In September 1815, Karl von Müffling, the Prussian governor of Paris, appeared at the gates of the Louvre and ordered the French guards to stand aside.
Belgian and Dutch officials, supported by Prussian and British troops, had arrived to recover art treasures looted by the French during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.
This moment is recognized by many scholars as a sea change in political attitudes toward the spoils of war and is considered the birth of repatriation, the concept of returning cultural property confiscated in times of conflict to the countries from which it was stolen.
“It was universally accepted that the winners of a war could take what they wanted,” said Wayne Sandholtz, professor of international relations and law at the University of Southern California and author of the book “Prohibiting Plunder: How Norms Change.” “Now, for the first time, the allies demanded that the treasures be returned to them. »
The return of Napoleon’s loot is such a pivotal moment in art history that, 200 years later, it resurfaces again and again as debates over its repatriation continue.
Three years ago, an exhibition in Paris, “Napoleon,” at the Grande Halle de la Villette, focused on the French emperor’s vast loot and his efforts to recover it. Last year, at an exhibition on the looting at the Mauritshuis in The Hague, officials revealed that while Napoleon returned much of the Dutch art he stole, dozens more were never returned.
This fall, French art historian Bénédicte Savoy will give a series of lectures at the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid on the repercussions of the 1815 repatriations. The series, “The Return of Looted Heritage: 1815, the Dismantling of the Louvre, and the Renaissance of Museums in Europe,” will focus on the concept of restitution, its legal and moral foundations, and the ethics of creating encyclopedic museums filled with artifacts from around the world that educate—but at what cost?
Certainly, the Louvre’s reputation as a “universal” museum was enhanced by the seizures of the French army. But in 1815, as the soldiers of France’s adversaries stood by, sabres in hand, Paulus Potter’s “Bull” was removed from the museum’s walls, as were Peter Paul Rubens’s monumental triptych “The Descent from the Cross,” looted in Antwerp, and Jan and Hubert van Eyck’s altarpiece, “The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb,” taken from Ghent in 1794.
The French were particularly reluctant to restore “The Bull,” a large portrait of a bull with other farm animals – and visible droppings – that particularly appealed to the public.
This treasure, along with all sorts of other treasures, had been seized in 1795 from the art gallery of the Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic, Willem V, in The Hague, after the French revolutionary army had declared him a vassal. The pieces join large quantities of works of art that Napoleon would later collect during campaigns in Italy, Prussia and the Austrian Empire.
Today, the Allied coalition that had defeated him at Waterloo wanted his treasures back, and the Second Treaty of Paris established a new agreement making the restitution of works of art a principle of international law.
“They talked about a ‘cultural Waterloo,'” said Beatrice de Graaf, professor of international history at Utrecht University and author of “Fighting Terror After Napoleon.” “They wanted to inflict not only a military defeat on the French but also a cultural one, which meant: ‘They have to give us what is owed to us.'”
Defenders of encyclopedic museums, who oppose repatriation, argue that demands for return are motivated by nationalism and that the valorization of distant and vanished cultures is favored by the distribution of artifacts across the world. Those who want the repatriation of works of art and objects of art point out that European countries once applied the right of return – when it was their works of art that were at stake.
Museums in many countries have faced such a growing number of claims and returns that some experts have suggested for years that it may be time for a reset. Last year, two major museums, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Cleveland Museum of Art, balked at trying to seize works they said had not been looted.
As the debates continue, some scholars believe it is worth returning to the appearance of the Prussian governor at the gate of the Louvre.
“The French era was an imperial era; we can say that France colonized Europe,” said Savoy, professor at the Technical University of Berlin and co-author of a report on African art at the request of Emmanuel Macron for the French government in 2018. “So there are parallels with current discussions about looted art in Europe. colonial period”, African countries for example.
In 1815, the director of the Louvre, Vivant Denon, was not – to say the least – very favourable to the concessions made by government representatives to return the objects.
“The sullen fury of the French nation at the prospect of the museum’s dissolution was reflected in the behavior of the general director,” wrote historian Cecil Gould in his 1965 book, “Trophy of Conquest: The Musee Napoleon and the Creation of the Louvre. “He challenged every decision and almost every piece of art. »
Denon argued to the allies that the Louvre was the only museum capable of housing Europe’s artistic treasures.
De Graaf said the general director believed it was a true “universal gallery,” in his words, “an encyclopedia of art.” He tried to persuade people, de Graaf said, that rather than letting art “rot in your ‘dungeons and dens,’ it is better here in France.”
“He tried to convince the European powers,” she said, “that their works were in good hands.”
According to Quentin Buvelot, chief curator of the Mauritshuis, “they had taken care of these paintings, so they were convinced that they were the new and legitimate owners”. “As certain paintings have even been restored in France,” those responsible for French museums have developed a feeling of responsibility, he explained, adding: “This same type of argument was used in the 1990s when we asked museums to return Nazi loot.”
De Graaf said Denon was threatened with arrest and deportation to a prison camp, before taking a different position.
The French also took a hard line on other works of art. When the Italian sculptor Antonio Canova requested, in the name of Pope Pius VII, the restitution of the masterpieces confiscated in Rome and the Papal States, the French argued that the works had not been seized, but given to France in under the Treaty of Tolentino of 1797.
Canova argued that the armistice treaty had been signed under duress, or, as he put it, in the words “the wolf dictated to the lamb.” France countered that the terms were explicitly “binding in perpetuity.”
Canova returned to Italy empty-handed. He returned in 1815 and recovered some works thanks to the intervention of the Allies.
Napoleon’s acquisitive fervor was surpassed only by that of Adolf Hitler, some 150 years later. But around 80% of Napoleonic loot was returned, often in an announced manner.
When Potter’s “The Bull”, Rubens’ “The Descent from the Cross” and the Ghent Altarpiece were transported with other works to the Netherlands, they were received with great fanfare, like national heroes, says de Graaf.
“The return of a work of art has elevated its status as a symbol of cultural nationalism,” she said.
Denon was right at the time in asserting that Europe did not have large public museums similar to the Louvre. Some royal and princely collections in Florence, Vienna and Stockholm had been transformed into public museums in the 18th century, but many paintings and sculptures still adorned the cathedrals, palaces and town halls for which they were commissioned.
However, when Napoleon’s loot was returned, new museums were built to display these national treasures, Savoy explained. As a result, “a completely new geography of museums in Europe” emerged, she said.
Among these museums are the National Museum of Belgium, the Prado in Spain and later the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. “Some of them existed in a more modest form before the Napoleonic era, but they have now grown in size,” says Savoy.
William V’s collection was moved to a larger building in The Hague and turned into a public museum, the Mauritshuis Royal Picture Gallery. When the museum opened in 1822, Potter’s “The Bull” took pride of place, becoming as popular with the Dutch as it had been with the French, said Buvelot, the Dutch curator.
“From 1822, this was the painting to see in the Mauritshuis,” he added. “Until Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring came along. The fact that the painting remained in the Louvre for 20 years gave it much of its fame. »