underwrite
the cost.21 Letourneux, Minister of the
Interior, also saw it as a vehicle for
Bonaparte: "He will see in this cere-
mony a sketch of the triumph that
awaits him on his return."22 Nonethe-
less, even with the backing of the Insti-
tut, the project would probably have had
to be abandoned for lack of funds had
not a letter arrived from the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs: "I have the honor of
informing you that General-in-chief
Bonaparte has resolved to make avail-
able the funds necessary for the trans-
port to Paris of the monuments of
Rome."23
The advantage of such a fete for
Bonaparte's future ambitions is obvious,
for, as in the Roman triumphs it imi-
tated, it would celebrate the conquering
general as much as the conquered trea-
sures. From the beginning, Bonaparte
and the Directory had extracted as
much benefit as possible from the plun-
der's prestige; each time a new convoy
from Italy arrived in Paris, the
announcement and inventory were pub-
lished in the Gazette nationale.24 Bona-
parte's letters to the Directory regularly
appeared in the official newspaper and
showed him quantifying aesthetics as
the only way of conveying value (Fig. 4):
"Citizen Barthelemy is busy at the
moment choosing the pictures from
Bologna. He is counting on taking
around fifty of them, including the Saint
Cecilia that is said to be the masterpiece
of Michelangelo"; he meant Raphael.25
"The famous painting of Saint Jerome is
so esteemed in this country that they
have offered a million to buy it back."6
In this respect, as in so many others,
Bonaparte anticipated our modern age
for, during the Enlightenment, works of
art were discussed more in transcendent
than in commercial terms, particularly
by public officials.27
s the convoy from Italy bearing the
antique sculpture proceeded slowly
towards Paris, the festival celebrating
its arrival began taking shape. The
numerous extant drafts of the program
for the "Triumphal entry of objects of
arts and sciences gathered in Italy"
attest to the careful planning that went
into even the most minor questions of
precedence and protocol. In the constant
changes can be seen the relative posi-
tions of the two protagonist groups, the
cultural (the Institut) and the political
(the Government).
The first government proposal came
from Letourneux, who, in April 1798,
reported to the Directory: "The govern-
ment commissioners for art, the litera-
ture and fine arts sections of the Institut,
poets, philosophers, public officials
especially, all those who feel the need of
restoring public spirit and of increasing
national pride by having the spoils of the
conquered peoples pass before the eyes
of our people, all join in requesting that
the day that these fruits of our victories
enter into Paris be celebrated by a festi-
val."28 In response, the Directory
decreed that such a festival should take
place, the date to be set when the con-
voy's arrival was imminent.29 The first
program, dated a few weeks later, cele-
brated "cultural Rome," proposing that
the triumphal entry be designed by the
architect Chalgrin, who had been in
charge of official festivals since 1794.30
Participants would include learned soci-
eties, schools, artists, and a ballet, "The
Offering to Liberty"; members of the
Institut would surround the Altar of the
Fatherland; and the Commissioners
from Italy would dedicate to them "all
the conquered riches." On the second
day, the President of the Institut would
present the "conquered riches" to the
Directory. This program draft was soon
superseded by another, in which the
Academicians at the Altar of the
Fatherland were replaced by members
of the Directory and public officials. In
Summer 1989 157