The Legacy of Napoleon’s Looting
This post gives a small handful of examples of some of the artworks which were taken by the French during the Napoleonic wars and never returned to their original owners. It is important to note that there are also many works that have been returned from France, as well as the fact that France certainly is not the only country guilty of looting. One of the items on the list below also now resides in the National Gallery, which has responsibility for it and it is, for lack of a better term, ‘out of France’s hands’. Whether or not the National Gallery should return something which has been through many owners before them is debatable and resources for learning more about repatriation are suggested at the end of this text.
Whilst researching these paintings I looked at the web pages of their current addresses. Namely The Louvre, the National Gallery in London and the Beaux-Arts de Tours in France. The information offered by the museums is interesting, namely in the deficient and vague language used.
For example, the information provided for the Madonna Della Vittoria (given the longer title of La Vierge et l’Enfant entourés de six saints (Michel, André, Longin, Georges, Élisabeth, le jeune saint Jean Baptiste) et adorés par Francesco II Gonzaga, dit La Vierge de la Victoire.). On the Louvre’s page for the Madonna, next to ‘Object History’ we are simply given ‘In place, until 1797; removed and taken to the Louvre, 1798’ and the method of acquisition is listed only as ‘military conquest’. Is the lack of specificity intentional? Why have the Louvre not told us who removed the piece and offered it to them? Or which military conquest it was and how exactly this conquest contributed to the acquisition? The Wedding at Cana’s page reads the same and in the Louvre itself, as of 2020, the text next to the painting claims that it came to the museum as a “revolutionary capture”.
Phillip IV in Brown and Silver is given a long description on the National Gallery’s website, including information on its subject and the artist but in regard to acquisition and previous owners, we are just told the date of when the National Gallery bought it and a small list of previous British owners.
La Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours offers slightly more information in that they tell us Resurrection was requisitioned from Italy in 1797 by the French commissioner Claude Louis Berthollet.
There is a wider discussion to be had about the nature of ‘stolen’ art and what constitutes as stolen. The usual idea is something that is taken by force but it is important to think about whether something which is signed over in a ‘treaty’, where one party is an aggressor, can be seen to be lawful. A ‘legal’ transaction made in a war-torn country may also be seen as unjust and unethical.
You can learn more about Napoleon’s cultural conquest, the origins of the Louvre and stolen and art repatriation from the following sources:
Plunder: Napoleon’s Theft of Veronese’s Feast (2021) by Cynthia Saltzman looks in detail at Napoleon’s art plundering campaign and the origins of the Louvre.
Trophy of Conquest: The Musée Napoléon and the Creation of the Louvre (1965) by Cecil Gould.
Napoleon’s appropriation of Italian cultural treasures, an article by Cynthia Prieur, accessed at https://smarthistory.org/napoleon-italy-culture-looting/.
Mapping the Limits of Repatriable Cultural Heritage: A Case Study of Stolen Flemish Art in French Museums, an article by Paige S. Goodwin for the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. Accessible via JSTOR with a subscription or university login.
