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

aware of the implications. Lord Liver-
pool wrote: "The reasonable part of the
world are for general restoration to the
original possessors; but they say, with
truth, that we have a better title to them
than the French, if legitimate war gives
a title to such objects; and they blame
the policy of leaving the trophies of the
French victories at Paris, and making
that capital in future the centre of the
arts."69 The Germans were also aware of
the problem. A petition from the foreign
artists in Rome to Lord Castlereagh
(the head of the English mission in
Paris) urged him to use all his influence
to have the art returned: "This eternal
city, by a set of circumstances unique in
the history of the world, has become the
capital of the arts for all peoples."70
Paris, the artists claimed, would con-
strict an artist's development "by a sys-
tem of rules and of fashions." Paris was
full of "distractions, of tumult"; a
momentary success there would propel
the artist towards "false and petty man-
nerisms." Rome, on the other hand, was
open to artists of all nationalities. There
they could work peacefully, learning
from the monuments of antiquity, and
be assured of "a pure and tranquil
enjoyment of the arts." The letter was
signed by forty artists, nearly all from
Northern Europe; the largest group, the
German Nazarenes, included Cornelius,
Overbeck, Veit, the Schadows. In this
moving plea, we can sense the Northern
artists' desperation to preserve a politi-
cally neutral cultural capital.
Despite the restitutions, France re-
tained enough art to ensure that the
Louvre remained the major museum of
Europe. Rome never reclaimed either all
its art or all its glory, and the Nazarenes
represented the last major art movement
centered there. Paris, despite its distrac-
tions (or perhaps because of them),
became the art capital of the Western
world, a position it retained until World
War II. The most prophetic note of the
1798 Fete de la Liberte had been struck
by Neufchateau, who had mused:
In seeing these treasures that the
spirit of liberty has conquered for
us, we are moved to think that
there will no longer exist a single
gifted man in the arts or sciences
who will not come to our shores to
enrich his knowledge and his taste,
to compare his genius with that of
the masterpieces France owns, and
to develop his ideas in converse
with republican artists and schol-
ars. What people, other than the
French, has ever assured itself an
empire of the future! What other
has known how to tie its glory to
the progress of the human spirit!71
Paris had successfully stolen the idea of
modern art away from Rome and would
keep it until, invaded by Germany in
1940, it underwent cultural upheavals
similar to those it had inflicted on eigh-
teenth-century Rome. In the aftermath,
the art capital of the world once again
moved west-to New York City.
Notes
I gratefully acknowledge the support of the City
University of New York PSC-CUNY Research
Award Program, which funded the research for
this article.
1 The song is given in the account of the festival
published in Le Ridacteur, No. 957, 12 Ther-
midor Year 6, pp. 1-6. Of the accounts of art
looting during the Revolutionary period, the
most reliable are: Charles Saunier, Les Con-
quetes artistiques de la Revolution et de l'Em-
pire, Paris, 1902; M. L. Blumer, "La Commis-
sion pour la recherche des objets de sciences et
arts en Italie, 1796-1797," Rivolution
francaise, 1934, pp. 62-88, 124-50, 222-59;
Eugene Miintz, "Les annexations de collections
d'art ou de bibliotheques et leur role dans les
relations internationales principalement pen-
dant la Revolution francaise," Revue d'histoire
diplomatique, 8 (1894), pp. 481-97, 9 (1895),
pp. 375-93, 10 (1896), pp. 481-508. For an
excellent short summary and a catalogue iden-
tifying many of the looted antique sculptures,
see: Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny,
Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical
Sculpture, 1500-1900, New Haven and Lon-
don, 1981. For summaries in English, largely
based on Saunier, see: D. M. Quynn, "Art
Confiscations of the Napoleonic Wars," Amer-
ican Historical Review, 50 (1945), pp. 437-60;
and Cecil Gould, Trophy of Conquest: The
Musie Napoleon and the Creation of the
Louvre, London, 1965. The standard works on
Revolutionary festivals are: Mona Ozouf, Fes-
tivals and the French Revolution, trans. Alan
Sheridan, Cambridge, MA and London, 1988;
and David Lloyd Dowd, Pageant Master of the
Republic: Jacques-Louis David and the French
Revolution, Lincoln, Nebraska, 1948. While
acknowledging my debt to the work of these
scholars, I have tried to keep as close as possible
to the original sources since errors have crept
into some subsequent accounts, and reference
numbers in the Archives nationales have some-
times changed.
2 See: Haskell and Penny (cited n. 1), pp. 108-
16; Gould (cited n. 1), p. 49.
3 See: Quynn (cited n. 1); Martha L. Turner,
"French Art Confiscations in the Roman
Republic, 1798," in The Consortium on Revo-
lutionary Europe, 1750-1850, Proceedings
(1980), Athens, GA, vol. 2, pp. 43-51.
4 For a brief account of Hitler's and Goering's
art thefts, see: Russell Chamberlin, Loot! The
Heritage of Plunder, N.Y., 1983, pp. 149-87. I
thank John Gregory for this reference.
5 See: Charles Piot, Rapport a M. le Ministre de
l'Interieur sur les tableaux enleves a la Bel-
gique en 1794 et restitues en 1815, Brussels,
1883, pp 2ff.
6 Proces-verbaux of 29 Prairial Year 2, in
Proces-verbaux du comiti d'instruction pub-
lique de la convention nationale, ed. James
Guillaume, Paris, 1901, vol. 4 (ler germinal an
II [21 mars 1794]-11 fructidor an II [28 aofit
1794]), pp. 654-55.
7 "Lettre du president du comite d'instruction
publique au comite de salut public," 8 messidor
an II, Ibid., vol. 4, p. 658. For the arrival of the
first convoy, see: "Convention nationale,"
Gazette nationale ou Le Moniteur universel
(hereafter GN), no. 3 bis, 3 Vend6miaire Year
3 (September 24, 1794).
8 The philosophical formulation of this concept is
by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Le Contrat social,
first published in 1762.
9 See, for example: Louis Hautecoeur, Histoire
du Louvre. Le Chateau. Le Palais. Le Musee.
Des Origines i nos jours, 1200-1928, Paris,
1928, p. 89. Non-French publications take a
completely different view of the matter.
10 See: "Int6rieur. Paris le 4 juin," Le Moniteur
universel, No. 156, (June 5, 1814), p. 612.
11 For the Treaty of Bologna of 4 messidor an IV
(June 22, 1796), see: Correspondance de
Napoleon ler, publiee par ordre de l'Empereur
Napoleon III, Paris, 1858, vol. 1, pp. 525-30,
no. 672, art. 8; for the Treaty of Tolentino, ler
vent6se an V (February 19, 1797), see: vol. 2,
pp. 444-49, no. 1511. The list of chosen objects
is in Archives Nationales, Paris (hereafter AN)
F17 1279, doss.4, "Liste des objets d'arts
design6s et choisis par les commissaires du
gouvernement francais en vertu de l'article huit
de l'armistice conclu entre la R6publique et sa
Saintete le Pape;" it is included in Correspon-
dance des directeurs de l'Academie de France
h Rome avec les surintendants des batiments,
ed. Anatole de Montaiglon and Jules Guiffrey,
Paris, 1907, vol. 16 (1791-1797), no. 9564, pp.
448-49, and no. 9575, pp. 462-67.
12 The inventory lists are in AN F17 1275A and
F17 1278/1279. A partial published listing is
"Specchio Generale di tutti gli oggetti d'arti e
scienze che partono da Roma per Parigi
nell'anno VI dell'era repubblicana," in Corre-
spondance de Napoleon I (cited n. 11), vol. 3,
pp. 498-505. The correspondence of the com-
missioners is included in Montaiglon and Guif-
frey (cited n. 11). I am grateful to Nina Atha-
nassoglou-Kallmyer for the Cruikshank illus-
tration (Fig. 2).
13 For the ambitions of earlier monarchs, see:
Haskell and Penny (cited n. 1), ch. I and VI.
14 Thouin (one of the Commissioners in Italy) in
his speech to the Ministre de l'Interieur Neuf-
chateau; see: AN ADVIII-18, liasse 4, no. 26,
"Extrait du proces verbal de la seance du
Directoire executif, du 10 thermidor an 6"; Le
Redacteur published an expanded version of
this; see no. 957 (12 Thermidor Year 6), p. 1.
Also see "Convention nationale. Rapport sur
les destructions op6eres par le vandalisme, et
sur les moyens de le r6primer; fait par
Gr6goire, au nom du comit6 d'instruction pub-
lique. Seance du 14 fructidor," GN, 9
Vend6miaire Year 3 (September 30, 1794).
"Institut national des sciences et des arts. Rap-
Summer 1989 161