THE FALL OF NAPOLEON AND RECOVERY OF THE STOLEN ART WORKS

On June 18, 1815, the Battle of Waterloo signaled Napoleon’s final defeat and the end of the Napoleonic era. After his fall, the Congress of Vienna (1815) re-established the old pre-Napoleonic kingdoms (Restoration) in Europe. However the “new king” of France, Louis XVIII, had stated in Parliament that works of art belonged to France “by a stronger law than the right of war”. Nevertheless,  despite a cooling of Allied disposition following the Waterloo defeat,  during the Vienna Congress the restitutions were treated as the object of negotiations rather than seen as an obligation.

Furthermore, each of the countries concerned, negotiated for themselves without following a common strategy or direction, in order to regain as much as possible of what had been expropriated. Since the collaboration of the Louvre Museum was necessary for the recovery of the seized assets, Dominique Vivan-Denon (director-general of museums and head of the new Musée Napoléon) benefitted greatly, since he as general manager was among the few to have the complete picture of what had entered France by way of the requisitions.  The country which sided decisively in favor of restitution was England, in the person of  the Foreign Minister Viscount Castlereagh and the Duke of Wellington, (Napoleon’s vanquisher at Waterloo). Both rushed to support the rights of nations deemed less defended, such as the Netherlands and the Papal States which were the ones that had in fact suffered the greatest losses. Wellington, as shown in a letter sent to Castlereagh and published in the French press, even sent his troops to the Louvre Museum, ordering his men to remove Flemish and Dutch paintings from the walls. As for the Vatican, British collaboration went as far as covering transport costs without accepting the offer of various antiquities as a sign of gratitude.

Antonio Canova was appointed in 1802 by pope Pius VII Chiaramonti as “General Inspector of Antiquities and the Arts”, and it was he who acted as mediator for the Vatican. On 2 October 1815 the great artist began to examine the works stolen in Rome and the Papal States. The prestige enjoyed by the very famous sculptor among the sovereigns of Europe – not at all challenged by the sarcasm of Minister Talleyrand, who called him “monsieur l’emballeur” – and his undisputed professional competence allowed him to do an excellent job. The recovery, however, was partial, sometimes because he was hindered due to dimensions, other times in order not to further exacerbate already tense relationships

The Austrian government instead dealt with what had been stolen from Lombardy and Veneto: one of the most delicate operations being the recovery of the Horses of San Marco, which had been hoisted on the “Arc de Triomphe” in the Carrousel Square in Paris. The removal of such an important symbol of Napoleonic power threatened to provoke protests from the population and was therefore carried out at night, preventing access to the square in order to avoid disorder.

On the part of French intellectuals very few voices condemned the arrogant policy of theft imposed by Napoleon: but at least one rose in a passionate defense of the rationale of the vanquished. It was that of Antoine Quatremère de Quincy, who in “Lettres à Miranda”, an almost clandestine work released in 1796 while the author was in prison, vehemently exposed his dissent. The interlocutor is the Venezuelan general, Francisco de Miranda, who had fought for the independence of his country and had participated in the French Revolution. Quatremère entrusted to him his reflections on the illegitimacy of requisitions in an ardent defense of the conservation of works of art in places of origin: “dividing is destroying” because “the assembled objects light up and explain each other” . Rome is seen “as a whole” not only for its objects but also for its places and atmospheres, and some are inseparable from others.

                CONSEQUENCES OF THE RECOVERY OF THE NAPOLEONIC ART

 With the recovery of seized works of art, there emerged a new sentiment within the offended states: an awareness of belonging to a nation of artistic heritage, one which was the foundation of their cultural identity. Therefore the concept of aesthetic, academic or economic value traditionally attributed to works of art, was overcome and these now became considered as assets linked to the Nation.

Excerpt from:  Maria Teresa Fiorio, Il museo nella storia,   Pearson, 2018,  pp 81-83

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