A visit to Havana’s Napoleon Museum
Napoleon Bonaparte is a man that people become obsessed with. Since his death, collectors have gathered thousands of items belonging to or related to Napoleon: just a few years ago, a South Korean businessman paid 1.9 million euros for one of his hats. At the same auction, a Russian businessman bought a lock of Napoleon’s hair to wear for “good luck” — a snip, at 37,500 euros. However, one of the world’s largest collections of Napoleon memorabilia (in fact the largest outside France), isn’t in a millionaire’s mansion but in a small museum in Centro Habana.
It did, however, start off with a millionaire: Julio Lobo (1898–1983), the “rey del azúkar”. Lobo’s family, originally from Venezuela, had moved to Cuba when he was one and he grew up to become a highly successful businessman and sugar magnate. He was also an art collector, amassing one of the world’s largest collections of Napoleonic memorabilia. That collection went into government hands when Lobo left Cuba after the revolution, and now makes up the contents of Havana’s Napoleonic Museum.
The museum is nicely set out, roughly in chronological order. In the first corridor there are engravings of the great French revolutionaries including Marat and Danton, as well as pieces relating to the executed royal family: a bust of Queen Marie-Antoinette, a facsimile of her last letter to her children and a print of Louis XVI’s farewell to his family. The main room covers Napoleon as general and consul (a quick recap of the various phases of Napoleon’s career: general, first consul (leader of France), emperor, exiled, emperor, exiled [and no, that’s not a typo]) and includes paintings of his military victories such as his foray in Italy and conquest of Egypt. Among these are a couple of pieces by Antoine-Jean Gros, whose famous paintings depicting Napoleon in Jaffa and at the Battle of Eylau hang in the Louvre.
There is also a large range of period items, so you can for instance imagine what you might have looked like as a civil servant in France’s first empire (answer: dapper, you would have looked dapper). A back room houses a range of daggers, swords and sabers. Interestingly, some of these are described as “relacionado” to certain people (for instance Haitian revolutionary Sylvain Salnave) — does this mean the weapons were owned by these people? Owned by their friends? Used on them? It wasn’t clear how ‘relacionado’ was different to ‘pertenece’ on the labels. Maybe that’s something you say when you can’t say an item 100% belonged to a specific individual? Another interesting bit was the angle — when I spoke with staff they emphasised that these items were on display because they were used by Haitian revolutionaries against France’s imperialism. It’s an angle that makes perfect sense and is even obvious, but which to me was a nice reminder that this museum is in Cuba. In the corner of this room, in a little shady case, is a bicorne (the Napoleon hat) that once belonged to Napoleon. On the one hand it’s odd that something so emblematic of Napoleon would be in the corner of the room, almost hidden away. On the other, it feels like you’ve found a nice little gem when you stumble on it, and — outside of who it belonged to — it is arguably a less interesting item than the other pieces in the room.
The first floor is of Napoleon as emperor and, to an extent, as a family man, given the various portraits of family members. There is a lovely painting of Napoleon preparing for the ceremony of the Sacre (when Napoleon was crowned Emperor). It depicts Napoleon, his mother, the pope and others using dolls to rehearse the event, positioning them according to where they will be in the ceremony. I think it’s the first time I have ever seen Napoleon portrayed in a private, quasi domestic, setting. As a French person my main encounters with Napoleon have been through the prism of his military victories — they are engrained in my city as so many avenues and metro stations are named after his generals and battles. The impact of his Arc de Triomphe on the geography of Paris can even be seen from the sky. The most famous depictions of Napoleon in the Louvre are grand: grand in subject matter (David’s paintings depict four key moments of Napoleon’s coronation as emperor) and grand in stature (these four paintings measure roughly 6 x 10 meters). So it’s fascinating to see Napoleon from a different lens.
This more complete view of Napoleon is continued on the next floor which covers the last chapters of his life: downfall, (second) exile and death. One of the first items is a statuette of an ill Napoleon in St. Helena. It’s not the kind of Napoleon I’ve been used to seeing: this isn’t the sober general or the triumphant emperor, but a tired, defeated man with thinning hair and a severe widow’s peak.
And so to one of the central pieces of the museum: Napoleon’s death mask (a death mask is a wax or plaster cast of a person’s face after they died). This mask was brought to Cuba by one of Napoleon’s physicians, François Carlo Antommarchi, when he moved to the country in the late 1830s (the Napoleonic History Society says 1837). It is one of a handful of masks dotted around the world; it seems that Antommarchi occasionally used his mould to create masks as gifts (or, if you are feeling cynical, to make money)— in X he offered a death mask as a gift to the city to New Orleans.
According to museum staff Antommarchi carried out Cuba’s first cataract operation and collaborated with a Cuban scientist on yellow fever, before succumbing to that disease himself and dying in Santiago in 1838. The room with the mask also houses Napoleon’s pocket watch, stopped at the time of his death and a Napoleonic era bed. (The bed did not belong to Napoleon, but the bedcover did.)
This museum and its collection are well-worth a visit, particularly if you are interested in Napoleon (obviously). The house alone (which used to belong to Cuban-Italian diplomat Orestes Ferrara) is beautiful and you’ll be able to glimpse some views of Havana from on high. If you do make it, definitely ask the museum staff questions — it’s their knowledge of the place which made my visit so interesting.
