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

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c. 1800-14. Bonaparte had been quite accurate in bragging that "we will have everything beautiful in Italy."40 Last came two wagons of paintings. The first, "The Roman School," carried the Transfigu- ration of Raphael, as well as works by Domenichino and Giulio Romano; on it was a banner reading, "Artists, come running! Here are your masters!" The last wagon, "The Venetian School," held works by Titian and Veronese but carried no inscription. In this politico- aesthetic context, Venice could not com- pete with Rome. The bust of Junius Brutus was carried at the end of the march and ceremonial- ly placed on a pedestal before the Altar of the Fatherland; on the pedestal was a plaque stating, "Rome was first gov- erned by kings:/ Junius Brutus gave it liberty and the Republic." After the Commissioners from Italy presented their inventories to the new Minister of the Interior, Neufchateau, with many speeches all around, the "cultural" festival ended with a salvo of artillery followed by orchestras, dancing, and fire- works. The "political" ceremony, held on the second day, had representatives of the government and the military in attendance; the music consisted of military marches. When Neufchateau presented the inventories to the Directory at the Altar of the Fatherland, only the military was present; military maneu- vers and a balloon launching concluded the ceremonies. In the speeches are revealed the issues and intentions that informed the event. When Thouin presented the inventories to Neufchateau, he stated: "The com- mission of sciences and arts in Italy is honored to present to you the monuments of the victories of the armies of the Republic in this part of Europe." He directly praised Bonaparte, the hidden presence behind the festival: "The general-in-chief whose genius organized the victory in Italy has shown foresight in organizing even the scientific contribu- tions."41 In response, Neufchateau stated: "The prime sentiment that the sight of such a rich and extensive gath- ering of masterpieces of all centuries inspires in Republican hearts is that of gratitude to the generous armies of the French Republic."42 He concluded: "Here is the triumphal ceremony, here is the expiating ceremony for the crimes of the tyranny overthrown on 9 Thermi- dor."43 The plunder from Italy would wash clean the Revolution, and Revolu- tionary principles would sanitize the looting. As the Institut report on the festival had suggested: "We will thus absolve the French nation of this charge of vandalism, so often repeated by its enemies; in the midst of the expenses of war its government still finds the means of giving such splendor to the fine arts."44 he 1798 Fete de la Liberte celebrated more than the triumphal entry of the Italian plunder to Paris: it celebrated the adoption of antique art as the official art of the state and cemented the union of the state and the Institut in their mutual esteem for that art. Although this was the first and last time that art was paraded through the streets of Paris, Bonaparte continued to exploit its double authority after his rise to power. Each time a new convoy of art plun- dered from Italy arrived, it was celebrated with a special exhibition in the Louvre, now called the Musee central des arts: in 1798 works from Lombardy, Venice, Rome; in 1800 from Florence and Turin; in 1802 from Florence, Turin, and Foligno; in 1803 from Venice, Florence, Naples, Turin, and Bologna; in 1805, from Parma and Venice.45 Each exhibition was accompa- nied by a catalogue that blatantly extolled military might: "Not until all the monuments have arrived and are united with those which have come from Belgium and Diisseldorf can this immortal trophy of our victories be con- sidered complete; only then will we be able to feel the extent of the gratitude that the Fatherland, and the arts in particular, owe to our invincible armies."46 The newly installed Gallery of Antiq- uity in the Louvre (Fig. 5) was opened to the public on 18 Brumaire Year 9 (November 9, 1800) to coincide with the anniversary of the 1799 coup d'etat that had brought Napoleon to power. The preface to its catalogue began with the statement: "The majority of statues exhibited in the Gallery of Antiquity are the fruits of the conquests of the Army of Italy."47 On opening day, Bonaparte visited the gallery with an official dele- gation and attached a plaque to the pedestal of the Apollo Belvedere: "The statue of Apollo/ Erected on this pedestal/ Found at Antium, at the end of the XV century, placed in the Vatican by Julius II/ At the beginning of the XVI century/ Conquered in the Year V of the Republic/ By the Army of Italy/ Under the orders of General Bonaparte/ Has been set here on 21 Germinal Year VIII/ First year of his Consulate."48 In 1803 the Musee central des arts was renamed the Musee Napoleon.49 Although the Venus de Medici arrived from Naples too late to be included in that year's July 14 celebration, Bona- parte nonetheless had a medal struck commemorating the occasion. It repre- sented on one side his portrait as First Consul, and on the other the Venus de Medici with the somewhat ambiguous legend: To the Arts, the Victory.5 The first anniversary of the 1806 Battle of Jena was celebrated with a major exhibition of conquered antiquities.51 A colossal bust of Napoleon himself was placed over the entrance to the "Musee des antiques," and the artists Gerard Summer 1989 159
and Gros were commissioned to decorate the Louvre with paintings commemorating, respectively, "The arrival in Paris of the monuments of arts conquered by the Treaty of Tolentino" and "The Emperor giving France the masterpieces of antique sculpture."52 By the end of Napoleon's reign, more than four hundred antique statues, busts, and reliefs were on display in the Louvre, which now possessed virtually all the most esteemed art in the Western world;53 only insufficient technology had prevented the removal of Trajan's Column and the transport of the major frescoes of the Renaissance.54 The horses of San Marco, which had led the fine-arts division in 1798, continued to serve a political function. In 1807 they were placed on the newly erected Arc du Triomphe du Carrousel modeled after the Roman Arch of Constantine.55 The arch, erected on the former site of the guillotine, carries a long inscription commemorating the 1805 victories of the French army in Germany and Austria; since Austria had been the previous ruler of Venice, the horses became, again, a trophy of war. Although by 1814 French armies had swept through most of Europe, the plunder from no other country could provide the combined political and cultural authority Napoleon sought; only the plunder from Italy was accorded the honors of state. n 1814, just as the French were organizing the first exhibition of Italian primitive painting with the last convoy of spoils from Italy, the first great museum age came abruptly to an end; Napoleon, defeated, abdicated and the monarchy was restored.56 Throughout 1814 and 1815 the allies arrived in Paris demanding the return of their art.57 In the efforts of Louis XVIII, France's restored monarch, to preserve the art legacy of the Revolution accumulated by his hated predecessor Napoleon, we can see the vital political significance attached to possession of the world's art treasures.58 The loss of the art from Italy would be the most painful, for, just as this art had provided both political and cultural authority, so its loss would mark a political as well as cultural defeat; Paris was in danger of losing both Romes. The Restoration government used every means in its power to impede restitution, even refusing to pay return shipping costs; many previous owners, such as the Albani, were thus forced to sell their collections in Paris.59 The Prussians simply climbed the Arc du Carrousel and, to the outrage of the French, took down the San Marco 160 Art Journal horses and sent them back to Venice.60 Several of the largest antique sculptures, including the Melpomene and the Tiber, were left in the Louvre, where they are still on display, as is the entire collection of Italian primitives and Veronese's Marriage at Cana. The sculptor Antonio Canova, the Papal ambassador, concentrated his efforts on regaining the antique sculpture and managed to bring back seventy-seven of the original hundred Papal works (Fig. 6).61 For his loyalty to Italy, Canova was vilified in France and his full-length nude statue of Napoleon, doubly anath- ema to the restored monarchy because of both subject and artist, ended up as a war trophy in the Duke of Wellington's Apsley House in London.62 Despite all efforts, only about half the art plunder was ever returned; the percentage of books, manuscripts, and natural science collections repatriated is no doubt even lower.63 French reaction then and now was best expressed by Stendhal, who wrote indignantly: "The allies have taken from us 1,150 pictures. I hope that I am allowed to note that we acquired the best of them by a treaty, that of Tolentino. ... The allies, on the other hand, took our pictures from us without a treaty."64 The English, who had lost no art and could therefore claim nothing, nonetheless supported Canova in his efforts to repatriate the Italian art treasures. Had they not chosen to come in on the side of Italy, all the classical sculpture would probably have remained in France, for, unlike the Prussians, the Pope had no armies to back up his claims. British support for Italy was not, however, an entirely disinterested gesture; as Lord Liverpool, the English Prime Minister, wrote of the sculptures: "The Prince Regent is desirous of getting some of them for a Museum or a gallery here. The men of taste and virtu encourage this idea."65 he eighteenth-century esteem for classical art is well known, but it has not been remarked that the first museum age saw grand-scale efforts on the part of governments to collect antique art-sometimes by purchase, sometimes by plunder-in fierce compe- tition with one another. French art looting of the Revolutionary period was followed by Lord Elgin's removal of the Parthenon sculptures and their transport to England; they were acquired by the British Museum in 1816 only after it was clear that England would not bene- fit from the dispersal of the French art loot.66 In Germany, Ludwig of Bavaria was steadily purchasing collections of classical art, acquiring the sculptures from the Temple of Aegina in 1812. He had unsuccessfully attempted to purchase the Elgin marbles but did acquire the Albani collection, which he dis- played in the Glyptothek in Munich, especially built to house antique art.67 Because it was universally accepted that the cultural lineage of Europe flowed from Egypt to Greece to Rome, whatever nation was in possession of the major antiquities of these ancient civili- zations became symbolically the torch- bearer of Western culture. From the Roman antiquities to the Parthenon sculpture to the Egyptian Rosetta stone, England, France, and Germany com- peted for the cultural authority that symbolized political power.68 Even the French Academy wanted and needed the authority of antique art to position itself in a direct line from antiquity. Rubens, Titian, Veronese, whatever they could offer to artists by way of aesthetic authority, could offer nothing to the state; only Rome could provide this double authority. Classicism, Neo- classicism, and their Academic issue thus enjoyed, in nineteenth-century France, a symbiotic relationship with government, which aesthetics alone can- not explain. The political dimension of this phenomenon becomes invisible when it is attributed merely to "taste" or to "the cult of the antique." And so, in 1815, the maneuvering Fig. 6 The Return of the Art in 1815. among the major powers for possession of the French art loot masked a deeper issue: the location of the future cultural capital of Europe. Rome, the unchal- lenged center of eighteenth-century civ- ilization, had been pillaged of its treasures and could hardly continue to hold that title. The English were very much
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Assuring the Empire of the Future: The 1798 Fete de la Liberte

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