The Caesar of Paris

by Susan Jaques

  Distraught over the loss, Florentine officials asked Canova to create a copy of the prized antiquity. He returned to Rome without making a decision. In early February 1803, Canova accepted the commission and requested a cast of the Medici Venus.35 Though Canova repeated the Medici Venus’s turn of the head, the rest of his Venus was new. She stood some seven inches taller. Her stance was reversed, with her left knee bent instead of the right. Her coiffure more closely resembled that of the Capitoline Venus. Instead of portraying Venus nude, Canova added the cloth that she modestly clutches to her breast.

  According to his assistant Adamo Tadolini, Canova conceived the gesture after his beautiful studio model was overcome with shyness when asked to undress. Some contemporary art historians have interpreted the goddess’s hunch and closed legs as a political statement by the sculptor, a subtle expression of his feelings about the rape of Italy by the French.

  Given Canova’s resentment of Napoleon’s art confiscations, it’s tempting to read the statue politically. Yet the critical literature of the day focuses on the statue’s expressiveness and naturalness. It seems more likely that Canova invented the modest pose to distinguish his Venus from her famous antique prototypes. From the start, the commission did take on a patriotic quality when the Florentines thanked Canova for helping ease the painful loss of their beloved Medici Venus.

  Canova would soon carve a far less modest Venus, creating a scandal with a life-size marble portrait of Napoleon’s topless sister Pauline.

  THREE

  NAPOLEON’S EYE

  On November 7, 1800, Napoleon and Joséphine made the short hop from the Tuileries to the Louvre. The occasion was the inauguration of the Musée des Antiques, located on the ground floor in the former summer apartment of Anne of Austria, who, in 1638, over two decades into her marriage and as the thirty-seven-year-old Spanish-born queen consort, gave birth to the future Louis XIV.

  Anne of Austria’s mid-seventeenth-century royal suite now brimmed with over one hundred antique marble sculptures, mainly hauled off from Rome, Venice, Modena, and Mantua, along with antiquities from the royal collection nationalized during the Revolution.

  The gallery’s curator, Ennio Visconti, was intimately acquainted with the looted Italian treasures. His father, Giovanni Battista Visconti, was the Papal States’s superintendent of antiquities and first director of the Vatican’s Pio-Clementino museum. Together, they had worked on a description of the Capitoline and Vatican collections. Visconti, who fled to Paris after Naples occupied Rome, was considered one of the most famous antiquarians of the day.

  Inspired by the thematic groupings in the Capitoline and Vatican museums, Visconti tried matching the antiquities with Giovanni Francesco Romanelli’s ornate ceiling paintings for the queen’s six-room flat. Architect Jean-Arnaud Raymond replaced the walls separating the rooms with columns pilfered from the Palatine Chapel in Aachen (removed ten centuries earlier from Ravenna and Rome by Charlemagne). With its red-and-white marble revetment modeled after a Roman bath, Paris’s new antiquities gallery resembled the Pio-Clementino.1

  Visitors entered via the former Mars Rotunda. The spandrels of its dome sported new reliefs depicting personifications of the great cultures of the past, culminating with modern France. The Colossus of Memnon, the Apollo Belvedere, and Michelangelo’s Moses represented Egypt, Greece, and Italy. The rotunda led to the Emperors Room, populated with statues of Rome’s imperial rulers. Large imitation bronze medallions of the Po, Tiber, Nile, and Rhine rivers symbolized France’s recent military campaigns. History painter Charles Meynier decorated the ceiling with the Emperors Hadrian and Justinian presenting to the World the Codes of Roman Law. Three more halls followed, dedicated to the seasons, illustrious men, and the Romans.

  The showstoppers were two acclaimed masterpieces from the Vatican. The monumental Laocoön was installed in a niche at the end of a long corridor visible from the rotunda. Once displayed in Titus’s palace in Rome, the massive marble was described by Pliny the Elder as the work of the sculptor Agesander of Rhodes and his two sons, “superior to any other work of sculpture present in the city.” The jury is still out on whether the famed group marble of the priest of Troy and his two sons was a first-century original by the Rhodes father and sons or a copy by them of an earlier bronze model.2

  Turning right led to the Apollo Hall, the new home for the Apollo Belvedere. A second-century C.E. Roman copy of Leochares’s fourth-century B.C.E. bronze from the Agora in Athens, the ancient marble depicts the divine archer Apollo nude save his sandals and a draped cloak resting on his right arm. In Paris, the marble tour de force was placed on a high pedestal above a raised platform. Framing the recess, supporting two busts, were two red granite columns from Charlemagne’s tomb in Aachen.

  Now Napoleon attached a plaque to the pedestal of the Apollo Belvedere. The inscription read: “The statue of Apollo/Erected on this pedestal/Found at Antium, at the end of the XV century, placed in the Vatican by Julius II/At the beginning of the XVI century/Conquered in the Year V of the Republic/By the Army of Italy/Under the orders of General Bonaparte/Has been set her on 21 Germinal Year VIII/First year of his Consulate.”3 Two days later, on the first anniversary of Napoleon’s coup d’état, the antiquities gallery opened to the public.

  Part of the official delegation that day was Dominique-Vivant Denon. Since returning from Egypt, he had been compiling his impressions of Egypt along with engravings of some three hundred of his sketches of the ancient architecture and ornaments. In 1802, he published Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt during the Campaigns of General Bonaparte. An instant bestseller, Travels was translated into Italian, Spanish, German, and English, enjoying some forty printings. In addition to securing Denon’s reputation as an artist, Travels promoted France’s army as heir to the Roman legions and inspired the Egyptian Revival style in decorative art and architecture. Not since ancient Rome had there been such enthusiasm for Egyptian art.

  Denon extolled the originality of ancient Egyptian art and architecture. “Having borrowed nothing from other nations, the Egyptians added not one extraneous ornament, not a single superfluity to the lines dictated by necessity,” he wrote. “Order and simplicity were their principles, which they raised to the sublime.”4 His drawings and engravings were especially influential in the decorative arts where Egyptian Revival furniture sported sphinxes, chimera heads, and Egyptian gods and goddesses. As Frederica Todd Harlow notes, Denon brought “the art of the pharaohs into the drawing rooms of Napoleonic France . . . transforming the artistic idiom of an ancient people into the sumptuous decoration of Napoleonic France.”5

  Denon dedicated the travel guide to Napoleon, bolstering the first consul’s image as a patron of art and science: “To associate the glory of our name with the splendour of the monuments of Egypt is to combine the grandeur of our century with the mythical eras of history; to rekindle the ashes of Sesostris and Mendes, who, like you, were conquerors and benefactors. When Europe learns that I accompanied you on one of your most memorable expeditions, it will greet my book with keen interest. I have spared no effort in making it worthy of the hero to whom I wish to dedicate it.”6

  The literary sensation was a propaganda boon for Napoleon who rewarded its author by appointing him director of the Musée des Monuments Français (in the former convent of the Petits Augustins), a special museum devoted to the French school at Versailles, and the Louvre. Several weeks after his appointment, on January 1, 1803, Denon wrote his patron:

  “I spend my time in execution of all what you’ve entrusted me in order to engross all and demonstrate in future the opinion that your choice was given to me and every time that I perceive the amelioration in doing what I do with reverence for you and I address you my thanks for my preference to its execution. Accept, General, the homage of my profound respect.”7

  Denon was an inspired choice. Napoleon wasn’t a connoisseur; he was known to admire artworks based on their size. As Thomas Gaehtgens puts it, Denon became Napole
on’s Colbert, his minister of fine arts, guiding him in all matters of taste.8

  To novelist Anatole France, the witty and dapper museum director looked like “he had just stepped out of a fête by Watteau.”9 Denon would earn the moniker “Napoleon’s Eye” for his ability to pick the finest Western art for the Louvre. Traveling with the French army, he confiscated works from vanquished Italy, Spain, Belgium, Prussia, and Austria. He was so good at his job, French generals dubbed him “the packer” and the “thief on the coattails of the Grande Armée.” Indefatigable and driven, Denon devoted himself to making the Louvre the “most beautiful museum in the universe.”

  To help run the Louvre, Denon assembled a talented team. Athanase Lavallée remained secretary. Léon Dufourny who had seized many renowned works from Italy including the Medici Venus, became paintings conservator. Visconti remained antiquities curator, and Morel d’Arleux was named curator of drawings and chalcography. But Denon fired dealer and connoisseur Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Le Brun. The ex-husband of émigré portraitist Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun and grandnephew of Charles Le Brun, Louis XIV’s first painter, Le Brun had played a key role in assembling the collection of the Musée National, selecting art from fleeing and condemned nobles.

  Though Denon managed to eliminate rivals like Le Brun, a formidable new competitor soon emerged. During his first weeks as museum director, Denon had the first of many run-ins with Napoleon’s architect Pierre Fontaine. Though Fontaine was officially Denon’s superior, the two competed for Napoleon’s approval and often disagreed aesthetically. In November 26, 1801, Fontaine described Denon’s lack of cooperation in providing Louvre artworks to decorate the Tuileries.

  “The First Consul insisted that not only the public deposits, but also the houses of the ministers, those of the State authorities, should contribute to the furnishing and decoration of the Tuileries apartments,” Fontaine wrote. “That is why we are asking the minister for the Savonnerie carpets of the Legislative Body. The administration of the museum of painting, which has a large number of effects, which we ask of it, sees with difficulty draw from its stores the objects committed to its preservation, it believes in giving them to diminish its importance. He dared not refuse, but he appeared to be displeased, a bad grace, which made him wrong in the mind of the First Consul.”

  The power struggle continued when Fontaine replaced Jean-Armand Raymond as the museum’s architect in 1804. Another dispute broke out when Fontaine and Percier demolished the latrines during a project. An irked Denon wrote to Fontaine, urging the reinstallation of the latrines “as promptly as possible, in order to avoid evacuation in the courtyards, on the stairways, and perhaps even in the gallery of the museum, which would surely happen if the guards appointed to safeguard and maintain the propriety of this monument had no place to which to direct those in need.”10

  The Louvre had never been finished. During the Renaissance, François I turned the former medieval fortress into a royal abode, but it did not compare to his magnificent châteaux at Fontainebleau and Blois. Louis XIV’s ministers had tried unsuccessfully to keep him in Paris by embellishing the Louvre, even inviting Gian Lorenzo Bernini to draw up plans. But the Louvre was abandoned by the three Louies who continued amassing art for Versailles and other royal palaces. By the mid-eighteenth century, the royal art trove was one of Europe’s largest, numbering some 1,800 paintings and an important sculpture collection.

  During the Revolution, the royal collection was nationalized, along with art from France’s churches and private art collections. The Louvre was chosen for France’s national museum. As painter Jacques-Louis David described, “The national museum will embrace knowledge in all its manifold beauty and will be the admiration of the universe. By embodying these grand ideas, worthy of a free people . . . the museum . . . will become among the most powerful illustrations of the French Republic.”11

  Opened to the public in August 1793, the Musée National offered a jumble of paintings, antique busts, clocks, and porcelain. To meet the demand, the museum implemented a ten-day schedule with six days for artists and visitors, three for the public, and one for cleaning. But with the exception of paintings in the Salon Carré, the museum soon closed for a year of improvements. Complicating the project was the arrival of new masterworks—war booty from the Netherlands.

  After the Directory government confiscated more art in Italy, the museum closed its doors again in 1796. When it reopened three years later, masterpieces from Rome and Venice hung in the Salon Carré adjoining the Grand Gallery; a selection of the most superb Old Master drawings lined the walls of the Apollo Gallery. Antiquity’s most famous marble sculptures were installed below the Grand Gallery in the new Musée des Antiquities.

  It was around this time, writes Andrew McClellan, that the museum took on an atmosphere of military conquest. A journalist reviewing an exhibition of plundered Italian art described a museum door decorated with captured arms and battle standards from Napoleon’s Italian campaign. “The sight of this trophy warmed my blood, the words brought tears to my eyes,” he wrote. “One day we will raise monuments of marble and bronze to our warriors. Unnecessary efforts! The true and lasting monuments to their glory will be in our museums.”12

  When Denon’s tenure began in late 1802, art occupied just a fraction of the vast former royal palace. Works were displayed in the Apollo Gallery, Salon Carré, Grand Gallery, and the new Musée des Antiquities below. Henri IV had built the Grand Gallery between 1595 and 1610 to link the Louvre and Tuileries palaces. Until Louis XVI decided to install a sampling of royal art, the Grand Gallery housed the royal collection of relief maps. But measuring 1,300 feet long with numerous windows, the corridor was not ideal for viewing art.

  Denon reorganized the floor-to-ceiling painting display. In his new hang, pictures were organized around masterpieces. For example, Denon placed Raphael’s celebrated Transfiguration in the center of a bay. Surrounding this final altarpiece were other works from his brief, extraordinary career—from his early years in Perugino and formative period in Florence to his mature phase in Rome. According to Denon, he chose the Raphaels so “one could see at a glance the extent of this artist’s genius, the astonishing rapidity of his progress, and the variety of genres which his talent encompassed.”13

  In an invitation to Napoleon to see the installation, Denon further explained his goal. “It is like a life of the master of all painters,” he wrote on January 1, 1803. “The first time you walk through this gallery, I hope you will find that this exercise already brings a character of order, instruction, and classification. I will continue in the same spirit for all the schools, and in a few months, while visiting the gallery one will be able to have . . . a history course in the art of painting.”14 By arranging paintings in an art historical dialogue, Denon reinvented museum display, notes Noah Charney.15

  That summer, Denon added a history course in the art of sculpture. One hundred cases of looted antiquities arrived from Italy, including the Uffizi’s Medici Venus. In a speech to members of the Institut de France, Denon described the newest treasure: “Dressed in her modesty alone, her nakedness is pure. Her expression of happiness belongs to her perfection, to the plenitude of her being. The smile on her face is not yet that of voluptuousness, and yet happiness is already on her lips.” The former diplomat also praised his powerful patron. “The hero of our century, during the torment of war, required of our enemies trophies of peace, and he has seen to their conservation.”16

  Denon informed Napoleon that the Medici Venus was safely in Paris and proposed that he inaugurate the new antique halls. Reflecting his admiration for Egypt, he installed Egyptian and Egyptian-inspired sculpture from Italy, including the Antinous from Hadrian’s Villa. Denon also suggested renaming the Louvre the Musée Napoléon. “There is a frieze on the door waiting for an inscription, I think that Napoleon’s Museum is the only one that suits it,” he wrote.

  In fact, Denon had already ordered the bronze letters. For the museum’s main entra
nce, at the southeast corner of the Cour Napoleon, he also commissioned a colossal bronze bust of Napoleon from Tuscan sculptor Lorenzo Bartolini. Set in a niche above the entrance to the museum, the imposing bust measured over five feet tall and weighed over one ton. To compensate for the viewing angle, Bartolini elongated Napoleon’s neck and accentuated his chin and the lock of hair in the middle of his forehead.17 He captured the bend in his nose, berries in laurel wreath. Ends of the strips tying the wreath fell onto Napoleon’s shoulders.

  Until the bronze was finished, a mold was installed on August 15, 1805, Napoleon’s birthday. The truncated bust format known as a herm hailed from Roman art, and gave the portrait a hieratic quality.18 As Isabelle Leroy-Jay Lemaistre writes, “The general herm shape, the bare shoulders symmetrically decorated with the ties of the crown and the laurel crown itself, like the Augustan stylization of the features, speak to Bartolini’s training in the ateliers of David and François Lemot, and to the zeal of Denon whose artistic preferences are well-known. Denon could not but admire this sculptor driven by such a strong feeling for antiquity.”19

  Denon cosigned Bartolini’s Napoléon Empereur, cast with bronze from enemy cannons.

  Behind his many official titles, Vivant Denon was Napoleon’s image maker. With its political message of patriotism and citizenship, Neoclassicism was the ideal artistic style for the public relations campaign, allowing artists to compare Napoleon to history’s great military commanders—Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Hannibal, and Charlemagne. Denon’s A-list painters included Antoine-Jean Gros, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, and their teacher Jacques-Louis David. “O! My friends, what a beautiful head he has,” David raved about Napoleon. “It is pure, it is great, it is as beautiful as the antique. There is a man to whom altars would have been raised in ancient times.”