Napoleon looted art as the booty of conquest. This was justified on the grounds that the confiscated works of art, were themselves being “liberated” into the Enlightenment values of the French Revolution. A mere nine days after the overthrow of the French monarchy, the Louvre was declared a public museum. The Louvre employed the most modern methods, to systematically catalogue and research its growing collection. Thus, further justifying the cultural dispossession of large swathes of Europe. Following the defeat of Napoleon, many of the works would be returned to their previous owners and many others would not. Examine how national cultural beliefs were used to justify the theft of art and how, even today, similar beliefs around Enlightened values are employed to justify both war, imperialism and cultural reappropriation / theft.
- Josephine and the Arts of Empire , ed. Eleanor P. DeLorme (J Paul Getty Museum: 2005)
- Barbara and Day-Hickman, Napoleonic Art: Nationalism and the Spirit of Rebellion in France (University of Delaware Press: 1999)
- Susan Jaques, The Caesar of Paris: Napoleon Bonaparte, Rome, and the Artistic Obsession that Shaped an Empire (Pegasus Books, 2018)
- Cynthia Saltzman, Napoleon’s Plunder and the Theft of Veronese’s Feast (Thames and Hudson: 2021)
- How had France historically seen itself, as defining culture in Europe since the 17th century? What influence did this have upon the military campaigns of Napoleon Bonaparte?
- We will explore how Napoleon and the French justified the looting of art as the result of conquest. How the use of the language of the Enlightenment and a belief in a so called progressive “liberation” of culture, framed their Imperialist discourse.
- We will examine specific works that came into the Louvre and how they were reappropriated from the Royal Palace of Versailles, aristocrats who had fled France following the French Revolution and from renowned collections of Europe’s conquered.
- We will conclude with Napoleon’s maternal uncle, Cardinal Joseph Fesch’s extensive art collecting. The remains of which survive in Corsica, the birthplace of Napoleon and the largest art collection in French territories outside of the Louvre.
By the end of this course, students should be able to:
- Understand how the visual arts were culturally framed in the context of power and political ideology
- Visually analyse a work of art from the period
