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Napoleon’s Legacy
The Development of National Museums in Europe
1794-1830
International conference
31 January - 2 February 2008
Universiteit van Amsterdam
Napoleon’s Legacy
The Development of National Museums in Europe
1794-1830
International conference
Organized by the Huizinga Research Institute of Cultural History (Amsterdam) and
the Institute for Museum Research (Berlin).
Thursday, 31 January - Saturday, 2 February 2008
Agnietenkapel, Oudezijds Voorburgwal 231 and
University Library (Doelenzaal), Singel 425, Universiteit van Amsterdam
The French Revolution and the subsequent Napoleonic Wars had a major impact
on European museums. Between 1794 and 1813 enormous quantities of
artworks, natural specimens, scientific objects, books and manuscripts from
collections in the conquered areas in Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Austria and
Spain were transported to Paris by the French armies. During a relatively short
period of 15 years the general public had the opportunity to admire an overview of
what, for the first time in history, might be labelled ‘European heritage’, exhibited
in the Louvre and the Musée d’histoire naturelle. These outstanding French
museums made a great impression on the visitors and (museum) officials from
abroad but at the same time evoked criticism and strengthened the need for the
countries which had been robbed of their artistic and scientific treasures to create
their own national museums. In this atmosphere it was only logical that after
Napoleon’s final defeat at Waterloo (1815) the Allied Powers reclaimed their
artistic and scientific collections. When some of the confiscated objects returned
to their places of origin, their arrival back home formed an extra stimulus for the
(re)institution of public museums, in Berlin, Brussels, The Hague, Madrid, Vienna,
Rome, Milan and Parma, for example.
The conference Napoleon’s Legacy. The Development of National Museums
in Europe, 1794-1830 focuses on this enormous shift in the European ‘museum
landscape’. The central question is: how did various European countries in this
period, stimulated by these confiscations and subsequent restitutions, design and
disseminate the image of a ‘national culture’ through their museums. By
employing an international comparative approach in studying this process it will be
possible to examine national variations against the background of international
patterns. This museological turning point will be addressed on three levels: the
‘looting’ process, the Paris museums, and restitution and after (see program).
PROGRAM
Thursday, 31 January
(Agnietenkapel)
Chair: Debora Meijers
17.00
Opening by FLORIS COHEN, chairman of the Huizinga Institute
17.15
ROBERT SCHELLER (professor emeritus Universiteit van Amsterdam):
Keynote lecture, The age of confusion
17.45
Introduction by ELLINOOR BERGVELT and LIESKE TIBBE
18.15
Welcome drinks
Friday, 1 February
(Doelenzaal)
09.00
Arrival/registration
Chair: Donna Mehos
Discussion: Elsa van Wezel
1. The ‘Looting’ Process
a. Criteria for Selection
09.30
DEBORA MEIJERS (Universiteit van Amsterdam)
The Dutch way of developing a national art museum: How crucial were
the French confiscations of 1795?
10.00
MARIA DE LOS SANTOS GARCÍA FELGUERA (Universidad Complutense
Madrid)
The looting of Spanish art and the first ideas about the creation of a
public museum in Madrid before the arrival of Napoleon’s army.
b. Protest or Acceptance?
10.30
FLORENCE PIETERS (Universiteit van Amsterdam)
The looting of natural history collections in the Netherlands.
11.00
Coffee/tea break
2. French Museums (Paris and its Satellites)
a. Conservation, restoration and modes of display
12.00
FRANS GRIJZENHOUT (Universiteit van Amsterdam)
A new experience: visiting the conservation studio.
12.30
Discussion
13.00
Lunch
Chair: Renée Kistemaker
Discussion: Lieske Tibbe
b. National/international reception
14.30
ANDREW MCCLELLAN (Tufts University, Medford)
Nationalism and nostalgia in British reactions to the Musée Napoléon.
15.00
HEIDRUN THATE (Paris)
The creation of French satellite-museums in Mainz, Geneva and
Brussels.
15.30
Coffee/tea break
16.00
MIRJAM HOIJTINK (Universiteit van Amsterdam)
Collecting Egypt in 19th-century Europe: a matter of national
distinction.
Discussion (until 17.00)
16.30
Saturday, 2 February
Doelenzaal/13.00 Agnietenkapel
09.30
Arrival/Registration
Chair: Frans Grijzenhout
Discussion: Ellinoor Bergvelt
3. Restitution and after
10.00
10.30
GIUSEPPE BERTINI (Università degli Studi di Parma)
Works of art from Parma in Paris during Napoleon’s time and their
restitution.
ANNIE JOURDAN (Universiteit van Amsterdam)
A national tragedy in Restoration France: the return of the foreign
works of art to their countries of origin.
11.00
Coffee/tea break
11.30
12.30
MONICA PRETI-HAMARD (Musée du Louvre, Paris)
“La destruction du musée est devenue un monument historique”: The
restitution of the works of art seen by the Louvre’s employees (18151816).
DONNA MEHOS (Amsterdam)
Transforming natural treasures into national heritage: retrieving
naturalia from the Paris museums
Discussion
13.00
Lunch
12.00
Chair: Mirjam Hoijtink
Discussion: Debora Meijers
14.00
15.00
ELSA VAN W EZEL (Institute for Museum Research, Berlin)
Denon’s Louvre and Schinkel’s Altes Museum: war trophy museum
versus peace memorial.
ADRIAN VON BUTTLAR (Technische Universität, Berlin)
The museum and the city – Schinkel’s and Klenze’s contributions to
the autonomy of civil culture.
Discussion
15.30
Coffee/tea break
14.30
Closing
Chair: Ellinoor Bergvelt
16.00
16.30
16.45
BÉNÉDICTE SAVOY (Technische Universität Berlin)
Displaced works of art c. 1800 and today’s discussions about
restitutions.
Concluding remarks by BERNARD GRAF, director of the Institute for
Museum Research, Berlin
Drinks (until 18.00)
For more information contact Sanja Zivojnovic: 0031 (0)20 525 3503;
[email protected].
SUMMARIES and PERSONALIA
● Ellinoor Bergvelt: Introduction to the conference program
ELLINOOR BERGVELT is associate professor at the Department of Cultural history of
Europe, University of Amsterdam, and a specialist on collections and museums,
and interior design. Her present research concerns British (national) museums
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and galleries in the 19 century. She is a member of the organizing team for this
conference, and is one of the coordinators of the research project National
Museums and National Identity, Europe and the United States, c.1760-1918.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
- Pantheon der Gouden Eeuw. Van Nationale Konst-Gallerij tot Rijksmuseum van
Schilderijen (1798-1896), Zwolle 1998 [Ph.D. study University of Amsterdam,
1998]
- Co-editor of De wereld binnen handbereik, Amsterdam 1992 (2 Vol.) (Exh. cat.
Amsterdams Historisch Museum, Amsterdam)
- ‘De Britse Parlementaire Enquête uit 1853. De “modernisering” van de National
Gallery in Londen’, in: Kabinetten, galerijen en musea. Het verzamelen en
presenteren van naturalia en kunst van 1500 tot heden, Ellinoor Bergvelt, Debora
J. Meijers, Mieke Rijnders (eds.), Zwolle 2005, [Ch. 12], 319-342
● Giuseppe Bertini: Works of art from Parma in Paris during Napoleon’s
time and their restitution
In Northern Italy the small duchy of Parma and Piacenza held a relevant position
in the world of the arts thanks to the presence of a high number of paintings by
Correggio, one of the most admired artists of all times, and to the artistic
patronage of the first rulers, the Farnese. The French selected 53 paintings for the
Paris museum in three different stages. In 1796 under a clause of the truce signed
with duke Ferdinand of Bourbon 15 paintings were sent to France. Particularly
painful for Parma was the loss of “La Madonna di San Gerolamo” by Correggio,
which the duke tried to avert by offering a large sum of money. In 1803 thirty
paintings were sent to Paris to represent the “second choice” masters and in 1811
Vivant Denon requested eight additional paintings, so that the primitive school
should be represented in the Paris museum.
The recovery for Parma of the works of art in 1815 was executed by the
diplomat Giuseppe Poggi, under the protection of the Austrian emperor, father of
the new ruler of the duchy, Maria Luisa d’Asburgo. He was assisted by a young
artist, the engraver Paolo Toschi, resident in Paris at that time. Only a fraction of
the paintings were returned (30), but the precious Correggios were among them.
The pictures returned were retained in the reorganized Galleria dell’Accademia:
pictures taken from Piacenza and from churches of Parma were not put back in
their original locations.
GIUSEPPE BERTINI taught Museology and History of Collections with a contract at
Parma University. He is at present an independent scholar.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
- La Galleria del Duca di Parma. Storia di una collezione, Bologna 1987
- Le nozze di Alessandro Farnese. Feste alle corti di Lisbona e Bruxelles, Milano
1997
- L’appartamento del Duca Ferdinando a Colorno dipinto da Antonio Bresciani,
Colorno 2000
● Adrian von Buttlar: The museum and the city – Schinkel´s and Klenze´s
contributions to the autonomy of civil culture
The growing civil autonomy of the arts becomes obvious in the process of
independence, by which collections and galleries in Germany already during the
eighteenth century were defined beyond courtly representation and step by step
physically dissociated from the structure of palace and castle. The Museum
Fridericianum in Kassel (1764), influenced by modern French and English ideas,
may be regarded as one of the first autonomous cultural Institutions primarily
addressed to the public – a role expressed not only by its neopalladian rhetoric
but also by its isolated and dominant position at the main square of the newly
planned Oberneustadt. In response to the Napoleonic enterprise Leo von Klenze
and Karl Friedrich Schinkel took up these special threads to create the prototype
of the modern art museum as an architectural and urbanistic challenge.
The lecture will follow up these monumental anti-napoleonic projects and
the urbanistic settings, Klenze created by his Glyptothek at the Königsplatz in
Munich (1815 et sqq.) and Schinkel by the Museum at Berlin`s Lustgarten from
1823 onwards. It will analyze the fading role of the monarch in favour of an
abstract idea of aesthetic and humanistic education and also pay attention to their
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exemplary function for the triumph of Museumbuilding during the 19 Century all
over Europe.
ADRIAN VON BUTTLAR is art historian and professor at the Technische Universität
Berlin, and specialized on architectural history from classicism to modernity, the
history of garden art, and on history, methodology and politics of Preservation. He
is acting as chairman of the Berlin Council for the Preservation of Historic
Monuments, and was (1999-2007) chairman of the Scientific Council for the
Foundation of Royal Castles and Gardens of Prussia. He is participating in the
Transatlantic Graduate Program Berlin-New York on the history and culture of the
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20 century metropolis. At present he is involved in the research and preservation
of outstanding architecture of the Post-war period.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
- Leo von Klenze. Leben – Werk – Vision,
München 1999 [orig.
Habilitationsschrift]
- Co-editor of Denkmal! moderne. Architektur der 60er Jahre – Wiederentdeckung
einer Epoche, Berlin 2007
● Maria de Los Santos García Felguera: The looting of Spanish art and the
first ideas about the creation of a public museum in Madrid before the
arrival of Napoleon’s army.
The first ideas on creating a painting gallery in Madrid came from the times of
Carlos III, in the 1770’s, with “enlightened” men like Mengs, Jovellanos, Ponz or
Ceán. In this circle a new sense of cultural heritage was awaking, and some rules
were dictated to protect it; it was also appearing the conscience of a Spanish
School of Painting, different from Dutch or Italian, and the need to show it to
visitors and learned people, by galleries and books. All before the French army
invaded Spain in 1808.
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Already in the 17 and 18 centuries the royal collections in Spain,
considered dynasty properties, served as enjoyment for the kings while giving
additionally prestige to them in front of other countries. Located in the royal
residences (like El Buen Retiro or El Alcázar in Madrid), they formed a real
“museum” at El Escorial, the most visited of all these palaces.
The ecclesiastical confiscation and the war removed lots of masterworks
from their original location. In this situation, some voices were raised to propose
the creation of a gallery; King Joseph, one of Napoleon Bonaparte’s brothers, also
tried to create a museum in 1809, but the conditions were not the best.
At last, with Fernando VII back in Spain in 1814, two different projects
can be considered, presented by Manuel Napoli and Pablo Recio. From different
points, one stresses the interest of the “nation” and the “public benefit”, and the
other places the Spanish School in a outstanding position in the museum.
MARIA DE LOS SANTOS GARCÍA FELGUERA is currently professor of Art History at the
University of Madrid (Universidad Complutense). After her dissertation in 1987
about La fortuna crítica de Murillo. 1682-1900 she has been researching the
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reception of Spanish art during the 18 and 19 centuries.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
- La fortuna crítica de Murillo. 1682-1900, Sevilla, 1989
- Viajeros, eruditos y artistas. Los europeos ante la pintura española del Siglo de
Oro, Madrid, 1991
- Las vanguardias históricas, Madrid, 1993
- El arte después de Auschwitz, Madrid, 1993
- Antoine Watteau, Madrid, 1995
- M. Santos García Felguera & Javier Portús, ‘Les origines du Musée du Prado’,
in: Manet Velázquez, la manière espagnole au XIXe siécle, Paris, Musée d’Orsay,
2002
- Manet/ Velázquez. The French Taste for Spanish Painting, New York, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2003
● Frans Grijzenhout: Visiting the conservation studio: putting words to
conservation
In this paper I want to argue, that restoration was not ‘invented’ as such during the
revolutionary period in France. It was, however, the first time that a specific
‘rhetoric of restoration’ was developed and disseminated from the part of
administrators, restorers, and the public. To research this topic, I want to
concentrate on the (scarce) reports we have at our disposal of those who visited
the conservation studios in revolutionary Paris. What were the main elements of
this new language of restoration? How did it relate to the language of art, art
history and the museum? And what were its effects on the debate on conservation
and restoration in the long term?
FRANS GRIJZENHOUT is art historian, particularly interested in the relationship
between art and politics, especially in the revolutionary period in France and the
Netherlands. At the University of Amsterdam he holds the chair of Cultural
heritage, conservation and restoration.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
- Cultureel erfgoed in revolutie en restauratie, Inaugural oration, University of
Amsterdam, Amsterdam (Amsterdam University Press) 2004. (With a summary in
French)
- ‘La fête révolutionnaire aux Pays-Bas: de l’utopie à l’indifférence’, in: La
Révolution Batave. Péripéties d’une République-Soeur (1795-1813) (Annales
Historiques de la Révolution Française, nr. 326 (octobre/décembre 2001)), 107116
- Een Koninklijk Museum: Lodewijk Napoleon en het Rijksmuseum 1806-1810,
Zwolle 1999 (Exh. cat. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.)
- F. Grijzenhout & N.C.F. van Sas, Denkbeeldig Vaderland. Kunst en politiek in
Nederland omstreeks 1800, Den Haag 1995 (Exh. cat. Haags Historisch Museum)
- ‘Le temple et la table, la fête patriote 1781-1787’, Annales historiques de la
Révolution française, nr. 277 (juillet-septembre 1989), 185-196.
- Feesten voor het Vaderland. Patriotse en Bataafse feesten 1780-1806, Zwolle
1989 (Dissertation Free University, Amsterdam, with a summary in French)
- F. Grijzenhout & C. van Tuyll van Serooskerken (eds.), Edele eenvoud. Neoclassicisme in Nederland 1765-1800, Zwolle 1989 (Exh. cat. Frans Halsmuseum
& Teylers Museum, Haarlem.)
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● Mirjam Hoijtink: Collecting Egypt in 19 -century Europe: a matter of
national distinction
Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt was military in its purpose but completely scientific
in its results. The Description d’Égypte […] was published in twenty-three
enormous volumes between 1809 and 1828. It was the most monumental
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publication of the 19 century. The project was the first in a series of events that
expressed the French intellectual and ideological appropriation of the Pharaonic
country. The monuments, collected directly after the French invasion, were
foreseen to illuminate the Louvre and to enter Paris in a triumphal procession in
the Hellenistic tradition of Alexander the Great.
This plan came to an end with the British destruction of the French fleet
in 1799. The Egyptian sculpture, steles with hieroglyphics, architectural decoration
and some sarcophagi were, together with the Rosetta Stone, captured by the
British and sent to London. In 1808 they were placed in the Townley Gallery that
originally was solely planned for the housing of the Graeco-Roman collection of
Sir Charles Townley. The mixture of collections was part of a process that was
steeped in national sentiments and ideas on the progress of civilization that the
British Museum represented, and came to a peak with the purchase of the ‘Elgin
Marbles’.
Both developments: a growing appreciation of Egyptian monuments and
the glorification of Greek heritage ran parallel to the devaluation of Roman culture.
The Vatican initiative for an Egyptian Museum in 1820, can therefore be
explained as an act of restoration and as a symbol of age-old cultural superiority.
In the Museo Egizio in the Vatican (1839), this was even put stronger as the
relation with Egypt was inextricably linked here to Roman history through the
ages. By stating that the Egyptianized style in Hadrian’s time marked the end of
the ‘Greek School’, the pope’s Egyptologist firmly declared retroactively the
Roman artistic development as an individual style, instead of the supposed
weaker brother of Athens.
‘Collecting Egypt’ between 1800 and 1840, can be understood in the
particular relations of individual nation states to France, either in a political
competitive, or, after Champollion’s deciphering of hieroglyphs, in a scientific,
artistic sense.
MIRJAM HOIJTINK teaches Museology at the University of Amsterdam.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
- ‘On the exhibition plans of Greek sculpture at Leiden’s early national museum of
antiquities (1818-1835)’, Pharos, Journal of the Netherlands Institute in Athens 10
(2002), 157-167
- ‘Een Rijksmuseum in wording. Het Archaeologisch Cabinet in Leiden onder het
directoraat van Caspar Reuvens (1818-1835)’, De Negentiende Eeuw 27 (2003),
225-238
- ‘Omwille van “de algemeene beschaving der natie”, Caspar Reuvens en het
onderwijs in de archeologie’, in: Loffelijke verdiensten van de archeologie, C.J.C.
Reuvens als grondlegger van de moderne Nederlandse archeologie, Hilversum
2007
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- in print: ‘The Urge to Exhibit. Etrurian and Egyptian collections in the early 19
century Vatican Museums in Rome’, Proceedings of the Round Table ‘Archaeoloy
and National Identity’, KNIR (Royal Dutch Institute Rome) February 2007, in:
Fragmenta, vol. 2, Rome (KNIR) 2008
- By the end of 2008 the dissertation with English summary on Caspar Reuvens
and the development of European Museums of Antiquities 1800-1840 will be
finished
● Annie Jourdan: A National Tragedy: The return of the works of art to their
country in 1815
During the French Revolution a new ideology arose concerning the fine arts. As a
result of the wild destruction of the 1790s, the French Convention and its
committees enforced a preservation policy in France and a spoliation policy in the
conquered countries. These policies should testify to the revolutionaries’ concern
for civilization and be a sign of patriotism. For them, works of art were to be seen
all together as a proof of the genius of Liberty and of the improvement of human
kind, but also as able to educate the people. With this aim in view, the finest
works of art were brought to France to be displayed in the National Museum: the
Louvre.
In 1814, after the campaign of France, the Louvre had reached its zenith.
But at that time, the victorious allies spared this artistic temple, so as not to
alienate the French from their new king and not to make the taste of defeat more
bitter. One year later, after Waterloo, it would be completely different. The
conquerors of 1815 required the restitution of all works brought to France since
1793. Not only Prussia and Austria were taking their paintings and antiques back,
but after them came the Italians; then the Dutch, the Bavarians, the Spanish. All
Europe was playing the game and the Louvre was to be cleaned out in some
months – to the great despair of the Parisians and of the Museum director, Vivant
Denon.
My aim here is to investigate the motives the allies were using for
explaining their policy. Could they use the same as the French? Or did they have
to find new ones? And if they did, what does it say about the allies’ traumas
experienced during the Revolution and the Empire?
ANNIE JOURDAN is associate professor European Studies of the University of
Amsterdam and specialized in Western revolutions of the 18th century and
Napoleonic Europe.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
- Les monuments de la Révolution, Paris 1997
- Napoléon. Héros, Imperator, Mécène, Paris 1998
- L'empire de Napoléon, Champs Flammarion 2000
- La Révolution. Une exception française?, Paris 2004
- Mythes et Légendes de Napoléon, Toulouse,2004
- In print:: La Révolution batave entre la France et l'Amérique (1780-1806)
● Andrew McClellan: Nationalism and Nostalgia in British Reactions to the
Musée Napoléon
During the brief Peace of Amiens in 1802-3 and then again after the fall of
Napoleon a decade later, British visitors journeyed to France in unprecedented
numbers. Paris was their destination, and once in the capital everyone went to the
Louvre. For many, the museum was the first port of call and primary reason for
making the voyage. Repeat visits were customary and triggered a consistent set
of responses. Everyone marvelled at the sublimity of the 1300-foot long Grand
Gallery and the masterpieces it contained; the sight left visitors rhetorically
speechless. Many commented on the extraordinary social mix of visitors. If praise
for the grandeur of the collection was universal, there was also broad
condemnation of its means of assembly; the use of treaty agreements to secure
art for the Louvre was viewed by Britons as a ruse to cloak “crimes under a less
ignominious name,” as one Henry Milton put it. Beyond political objections,
experienced art lovers insisted (following the argument first made by Quatremère
de Quincy) that works of art removed from their native environments had suffered
a damaging change of identity. They echoed Quatremère’s belief that the move to
a public museum had “killed art to make art history.” Of course, nineteenthcentury nationalism propelled the art museum movement across Europe despite
such complaints; but what became of the argument against the public museum?
ANDREW MCCLELLAN is professor of Art History and Dean of Academic Affairs at
Tufts University.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
- Inventing the Louvre. Art, Politics and the Origins of the Modern Museum in
eighteenth-century Paris, Cambridge 1994
- 'A brief history of the Art Museum Public', in: Andrew McClellan (ed.), Art and
its Publics. Museum Studies at the Millennium, Malden and Oxford 2003, 1-49
- The Art Museum from Boullée to Bilbao, University of California Press 2007
● Donna C. Mehos: In the Service of Science? Natural Treasures and
National Heritage
Soon after the defeat of Napoleon In 1815, the sovereign of the new Dutch
Nation, King Willem I, dispatched the professor and rector of the University of
Leiden, Sebald Justinius Brugmans, to the Muséum d’histoire naturelle in Paris to
retrieve the famed natural history collection of Holland’s Stadhouder Willem V.
This became a daunting task as Brugmans faced unexpected resistance and
months of difficult negotiations in Paris. Ultimately, he returned to the Netherlands
with approximately 10,000 objects. However, many specimens from Willem V’s
collection were not returned while the Stadhouder had never owned a great
proportion of the naturalia Brugmans accepted. Nevertheless, Brugmans was
hailed as a hero and the king rewarded his success in Paris by donating the
naturalia to the University of Leiden thereby enriching the modest teaching and
research cabinet under Brugmans directorship. Five years later in 1820, this
university cabinet was fused with other collections, and the Dutch nation founded
the Rijksmuseum of Natural History in Leiden marking a new period in national
institution building. It also signalled the beginning of decades-long conflict
between university naturalists—stripped of their cabinet--and museum authorities
over the use and control of the growing national collection.
In each context of ownership, this collection held different meanings and
values by its owners and curators. In this paper, I will explore changing
perceptions of the collection’s utility and scientific value during its travels across
Europe, in particular, when it entered the new national museum.
DONNA C. MEHOS is an independent historian of science, technology, and
medicine. Her research on the history of natural history has sparked her interest in
colonialism and collecting as well as in the circulation of experts, expertise, and
artefacts. Until recently, she was a senior researcher at the Eindhoven Technical
University, and project leader of Technology and the Civilizing Mission, funded by
the Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
- ‘Colonial Commerce and Ethnographic Collections: Dutch Ethnographic
Museums in the European Context’, in: A New History of Anthropology, ed. by
Henrika Kuklick, Oxford 2008 173-190
- Science and Culture for Members Only: The Amsterdam Zoo Artis in the
Nineteenth Century. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006.
● Debora Meijers: The Dutch way of developing a national art museum: how
crucial were the French confiscations of 1795?
For this first conference of our project we decided to focus on the episode of the
French confiscations and the subsequent restitutions, because these events seem
to have been a major stimulus for the foundation, after 1815, of national museums
all over Europe. My proposition, however, would be that for the Northern
Netherlands this only applies to a limited degree. The foundation of the Nationale
Konst-Gallerij in 1798 should be considered in the light of a number of local
traditions going back as far as the sixteenth century that produced a kind of
‘collection management’ by the municipal governments:
In the Dutch towns a form of museification had already developed after the
abolition of Catholicism in the 1560/70’s, when the confiscated goods of
churches and convents were rendered homeless. Many of these objects
were received in the town halls, forming collections that developed further
after the abolition of the civic guards and the guilds in the following
centuries. Thus in the Netherlands the first governmental museums (be it
avant la lettre) could be found in the cities, already in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries.
The Netherlands had been a republic since the 1580's.
Related, in part, to this political tradition, the Dutch Patriot movement
developed in the early 1780’s, several years before the French Revolution.
The French occupation and the foundation of the allied Batavian Republic in
1795 brought the Dutch Patriots to power. The first national museum in the
Netherlands, the Nationale Konst-Gallerij, originated in the context of this
political movement; it opened in 1800, therefore not as a result of the
restitutions as was the case in Berlin, for example.
Although the French only confiscated possessions of the Stadholder, I want to
argue in favour of an approach that also pays attention to the fate of the municipal
collections – especially the paintings. These collections, originating in a local
tradition, were attributed a national (even nationalist) meaning in the course of the
nineteenth century. It seems this process started around 1800, when, by the
reallocation of a number of paintings, the fate of two municipal collections – those
of Haarlem and Amsterdam – became related to that of the newly-founded
national museum in an interesting way. Its rather poor collection was upgraded by
fourteen highly-prized pieces from these cities, Rembrandt’s Nightwatch among
them.
Relocation of paintings from a local, municipal or regional frame of
reference to a national and international context (transportation to Paris) goes
hand in hand with the museification of the objects and their elevation to the status
of symbols for a ‘national identity’. This process should not be attributed solely to
the French confiscations and the subsequent restitutions between 1794 and
1815/16, but rather should be seen as a long term process, going back, in the
Netherlands, as far as the sixteenth century. But the impact of the French
Revolution and the Napoleonic wars certainly intensified and accelerated this
process enormously.
DEBORA J.MEIJERS is associate professor of Art History and leader of the Master
Program of Curatorial Studies at the University of Amsterdam. She has worked on
several topics relating to the history of collecting. She is a member of the
organizing team for this conference and one of the coordinators of the research
program National Museums and National Identity, Europe and the United States,
c. 1760-1918.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
- Kunst als Natur: die Habsburger Gemäldegalerie um 1780 (Vienna 1995)
- Co-editor of The Paper Museum of the Academy of Sciences of St Petersburg,
c. 1725-1760 (St Petersburg 2003 and Amsterdam 2005) [with Renée
Kistemaker, Natalja Kopaneva and George Vilinbakhov]
- Co-editor of Kabinetten, galerijen en musea. Het verzamelen en presenteren van
naturalia en kunst van 1500 tot heden (Zwolle 2005)
- In print: ‘Ein logischer Schritt im richtigen Moment. Wie beim Bildertausch von
1792 Systematik und Politik zusammengingen’, in: Johannes Weidinger, Nora
Fischer, Elisabeth Zerbst (Red.), Ein Tausch von Gemälden 1792 – 1793 [1821].
Zur Sammlungsgeschichte der fürstlichen Galerien in Florenz und Wien.
● Florence Pieters: The sequestration of natural history collections in the
Netherlands in 1794-1795
The geologist Barthélémy Faujas de Saint-Fond (1741-1819),
Professor of Geology at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in
Paris and one of the two commissioners charged with the research and
sequestration of objects of natural history in the countries conquered by
the French in 1794-1795, wrote a book on the natural history of the St.
Pieter’s mountain near Maastricht, entitled: Histoire Naturelle de la
montagne Saint-Pierre de Maestricht. It was published only three years
after his short visit to that region. In the book he narrates a thrilling
story about the sequestration of the huge head of a ‘petrified crocodile’
(now: the holotype of Mosasaurus hoffmanni Mantell, 1829) that is
demystified here.
In reality, the famous fossil was looted from his legal owner,
Dean Godding of the St. Servaes cathedral in Maastricht. This has
been proven by archival research in the National Archives in The
Hague, in which requests for restitution of the fossil by Godding’s heirs
can be traced, dating from 1814, 1816, and 1823. However, on 8
January 1827 a definitive answer came from the French Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, in consultation with the (still) present owners, the
administrators of the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle: “qu’en
dédommagement de cet objet d’histoire naturelle, ce chanoine avait
obtenu d’être exempté de la contribution de guerre qui avait été
imposée aux membres du chapitre de Maestricht.” This fact (as well as
some other facts mentioned in the letter) is unreliable, as it was again
taken from the implausible story in Faujas’ book. Moreover, the book
shows more inexactitudes, probably also because his stay in
Maastricht lasted only 22 days. Anyhow, up to the present the people in
Maastricht are anxious to obtain their famous Mosasaurus back for
their Museum of Natural History, instead of the replica made under the
supervision of Georges Cuvier himself (see e.g. M. Simons in: New
York Times, June 7, 1996) – which is fully justified, I think.
The other commissioner was André Thouin (1747-1824),
Professor of Culture (i.e. agriculture, horticulture etc.) at the same
Muséum. According to his biographer Yvonne Letouzey, he was an
honourable man who did most of the work – and he did it
conscienciously. Letouzey states that he is depicted with his cocommissioners on a famous painting by Adriaan de Lelie, now in the
Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, representing the collector Jan Gildemeester
Jansz. in his art gallery, dated 1794/1795.
For the remaining story about the fate of the natural history
cabinet and the menagerie of Stadholder William V with the two
Ceylonese elephants, see the relevant publications below.
Furthermore, in an article Sur l’accroissement des collections des
mammifères et des oiseaux du Muséum d’Histoire naturelle, Professor
of Zoology E. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire summarizes the growth of the
collection of the Muséum by the mission to Holland of MM. Thouin &
Faujas.
In 1814 the Muséum was freed from a threatening occupation
by Prussian troups (as happened in the Louvre) by intervention of
Alexander von Humboldt. In the same year, the emperors of Austria
and Russia and the king of Prussia came to admire the richesses
enclosed in the Muséum and to take information on its organisation, in
order to form analogue institutions in their homelands (Deleuze,
Histoire et description du Muséum Royal d’Histoire Naturelle, 1823, pp.
123-124). The story goes that by then also our future King William I
(son of William V) visited the Muséum and its menagerie, where he
was cheerfully saluted by the Indian elephant Parkie by swinging with
her trunk – she had recognized her former playmate!
FLORENCE F.J.M. PIETERS is biologist and recently retired as
conservator of the Artis Library, University of Amsterdam. She is
presently guest member of the staff of the Zoological Museum of
the University of Amsterdam. Her research is concentrated on the
history of Dutch collections of natural history.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
- (with Kees Rookmaker) ‘Arnout Vosmaer, topcollectioneur van
naturalia en zijn Regnum animale/ Arnout Vormaer, grand
collectioneur de curiosités naturelles, et son Regnum animale’, in:
Le zoo du Prince – La ménagerie du stathouder Guillaume V / Een
vorstelijke dierentuin – De menagerie van Willem V (B.C. Sliggers &
A.A. Wertheim eds.), Haarlem/ Parijs/ Zutphen 1994), 11-38
- ‘De menagerie van stadhouder Willem V op Het Kleine Loo te
Voorburg/ La ménagerie du stathouder Guillaume V dans la
domaine Het Kleine Loo à Voorburg’, in: Le zoo du Prince – La
ménagerie du stathouder Guillaume V/ Een vorstelijke dierentuin –
De menagerie van Willem V (B.C. Sliggers & A.A. Wertheim eds.),
Haarlem/ Parijs/ Zutphen 1994, 61-86
- ‘Het schatrijke naturaliënkabinet van Stadhouder Willem V onder
directoraat van topverzamelaar Arnout Vosmaer´, in: Het
verdwenen museum – Natuurhistorische verzamelingen 1750-1850
(B.C. Sliggers & M.H. Besselink eds.), Haarlem/ Blaricum 2002, 1944
● Monica Preti-Hamard: “La destruction du musée est devenue un
monument historique” (Destroying the Museum has Become a Historic
Monument): The Restitution of the Works of Art Seen by the Louvre’s
Employees (1814-1815)
A reading of the famous “Précis of What has Happened at the Musée Royal Since
the Arrival of the Allies in Paris” written by Vivant Denon during the year 1815, of
several reports concerning the reorganisation of the Louvre and written by the civil
servants of the French State, as well as various documents and testimonials, will
enable us, after the imperial experience, to follow the genesis of a new reflection
on the museum and its functions, confronted with the assertion of national
heritage values and the political changes that marked Europe at the time.
MONICA PRETI-HAMARD is Academic Program Coordinator of the Auditorium du
Musée du Louvre.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
- Co-editor of Collections et marché de l´art en France 1789 – 1848, Rennes 2005
- Co-editor of La circulation des oeuvres d’ art/ The circulation of works of art in
the Revolutionary Era: 1789 – 1848, Rennes 2007
● Bénédicte Savoy: Displaced works of art ca. 1800 and today’s discusion
about restitutions
BÉNÉDICTE SAVOY is assistant professor and director at the Institute of History and
Art History of the Technische Universität Berlin, and was a researcher at the Marc
Bloch Center in Berlin and at the Zentrum für Deutschlandforschung at Paris. She
has specialized in the exchange of art and science in Europe in the 18th and 19th
century, and in the history of museums and collections. She is a member of the
Junge Akademie at the Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften
and of the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
- Patrimoine annexé. Les biens culturels saisis par la France en Allemagne autour
de 1800, with preface by Pierre Rosenberg (2 Vols.), Paris 2003
‘Des musées nationaux aux vases antiques du comte de Paroy. Regards
allemands sur les collections parisiennes autour de 1800’, in: Philippe Sénéchal
and Monica Preti-Hamard (eds.), Collections et marché de l´art en France, 17891848, Rennes 2005, 387-405
- ‘Krieg, Wissenschaft und Recht. Die Erinnerung an Napoleons Kunstraub um
1915’, in: Osteuropa 56 (2006) (special issue Kunst und Kultur im Schatten des
Krieges)
- ‘Peintres berlinois à Paris 1800-1820 ‘: in: Marie-Claude Chaudonneret (ed..) :
Les artistes étrangers à Paris de la fin du Moyen Âge aux années 1920, Bern
2007, 57-176
- Editor of: Tempel der Kunst. Die Entstehung des öffentlichen Museums in
Deutschland. 1701-1815, Mainz 2006
● Robert W. Scheller: The Age of Confusion
It would be presumptuous to try to present an overview of art collecting between
1789 and 1815. Instead I will concentrate on two issues. The first concerns the
legitimacy of the confiscations of works of art. It transpires that contemporary
jurists were familiar with the notions regarding plunder and booty, first formulated
by Hugo Grotius in 1623.
In the second part I will address the complexities of museum
management, more especially regarding paintings, confronting the curators of the
French Republic and their successor Vivant-Denon during the Consulate and the
Empire. This may provide an insight into the tribulations that arose from the influx
of thousands of paintings and into the manner they were dealt with.
ROBERT W. SCHELLER is professor emeritus at the University of Amsterdam.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
- ´Der Zugang zum Kunstwerk: die Republik der Niederlande´, in: Akten des XXV.
Internationalen Kongresses für. Kunstgeschichte, Wien-Köln-Graz 1986, vol. 4,
63-71.
- ´La notion de patrimoine artistique et la formation du musée au XVIIIe siecle´, in:
Les musées en Europe à la veille de l´ouverture du Louvre, Paris 1995, 111-124.
- 'Art of the state: forms of government and their effect on the collecting of art
1550/1800´, Simiolus 24 (1996), 275-286.
● Heidrun Thate: The creation of French satellite-museums in Mainz,
Geneva and Brussels
On 31 August 1801, the First Consul of the French Republic, Napoleon
Bonaparte, received a report of his Minister of Interior Jean-Antoine Chaptal
recommending the creation of 15 picture galleries in the provinces of the French
Republic. The next day Bonaparte signed the decree, the ´Décret Chaptal´, which
was the act establishing the provincial museums in Rennes, Nancy, Dijon, Lyon,
Nantes, Strasbourg, Bordeaux, Lille, Rouen, Marseille, Toulouse, Caen and also
in Mainz, Geneva and Brussels. The last three are situated in the territories which
had been annexed in 1797. Considered at that time the most important cities in
the territories next to the border as regards strategic, political, demographic,
economic and cultural matters, they were assigned the obligation and the
responsibility to represent the supremacy of the French Republic.
At first a political programme named ´francisation´ attempted to integrate
the new ´departments´ and their new inhabitants into the Republic. This required a
modification of the administration, the legislature, the educational curriculum and
the language: The German speaking Rhineland had initially to become bilingual
and then completely francophone.
The establishment of French-created galleries freely accessible to
everybody was clearly designed to assist in the process of ´francisation´. The
central idea was not only to create a museum but a ´cultural institute´: The
programme called for a college of art to be attached to each museum so that the
new talents could find inspiration by studying old masters and thereby acquire the
means to influence positively both, art and industry, in the region. It was thought
that each collection of paintings could be a small encyclopaedia of the history of
art containing works from all the different schools, countries and époques. The
foreign tourist would as a result be convinced of the cultural supremacy of the
French Republic.
As it turned out the French Government did not manage to realize
idealized conception regarding the role of the museum. Financial support for the
project was not forthcoming in large part as a result of the continuous wars which
commanded all the available capital. The population in the territories next to the
border suffered particular injury because of the massing of troops and their
movements. After the second Congress of Vienna in 1816 many claims for
restitution in respect of the confiscated works of art were lodged and the
foundation of the provincial museums was seriously undermined.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
- ‘Das Décret Chaptal’ , in: Beutekunst unter Napoleon. Die französische
Schenkung an Mainz 1803, Hrsg. von Sigrun Paas & Sabine Mertens, Mainz
2003, 187 – 190
- ‘Die Gründung der Gemäldegalerie’, in: Beutekunst unter Napoleon. Die
französische Schenkung an Mainz 1803, Hrsg. von Sigrun Paas & Sabine
Mertens, Mainz 2003, 322 – 327
● Lieske Tibbe: Introduction to the conference programme
LIESKE TIBBE is assistant professor at the Department of Art History of the
Radboud University Nijmegen, and specialized on the relationship between art, art
theory and political theory around 1900, and on museums/ exhibitions of industrial
art in the 19th and early 20th centuries. She is a member of the organizing team
for this conference and one of the coordinators of the research program National
Museums and National Identity, Europe and the United States, c. 1760-1918.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
- ´De nijverheidstentoonstelling als middel tot scholing en verheffing.
Handwerkslieden als bezoekers en exposanten´, De Negentiende Eeuw 21 (1997),
105-126.
- ´Kunstnijverheidsmusea: van techniek naar esthetiek´, in: Kabinetten, galerijen en
musea. Het verzamelen en presenteren van naturalia en kunst van 1500 tot heden,
Ellinoor Bergvelt, Debora J.Meijers, Mieke Rijnders (eds.), Zwolle 2005, [Ch.9] 233262
- ´Natuurstaat en verval. Discussies over exotische kunststijlen rondom de
Internationale Koloniale Tentoonstelling van 1883´, De Negentiende Eeuw 29
(2005), 261-284.
- ´Taxonomie und Didaktik oder Chronologie und Ästhetik. Entwicklungen im
Kunstgewerbemuseum des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts´, in: Zur Geschichte der
Museen im 19. Jahrhundert 1789-1918, Hrsg. Von Bernard Graf und Hanno
Möbius, Berlin 2006 (Berliner Schriften zur Museumskunde, Bd. 22), 69-80.
● Elsa van Wezel: Denon’s Louvre and Schinkel’s Alte Museum: War Trophy
Museum versus Peace Memorial
Although Napoleon’s cultural politics initiated the establishment, in 1830, of
Berlin’s first public art museum, Schinkel’s Alte Museum, this museum in many
ways formed an antipole to Denon’s Musée Napoléon, rather than emulating it.
Besides pointing out the obvious differences in function between Denon’s
Louvre, a museum full of war trophies meant to affirm and display Napoleon’s
military victories and hegemonic claims, and Schinkel’s Alte Museum, in concept
and perception a peace memorial built by the modestly self-effacing Frederick
William III of Prussia, this lecture will address the more fundamental question of
the radically different art history concepts expressed by these two museums. As
the differences between the underlying concepts of the Louvre and of the Alte
Museum become clear, we can reconsider their specific positions in museum
history.
The paper will focus on the Berlin connoisseur Aloys Hirt’s protests, in
1801, against the “transplantation” of monuments from Rome to Paris – hence
also commenting on their exhibition in the Louvre –, and on the visits to the
Louvre by Karl Friedrich Schinkel (in 1804 and 1826) and art historian Gustav
Waagen (in 1814), and the possible consequences of those visits for the Alte
Museum in Berlin – for the building itself, and for the arrangement of the art within
its walls.
ELSA VAN W EZEL has done research on museum history both for the Berlin State
Museums and on a freelance basis. Presently she is doing research at the
Institute for Museum Research in Berlin, where she is working on a museumhistorical project financed by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. She is a
member of the organizing team for this conference and one of the coordinators of
the research project National Museums and National Identity, Europe and the
United States c. 1760-1918.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
- ´Die Konzeptionen des Alten und Neuen Museums zu Berlin und das sich
wandelnde historische Bewusstsein´, Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, N.F. 43
(2001),Beiheft, 1-244 [ = Publication of Ph.D. study The Conception of the Alte
and neue Museum in Berlin and the changes in historical consciousness,
University of Amsterdam 2001]
- ´Das akademische Museum. Hirts gescheiterte Museumsplanungen 1797/98,
1820 und 1825´, in: Berliner Klassik. Eine Großstadtkultur um 1800, Bd. I, Aloys
Hirt. Archäologe, Historiker, Kunstkenner, Claudia Sedlarz (Hrsg.), Laatzen 2004,
105-128.
- ´Museumconcept en geschiedopvatting. Het Alte en Neue Museum in Berlijn´, in:
Kabinetten, galerijen en musea. Het verzamelen en presenteren van naturalia en
kunst van 1500 tot heden, Ellinoor Bergvelt, Debora J. Meijers, Mieke Rijnders
(eds.), Zwolle 2005, [Ch. 11] 289-318.
Colophon
Organizing committee: Ellinoor Bergvelt, Debora Meijers (both University of
Amsterdam), Lieske Tibbe (Radboud University Nijmegen), Elza van Wezel
(Institute for Museum Research, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin).
Financially supported by: Huizinga Institute (Amsterdam), Institute for Museum
Research (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin), University of Amsterdam, Stichting
Daendels (Amsterdam), Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
(KNAW, Amsterdam).