TROPHY OF CONQUEST: THE MUSÉE NAPOLÉON AND THE CREATION OF THE LOUVRE byCecil GouldReview by: F. J. B. WATSONJournal of the Royal Society of Arts, Vol. 113, No. 5105 (APRIL 1965), pp. 373-374Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and CommerceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41367828 .

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APRIL 1965 NOTES ON BOOKS

forte is perhaps the ability, rather rare in art-historians, not merely to plot his subject's position in the complex web of history in relation to other artists, events, movements of thought and belief, but to disengage from that web, to identify and define, Rembrandt's uniqueness and essential difference from all other painters. The final chapter deals with style and technique. While there are points of interpretation and opinion on which one may disagree, and perhaps even on occasion feel that subjective interpretation (particularly of individual works) is presented too much as though it were a statement of objective fact, an admirable lucidity and a masterful common sense inform the whole.

DAVID PIPER

TROPHY OF conquest: the musée napoleon and the creation of the louvre. By Cecil Gould. London , Fab er, 1965. 28 s net

The Musée Napoléon was without any question the most dazzling assemblage of masterpieces ever brought together in a single place. This remarkably interesting book is an account of its creation, largely by military conquest. The story of Napoleon's art pillages has, of course, often been discussed but generally only in highly specialized detail in historical periodicals and in French. There has been no continuous narrative account in English before Mr. Gould's, and indeed none in French since Saunier 's rare Les Conquêtes Artistiques de la Revolution , published over sixty years ago and factually out of date to-day.

The plunder of works of art had, of course, been an accompaniment of war since the beginning of civilization, but never before had such looting been deliberately planned and systematically organized, nor the theft of works of art justified on ethical and historical grounds. Even before the Italian campaign was launched in 1796 the Abbé Grégoire, in many ways an enlightened man who did much to minimize Revolutionary vandalism, declared that 'the removal of the Apollo Belvedere and the Farnese Hercules would be the most brilliant conquest'. In a letter addressed by Thouin, one of the commissaires appointed for the sacking of Italy, to the First Consul, he specifically claims that the French spoliations were the reward of military virtue triumphing over decadence, and likens them to the removal by the Romans of the finest sculptures from Greece. In further emulation of classical practice the major loot arriving from Italy in 1799 was intended to be carried through Paris in the manner of a Roman triumph.

Mr. Gould links his fascinating story of plunder with the opening of the Louvre as a museum, a project which had long been discussed under the ancien régime but which only the high-minded enthusiasm and energy released by the Revolution brought to fruition. There is little doubt that the interest awakened by the new museum provided a powerful impulse to the spoliations. The first almost amateur looting, resulting from the conquest of Flanders in i794> brought in an astonishing assemblage of Rubens' works, delivered just a year after the Louvre opened its doors. Thereafter even greater care was taken and a cadre of throughly informed experts accompanied the army of Italy. Later the sacking was personally supervised by that remarkable man Vivant Denon. This ci-devant aristocrat and dilettante who became Napoelon's principal adviser on the arts, was a man of great intelligence, infinite resource and unusually catholic taste. It was due to him that the Musée Napoléon came to house not only an amazing galaxy of the greatest masterpieces of Raphael, Rubens, the Bolognese masters and Hellenistic sculptures which were the most admired works of the day, but also included important Italian primitives and early Renaissance works which were by no means highly regarded then. The only serious error of judgement Mr. Gould can charge him with is his omission to remove Frederick the Great's Watteaus from Berlin. But the reason for this is plain. Watteau more than any artist was closely associated in the public mind with the supposed

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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS APRIL 1 965

frivolity of pre-Revolutionary days. Although Denon personally admired Watteau, and indeed owned the Gilles, he had learned this a few years earlier. When he attempted to buy Watteau' s Venus and Cupid at auction, the Parisian crowd became so menacing that he had to desist and see the painting sold to an Englishman for the next insignificant bid.

The nemesis which befell Napoleon's vainglorious collection is the best known part of Mr. Gould's narrative. The British played a leading rôle in the return of the works of art to their rightful owners, and accounts of the carrying out of this act (which was resisted with everything short of violence by the defeated French) are to be found in numerous contemporary English memoirs. It is perhaps less well known that of the 506 major works seized from Italy no less than 248 still remain in French museums.

There is, however, another aspect to this gripping though morally disagreeable tale of ill-gotten gains and inadequate restitutions which Mr. Gould does not mention, for it is outside his terms of reference. It seems only just to put it on record here. The Commission de Commerce et ď Approvisionnement, a parallel body to the art Commission and set up for the economic exploitation of the occupied territories, is referred to by Mr. Gould in passing. What he does not note is that it is almost entirely due to the activities of this body that England is so outstandingly rich in the finest French furniture and objects of art of the eighteenth century. Moreover, these things, alienated by the Commission in exchange for commodities needed by the bankrupt republic, were purchased and not pillaged, so that our moral right to them is unquestionable, however regrettable their absence from French museums may be.

F. J. B. WATSON

THE GENIUS OF JOHN RUSKiN. Selections from His Writings. Edited by John D. Rosenberg. London , Allen & Unzvin, 1964. 455 net

THE PAINTER OF MODERN LIFE AND OTHER ESSAYS BY CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. Translated and edited by Jonathan Mayne. London , Phaidon , 1964. 345 net

There is a slight danger that these works may be confused with previous productions of their editors. Mr. Rosenberg published in Ï961 a revaluation of Ruskin under the title The Darkening Glass: A Portrait of Ruskin9s Genius. In The Genius of John Ruskin he provides, as it were, a first reader in the master's writings. He feels, quite rightly, that many people are discouraged by the sheer disorganized bulk of Ruskin' s texts from even embarking upon their perusal. His selection ranges widely over his subject's interests and styles, which he classifies under such headings as Art, Society, Self.

Mr. Mayne, the editor of the present volume of Baudelaire's criticism, was awarded the Denyse Clarouin translation prize for his former volume, The Mirror of Art. The Painter of Modern Life appears in a larger format - many people will regret the passing of the Phaidon 's thin paper octavoes - and is the first of two which will contain the whole of Baudelaire's criticism. Some re-arrangement of the material has accompanied this change, and whilst the translations of the title essay on Guys and of those on Wagner and Poe appear for the first time, those on Delacroix and the caricaturists have already been seen in The Mirror of Art.

Until recently it was the custom to say that, in matters of art criticism, Baudelaire was never wrong and Ruskin almost never right. The simultaneous appearance of these two books gives a welcome opportunity for reassessing this drastic judgement. As Mr. Mayne records in his Introduction, some doubts have lately been cast upon the accuracy of Baudelaire's taste; but, in a balanced summary of the conventional and the adverse view he fairly concludes that 'he seldom failed to discern greatness, or even ť 'importance", where it existed'. Mr. Rosenberg does not face up so squarely to Ruskin's impugned capacity for sound judgement. Indeed it is not possible to

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