Napoleonic looting of art

• 1. Introduction

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  Napoleonic looting of art was announced to the world on the 27th and the 28th of July 1798, when Paris staged a triumphal procession. Moving through the streets were the Horses of Saint Mark, the Apollo Belvedere, and the Venus de' Medici. The Discobolus and the Laocoön group followed. Nine Raphaels, two Correggios, exotic animals, and Vatican manuscripts completed the convoy. Commemorative prints fixed the parade's motto for posterity: La Grèce les ceda; Rome les a perdus; leur sort changea deux fois, il ne changera plus. Greece has fallen; Rome is lost; their luck changed twice, it won't change again.

  The seizures had begun around 1794 and would continue until the Congress of Vienna in 1815 ordered the works returned. What compelled a republic founded on liberty to strip the art of an entire continent? Who resisted, and on what grounds? And when the peace finally came, how much of it could actually be put back?

• 2. The Ideology of Seizure

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  Bishop Henri Gregoire told the French Convention in 1794 that the Apollo Belvedere and the Farnese Hercules should be the "most brilliant conquest" of French armies entering Italy. He insisted that Greek masterpieces had no business decorating "a country of slaves" and that the French Republic should be their "final resting place."

  Nord Jacques-Luc Barbier-Walbonne, a Hussar lieutenant, proclaimed before the National Assembly that the works had remained "soiled too long by slavery." He described them as "brought to the homeland of arts and genius, to the homeland of liberty and sacred equality: the French Republic." French officials also cited the right of conquest, Enlightenment ideals of encyclopedism, and the "scientific cosmopolitanism" of the Republic of Letters. All of these arguments positioned the seizures as rescue, not theft. The French Republic still held Haiti as a slave colony at this same moment. Defenders of the policy chose not to raise that fact.

  Not everyone in France accepted the argument. Quatremère de Quincy, a student of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, began arguing against art appropriation in 1796. He urged scholars to "turn to the ruins of Provence, investigate the ruins of Arles, Orange, and restore the beautiful amphitheater of Nîmes" instead of looting Rome. Uprooting art from its original context, he believed, would destroy its authentic meaning. His views were a minority in France.

  Conquered peoples made similar appeals. Popular protests erupted in occupied Belgium against art expropriation, and the Central and Superior Administration of Belgium tried to block French acquisitions outright. In Florence, the director of the Uffizi argued that the galleries' collection already belonged to the people of Tuscany, not to the Grand Duke who had signed treaties with the French. A French official, Charles Nicolas Lacretelle, warned that taking Italian art in excess would push Italians toward Habsburg rule. That caution went largely unheeded, and the commissions sent to Italy would prove among the most systematic in the entire campaign.

• 3. The Savant System

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  In November 1802, First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte appointed Vivant Denon director of the Louvre, the museums of Versailles, and the royal castle collections. Known as "Napoleon's eye," Denon continued to travel with French military expeditions to Italy, Germany, Austria, and Spain to select artworks personally. He improved the Louvre's layout and lighting to encourage comparisons between plundered pieces. He also, as sources describe, "deployed flattery and duplicity" to gain further acquisitions, even against Napoleon's own wishes.

  Denon was not the first to organize the acquisition of foreign art. The French Directory had earlier established "savant" commissions, exemplified by the Commission des Sciences et des Arts. These commissions deployed experts into the field alongside the armies, designed to reconcile imperial tribute with Enlightenment ideals. Their specialized knowledge allowed French forces to identify genuine Old Master works and distinguish them from copies. Peace treaties backed the commissions' work, with some clauses requiring the delivery of artworks and others imposing acquisitions as tribute from foreign nobles.

  Jean-Baptiste Wicar was among the earliest of these expert selectors. Drawing on his experience cataloging the art collections of Italian duchies, Wicar chose which paintings would be sent to Paris from 1797 to 1800. The Chaptal Decree of 1801 then organized what arrived: works of greater merit went to the Louvre, while less important pieces were distributed among new French provincial museums in Lyon, Marseille, Reims, Tours, and Arles.

  In 1798, the Louvre exhibited a painting by Pietro Perugino that was only half restored, so the public could see the repairs in progress. French restorers were simultaneously devising methods to peel frescoes from Italian walls. They argued that detaching a mural was no different from moving a wooden altarpiece.

• 4. Italy's Losses

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  Over 110 artworks were brought to France in 1796 alone, the first year of Napoleon's Italian campaign. Regions that actively resisted the French, such as Parma and Venice, had the transfer of artworks written directly into the terms of their surrender. The practice reached across multiple treaties. The Armistice of Cherasco, the Armistice of Bologna, and the Treaty of Leoben all contained clauses requiring the delivery of art. The Treaty of Tolentino and the 1797 Treaty of Campo Formio went further, transferring artworks from Austria and the former Venetian Republic to France.

  At the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, commission member Jacques-Pierre Tinet arrived while fighting still raged at Castello Sforzesco in May 1796. He took Raphael's preparatory drawings for The School of Athens fresco at the Vatican. Along with them went 12 drawings and the Codex Atlanticus of Leonardo da Vinci. He also seized precious illuminated manuscripts of the Bucolics of the Virgin. Five landscapes by Jan Brueghel, originally placed in the Ambrosiana in 1673 for Carlo Borromeo, went as well.

  On the 14th of October 1796, Napoleon entered Modena with two new commissioners, Pierre-Anselme Garrau and Antoine Christophe Saliceti. Three days later, they shipped 1,213 items from the ducal collections. These included 900 bronze imperial Roman coins, 124 coins from Roman colonies, and 10 silver coins. Also shipped were 31 shaped medals, 44 coins from Greek cities, and 103 Papal coins. All were sent to the Bibliothèque nationale of Paris, where they still reside.

  In February 1797, Napoleon's wife Joséphine took up residence at the Ducal Palace of Modena. She took around 200 cameos and precious stones, in addition to those already secured by her husband. In Rome, French general Mathurin-Léonard Duphot was accidentally shot and killed outside the French embassy in December 1797. French armies then occupied the city, exiled Pope Pius VI, and established the short-lived Roman Republic. Officials fused Vatican medals of gold and silver for easier transportation. In 1800, they attempted to remove the Deposition by Daniele da Volterra from the Orsini chapel of Rome's Trinità dei Monti church. The stacco a massello technique they used undermined the chapel walls, and the removal had to be halted to prevent a collapse. The mural was never sent to Paris. One general also proposed removing Trajan's Column and shipping it to France in pieces. The cost of transportation and obstacles created by the Church halted that plan as well.

  Sculptor and papal diplomat Antonio Canova later compiled a catalog of Italian paintings taken to France. His count covered the years 1796 to 1813, drawn from French sources. Of 506 works taken, 249 were eventually returned, 248 remained in France, and 9 were lost entirely. Canova himself never asked for 23 paintings dispersed throughout the French provincial museums, offering that restraint as a gesture of goodwill.

• 5. Venice's Destruction

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  Scientists Monge and Berthollet, along with artist Jean-Simon Berthélemy and commission member Tinet, led the French search for Venetian artworks. After the defeat of the Venetian Republic, several revolts broke out against the occupying armies. The resulting reprisals were particularly harsh. Around 30,000 works of art were sold or went missing. Religious orders were abolished, and some 70 churches were demolished.

  Gold and silver works from the Zecca of Venice and the Basilica di San Marco were melted down. Some were sent to France; others paid soldiers' salaries. The Bucintoro, the Venetian state barge, was taken apart along with all its sculptures. Most were burned on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore to extract their gold leaf. The Arsenal of Venice was dismantled, and more than 5,000 cannons were melted down. The finest arms, armour, and firearms were shipped to France for the collection of the Musée de l'Armée.

  Paolo Veronese's The Wedding at Cana was cut in two and sent to the Louvre, where it remains. The San Zeno Altarpiece by Andrea Mantegna was also cut apart. Its platform panels remain at the Louvre, while the principal panel was returned to Verona, permanently destroying the work's integrity. Giovanni Battista Gazola's renowned fossil collection from Mount Bolca was confiscated in May 1797. It was deposited in the Museum of Natural History in Paris that September. Gazola was retrospectively compensated with an annuity from 1797 and a pension from 1803. He created a second collection of fossils. That collection was also confiscated and brought to Paris in 1806.

• 6. Beyond Italy

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  In September 1794, three paintings by Peter Paul Rubens arrived in Paris from Antwerp. They were accompanied by around 5,000 books from the University of Leuven. The Louvre eventually received around 200 Flemish old-master paintings, including 55 by Rubens and 18 by Rembrandt. Jan van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece and 12 portraits by Hans Holbein the Younger also reached Paris. Marble columns from Aachen Cathedral were broken apart in transit and never reassembled.

  The French army's Egyptian campaign brought a contingent of 167 scholars, including Denon, mathematician Joseph Fourier, and scientist Gaspard Monge. Their studies produced the monumental Description de l'Égypte encyclopedia, finished in 1822. Most objects the French had taken from Egypt were lost to the British after the Battle of the Nile in 1798. The sarcophagus of Nectanebo II and the Rosetta Stone were among those sent to the British Museum instead.

  The Peace of Pressburg in December 1805 opened central Europe to French art seizures. Denon and his aides Count Daru and Stendhal moved through the Holy Roman Empire, Westphalia, and Prussia. At the gallery of Cassel, Denon selected 48 paintings initially, then ultimately over 299. En route, the Empress Joséphine saw the Cassel paintings at Mainz and persuaded Napoleon to send them to Malmaison as a gift. Stendhal collected over 500 illuminated manuscripts and the art collection of the deceased Cardinal Mazarin. Over a thousand paintings were taken from German and Austrian cities; Vienna alone yielded 400 art objects. Two large auctions were held in 1804 and 1811 to fund further French military expeditions.

  In Spain, during and after the Peninsular War, Denon selected works by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Francisco de Zurbarán, and Diego Velázquez. Most came from the Spanish royal collection, stored at the Prado in Madrid. At El Escorial palace, Marshal Jean-de-Dieu Soult claimed many Murillo paintings for himself. His private collection eventually made up a significant portion of the Louvre's "Spanish gallery" after his death. After the Battle of Vitoria in 1813, King Joseph abandoned an enormous baggage train of looted objects and fled. British troops captured almost 250 of the abandoned paintings. The Duke of Wellington sent around 165 to England. Ferdinand VII of Spain declined Wellington's subsequent offer to return them. The duke kept the paintings, and most are now on display at Apsley House.

• 7. The Struggle to Return

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  In July 1815, the Prussians did not wait for formal agreements. King Frederick William III ordered diplomat von Ribbentropp, art expert Jacobi, and reserve officer Eberhardt de Groote to deal with the returns directly. On the 8th of July, they demanded that Denon return all Prussian treasures. He refused, claiming the returns had not been authorized by Louis XVIII. Von Ribbentropp threatened to have Prussian soldiers seize the works and imprison Denon. By the 13th of July, all the key Prussian works were out of the Louvre and packed for travel.

  Denon wrote to Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord and the Congress of Vienna to protest Dutch requests for restitution. He argued that England had "stolen the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon" and was now competing with the Louvre. The French National Museum of Natural History refused the Netherlands' request for natural history artifacts, offering to send an "equivalent" collection instead. In the end, delegates from the Low Countries grew so impatient that they took their works back by force.

  Antonio Canova was sent by the Vatican on a diplomatic mission to the peace conference for the second Treaty of Paris in August 1815. He wrote letters to Wilhelm von Humboldt and Lord Castlereagh asking for their support. In September 1815, he met personally with Louis XVIII, which lessened French resistance to repatriations. By October, Austria, Prussia, and Britain had agreed to back Canova's efforts. The Duke of Wellington joined Prussian troops inside the Louvre to remove Flemish and Dutch paintings from the walls.

  The Horses of Saint Mark were returned to Venice in 1815. It took workers over a week to remove them from the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel. The streets around the Arc were blocked by Austrian dragoons to prevent any interference. On the 24th of October 1815, a convoy of 41 carriages set out escorted by Prussian soldiers, traveling to Milan. From there, artworks were distributed to their owners across Europe. By November, French general Athenase Lavallée reported that Spain had received 248 paintings, Austria 325, and Prussia 258 bronzes.

  Shortly before her death in 1814, Joséphine had given Russia's Emperor Alexander I the Gonzaga Cameo from the Vatican as a personal gift. He also acquired 38 artworks sold by her descendants to pay her debts, all sent to the Hermitage Museum. Alexander chose not to join the September 1815 agreement requiring the return of remaining works.

• 8. The Long Aftermath

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  From its opening in 1793, the Louvre had drawn artists and scholars from across Europe to see its collection. Among them were Charles Lock Eastlake, Henry Fuseli, Benjamin West, Maria Cosway, and J. M. W. Turner. English artist Thomas Lawrence expressed sorrow at its dissolution between 1814 and 1815, despite the injustices that had led to its creation.

  One account captured the paradox plainly. The Louvre had shown "for the first time that the artworks of the past, even if collected by princes, belonged in relation to their people." That principle shaped the public museums that followed. The Prado in Madrid, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, and the National Gallery in London were all founded following the Louvre's example. The 1815 Treaty of Paris set a nationalist precedent for future repatriations. Its conditions later shaped the recovery of Nazi-plundered art in the 20th century.

  Wescher also noted that returning the looted artworks had built "an awareness of national artistic heritages, an awareness that did not exist in the 1700s." The circulation of works during the Napoleonic era also increased the international renown of artists who had been little known outside their home regions.

  In 1994, the general director of the Italian Ministry of Culture judged conditions right for France to return The Wedding at Cana by Veronese. In 2010, Veneto official Estore Beggiatto wrote directly to French presidential spouse Carla Bruni urging the painting's return. It is still at the Louvre. Egypt has requested the repatriation of the Rosetta Stone, discovered by French soldiers in 1799 and captured by British forces two years later. In 2019, then-Antiquities Minister Zahi Hawass launched a campaign to have the Dendera zodiac returned to Egypt. It had been removed from the Dendera Temple complex in 1822 by Sébastien Louis Saulnier, after Vivant Denon had first identified it in 1799. The zodiac is on display in the Louvre today.