Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 1

by H. Sutherland Edwards

The French Museum, as the Louvre collection was first called, received afterwards the name of Central Museum of the Arts; and it was first opened to the public on the 8th of November, 1793. The next decree in connection with the fine arts ordered that a number of pictures and statues formerly belonging to the palace of Versailles, and which the inhabitants of Versailles were detaining as their property, should be placed in the Louvre. The old palace was still inhabited by a number of artists and their families. David had his studio there, and most of the painters who had made for themselves a tolerable reputation had apartments in the Louvre. It was reserved for Napoleon to turn them all out, and to give to the Louvre the character which it has since preserved—that of a national palace of art treasures.

The galleries of the Louvre profited greatly by the Napoleonic wars. All continental Europe was laid under contribution by the victorious French armies, but especially Italy and Spain.

The stolen pictures formed the best part of what was now called the Musée Napoléon. Though not surreptitiously obtained they had been acquired in virtue of conventions imposed on a conquered people. Thus pictures from the galleries of Parma, Piacenza, Milan, Cremona, Modena, and Bologna, were made over to France by the armistices of Parma, Bologna, and Tolentino. The public was admitted to view the conquered treasures on the 6th of February, 1798. Some months afterwards masterpieces from Verona, Mantua, Pesaro, Loretto, and Rome were added to the marvellous collections; which on the 19th of March, 1800, was further augmented by drafts of pictures from Florence and Turin. In 1807 France received the artistic spoils of Germany and Holland.

Among the famous works of art which France at this time possessed, and which were all on exhibition at the Louvre, may be mentioned “The Belvedere Apollo,” “The Laocoon,” “The Medicean Venus,” “The Wrestlers,” “The Transformation” and “The Spasimo”; Domenichino’s “Communion of St. Jerome,” Tintoretto’s “Miracle of St. Mark,” Paul Veronese’s four “Last Suppers,” and Titian’s “Assumption”; Correggio’s “St. Jerome” and Guercino’s “St. Petronilla”; “The Lances” of Velasquez, and the “St. Elizabeth” of Murillo; Rubens’ “Descent from the Cross,” and Rembrandt’s “Night Patrol.”

The French say with some justice that many of these works by being sent to the Louvre were saved from destruction. Many of them, too, though falling into decay, were restored with the greatest care; and some were transferred with success from worm-eaten panels to canvas, thus receiving new brilliancy and a new life. When Paris was occupied by the allies in 1814, the art treasures of which so many European countries had been despoiled were left in the possession of the French, who may be said on this occasion to have been magnanimously treated. The object, indeed, of the allies was not to weaken nor to humiliate France as a nation, but simply to restore Louis XVIII. to the throne of his ancestors.

In 1815, after the return from Elba and the Waterloo campaign, it was determined to treat France with a certain severity. She was deprived of the Rhine provinces for the benefit of Prussia, while Milan and Venice were placed in the hands of Austria, so that both from the Italian and from the German side France might be held in check. The artistic plunder which France had collected from so many quarters was at the same time {204} given back to the countries from which it had been taken.

French statesmen protested that the pictures and statues brought to Paris from so many foreign picture galleries belonged to France in virtue of formal treaties and conventions; Louis XVIII. himself declined to sanction the restoration of the captured pictures and statues. Denon, Director-General of Museums, resisted even when threatened with imprisonment in a Prussian fortress; and he made the foreign commissaries sign a declaration to the effect that in giving up the works claimed he yielded only to force.

The so-called spoliation of the Louvre was at last effected. The pictures and statues, that is to say, which had been seized by victorious France, were from vanquished France taken back and replaced in the museums to which they had originally belonged.

Since the fall of the First Empire the Louvre has acquired but few masterpieces from abroad. Italy now guards her art treasures with a jealous hand; and there are few countries where the masterpieces of antiquity can be purchased except when some private gallery is broken up through the bankruptcy or death of the owner. Under the new monarchy the beautiful though armless Venus of Milo was brought to France; and under the Second Empire “The Conception” of Murillo was purchased for 615,000 francs. The Third Republic, under the presidency of M. Thiers, spite of its difficulties in connection with the crushing war indemnity, paid 206,000 francs for a fresco by Raphael. The regular annual allowance to the Minister of Fine Arts for the purchase of pictures is now 100,000 francs a year. Meanwhile, the Louvre collection has been constantly augmented by pictures transferred to the more classical museum from the gallery of pictures by living artists in the Luxembourg.

The pictures exhibited at the Louvre are arranged on a system which leaves nothing to be desired. The supreme masterpieces of the collection are all together, without reference to school, nationality, or period, in a large square room known as the Salon Carré. In the other rooms the pictures are arranged historically.