Napoleon’s Looting: When the International Made Our Minds That Stolen Artifacts Must Travel Again

In September 1815, Karl von Muffling, the Prussian governor of Paris, presented himself at the door of the Louvre and ordered his French guards to step aside.

Belgian and Dutch authorities, subsidized by Prussian and British troops, arrived to reclaim the treasures of artwork looted by the French during the Modern and Napoleonic Wars.

This day is recognized by many students as a political approach to the spoils of conflict in maritime trade and is not hidden as the beginning of repatriation, the concept of returning cultural items taken in time of war to the nations from which they came. They were stolen. ,

“It was universally accepted that the winners in a war could take whatever they wanted,” said Wayne Sandholtz, who teaches world family member and law at the University of Southern California and creator of the book “Prohibiting Looting: How Norms Change.” . ” “Now, for the first time, the allies demanded that the treasure be returned.”

The return of Napoleon’s loot is such an important day in the history of art that 200 years later it comes up again and again as the debate over repatriation continues.

Three years earlier, an exhibition at the Grande Halle de los Angeles Villette in Paris, “Napoleon”, focused on the French Emperor’s vast plunder and efforts to reclaim them. Recently, during an exhibition on the looting of Mauritius in The Hague, officials there revealed that even though Napoleon returned most of the Dutch artefacts stolen, dozens of other artefacts were never returned.

Now, Q4, French art historian Benedict Savoy will give a sort of lecture at the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid about the resonant impact of the 1815 repatriation. form, “The Return of the Looted Heritage: 1815, Dismantling the Louvre and the Rebirth of Museums in Europe,” will focus on the concept of restitution, its criminal and moral underpinnings, and the ethics of creating encyclopedic museums filled with worldwide artifacts that teach Are – but at what cost?

The Louvre’s status as an undisputed “universal” museum was enhanced through its French military seizure. However, in 1815, when the squads of French adversaries stood guard with sabers, Paulus Potter’s “The Bull” was removed from the walls of the museum, as was Peter-Paul Rubens’s giant triptych “The Descent from the Cross. ” was removed. ,” looted from Antwerp, and Jan and Hubert van Eyck’s altarpiece, “The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb,” taken from Ghent in 1794.

The French were particularly opposed to the withdrawal of “The Bull”, a giant painting of a bull with various cattle – and watching the droppings – which was a particular crowd-pleaser.

It and a wide variety of other treasures were confiscated from the artwork gallery of the Dutch Republic’s stadtholder, Willem V, in The Hague in 1795, after the invading French modern army declared it a vassal climate. These objects joined the vast quantities of artwork that Napoleon would pack during campaigns in Italy, Prussia, and the Austrian Empire.

Now, the Allied coalition that had defeated him at Waterloo sought to regain his treasures, and the second Treaty of Paris drew up an unspoken law that adopted art restitution as a guideline for world regulation.

“He talked about a ‘cultural Waterloo,'” said Beatrice de Graaff, a teacher of world history at Utrecht University and author of “Fighting Terror After Napoleon.” “They wanted to give the French not only a military defeat, but also a cultural defeat, saying ‘they have to give us back what we owe.'”

Defenders of encyclopedic museums, who oppose repatriation, argue that the case for repatriation is pushed through nationalism and a fear of distant and lost cultures compounded through the distribution of artifacts around the world. Is. Those who demand the repatriation of artefacts and artifacts point out that European countries once implemented the right of return – when it was their artefacts that were at stake.

Museums in many countries have faced such a growing backlog of claims and returns that some professionals have suggested for years that they may need to be reset. In the past month, two major museums, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Cleveland Museum of Art, backed away from efforts to decipher works they argue were not looted.

As the arguments go on, some students say it is worthwhile to revisit the Prussian Governor’s look at the door of the Louvre.

“The French era was an imperial era; We can say that France colonized Europe,” said Savoy, a teacher at the Berlin Technical College, who in 2018 co-authored a record about African artwork at the request of Emmanuel Macron for the French executive. “So today’s discussions about looted art have parallels with, for example, the colonial period, from African countries.

In 1815, the director of the Louvre, Vivant Denon, was once – to put it mildly – ​​no longer partial to the concessions that the executive authorities had made to return the pieces.

Historian Cecil Gould wrote in his 1965 memoir, “Trophies of Conquest: The Musée Napoleon and its Creation”, “The anger of the French nation at the prospect of the museum being broken up was emblematic of the behavior of the Director General.” of the Louvre.” “He opposed every decision and almost every work of art.”

Denon argued with colleagues that the Louvre was once the only museum suitable to accommodate Europe’s art treasures.

De Graaf said that the Director General’s idea was actually a “universal gallery”, in his words, “an encyclopedia of art.” He attempted to impress upon the family, De Graaff noted, that the artwork “is better off right here in France, rather than rotting in your ‘dungeons and lairs’.”

“They tried to convince the powers of Europe,” he said, “that their artworks were in good hands.”

According to Quentin Buvelot, Mauritius’s senior curator, “He took great care of these paintings, so he was confident that they were new and the rightful owners.” “Some paintings were even restored in France” as a result, French museum authorities put forward a spirit of guardianship, he said, adding, “Similar arguments were made in the 1990s when museums were forced to return Nazi loot. Was asked to do.”

De Graaf said he was threatened with arrest and deportation to a prison camp before Denon took a different stance.

The French additionally adopted a strict layout with alternating works of art. When the Italian sculptor Antonio Canova petitioned in the name of Pope Pius VII for the return of masterpieces taken from Rome and the Papal States, the French argued that the works were not confiscated, but rather ceded to France under the 1797 was given. Treaty of Tolentino.

Canova argued that the armistice treaty was signed under duress, or as he put it, “the wolf gave orders to the lamb.” France countered that the conditions were clearly “perpetually binding”.

Canova went back to Italy empty-handed. He next returned in 1815 and, due to the intervention of colleagues, was again given some work.

Napoleon’s zeal for conquest once exceeded that of Adolf Hitler, some 150 years later. However, about 80% of Napoleon’s loot was returned, often through dubious means.

When Potter’s “The Bull,” Rubens’s “Descent from the Cross” and the Ghent Altarpiece were taken back to the Low Nations with alternative works, they were received with much fanfare, like national heroes, de Graaff said.

He said, “The fact that an artifact was returned increased its status as a symbol of cultural nationalism.”

Denon was right in arguing that Europe did not have grand community museums indistinguishable from the Louvre. Some of the royal and princely collections in Florence, Vienna and Stockholm were converted into community museums within the 18th century, although many art works and sculptures nevertheless adorned the cathedrals, palaces and town halls for which they were commissioned. .

When Napoleon’s loot was returned, however, Savoy reported, untouched museums were created to display those national treasures. As a result, “a completely new geography of museums in Europe” emerged, she said.

These include a nationwide museum in Belgium, the Prado in Spain and then the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. “Some of these existed in small form before the Napoleonic era,” Savoy said, “but now they have become larger.”

Willem V’s collection was moved to a larger development in The Hague and made into a community museum, the Mauritius Royal Image Gallery. When the museum opened in 1822, Potter’s “The Bull” took pride of place in the park, becoming as widely known to the Dutch as it was to the French, said Dutch curator Buvelot.

He added, “Since 1822, it was the ‘painting’ to be seen in Mauritius.” “Until Vermeer’s ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ came along. The fact that the painting was in the Louvre for 20 years gave it a large part of its fame.