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UNIVERSE BOOKS
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 THE
MUSEUM AGE

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First American Edition published in the United States of America
in 1967 by

UNIVERSE BOOKS Inc.

381 Park Avenue South

New York, N.Y. 10016

IBSIOT EOBLIC LlBRAfttT

Library of Congress Catalog ( drd X umber: 67-26914

© DesoerS. I. Editions, Brussels 1967

All rights reserved. So part of this book may be reproduced

in any form without the permission in writing from the publisher
except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review
to be printed in a magazine or newspaper.

Printed in Belgium
 THE
MUSEUM AGE
by Germain Bazin

Translatedfrom the French by Jane van Nuis Cahill

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 Foreword

To write a history of the museum is to give The historical sense was engendered bv a
account of the evolution of two concepts: that of sequence of great political events which shook that
the Museum and that of Time. Regarding the masterpiece of the human conscience —
the Greek
nature of Time, our age has accumulated all kinds city, of which Athens, at a given moment, had been
of studies: metaphysical, psychological, socio- the most accomplished example. If the Medic Wars
logical, and ethnological and scientific; excepting confirmed the city's existence, the Peloponnesian
the two last mentioned, which treat another aspect Wars compromised it and the Philippic Wars
of the problem, all arrive at more or less the same ruined Chaeronea ended the life of a State
it.

conclusion, at the presence in the human conscious- established by the^mutual consent of its citizens and
ness of two notions of time: that of a time which replaced it with a monarchic State founded on per-
passes and that of a time which endures. Archaic sonal power acquired bv trickery and violence.
civilizations, with their denial of history, know Alexander's conquests brought to the concept of
only the second, which ethnologists have' termed temporalitv the dimension of space, requisite for its
"absolute time" and in which primitive peoples, evolution.
who by recourse to ritual and myth seek to abolish Cyclic time, by definition always returning
temporality, believe. Individual human existence upon was a profound conception of the
itself,

becomes, then, so intimately integrated with that of Greeks; it was valid, however, only within the
the group that it is seen as part of a natural, univer- confines of the city-state, where even conflicts of —
sal continuum. One can rediscover this notion of a fraternal nature —
could not project the citizen
absolute time within oneself bv trying to recapture beyond the perception of the tutelary group into
one's childhood where the role of games is compar- the perspectives of history.
able to the role of myth among primitives. Deprived suddenly of the history of their city,
The burden of time increased when humanity estranged from the familial life on a grand scale
—
became conscious of individual destiny of secular that it had meant, men felt like atoms lost in vast
destinv — holding itself responsible for its own empires, no longer citizens but subjects. When the
actions, when the individual, disengaged from the present becomes unbearable, there are two means
group, thought of himself as cause and no longer of escaping it: the past and the future. Plato chose
just as effect. the second, assigning happiness a place in his
Utopia, and thereby gave to an immediate problem for realizing his destiny within the brief course of a
of the State an ideal Solution. During the Hellenis- lifetime. Adoring one God who is an historical
tic period, one sought refuge in intemporal spheres personage, does not the Church live entirely in
which simultaneously abolished both novelty and expectation of the Parousia to occur in a transcen-
the anguish it caused; religions of salvation pros- dent moment which will abolish at once both time
pered in this world thirsting for hope, as did the and history? But Christianity has buried an histo-
Utopias of Plotinus who conceived of two beings in rical past and the one it proposes as an antecedent,
man: one in time, the other beyond time. But the span between Genesis and the Gospels, strays
humanity equally indulged in the "esperance a somewhat from the main artery of time. This past is
reBours" Q-) which is nostalgia. Established as an set forth in the Holy Books which, because they are
absolute, the past also becomes a refuge. Only when such, impart to this evolution a mythical character.
men sense the waning of a civilization do they Elsewere, too, is Christianity weighed down by the
suddenly become interested in its history and, Hebraic notion that history is an act of God which
probing, become aware of the force and uniqueness man assumes the responsibility to work out.
of the ideas it has fostered. Hegel said that the owl Medieval men lived in the shelter and moral
of Wisdom appears only at twilight. Hellenism, —
comfort of a cyclic time for the agricultural popu-
become conscious of its historical reality, turned to lation, the cycle of the seasons and for the ecclesias-
introspection and self-analysis; archives were tical world, the cycle of the liturgical year.
consulted, documents compiled, writings collected Museums had no part in their lives, except those
in colossal libraries that were the bitter rivals, like which held vestiges of the only past to which they
Alexandria toward Pergamum, of each other. ascribed, that is, the treasuries with their relics of
Museums coveted the artistic products of this saints.
classicism, judged inimitable, and even its earliest The Renaissance cut through ten centuries to
expressions generated interest. Man consoles him- exhume the past denied by Christianity. Involution
self for what he is by what he was. was necessary to any evolution. Following a new
Rome inherited from Greece museums and route of responsibility to oneself rather than to
libraries;the historian and Hellenist, Polvbius, God, Renaissance man turned to antiquity for
viewed the achievements of the Greek civilization confirmation of the destiny he proposed for him-
as a prelude to the historical climax wrought by self. The Past again became a refuge, this time not

Rome — the rationalization of Empire. If, as our from a discredited present but from a recent past
contemporary historical philosophers Spengler, one sought to break with. Museums, sanctuaries of
Toynbee and Mumford claim, the tendency toward forgotten classicism, experienced a rebirth. The
the universality and hypertrophy of cities an- intense curiosity to know tormented the human
nounces the decline of a civilization, Rome, at the conscience to advance its once limited horizon to
moment when her empire reached the farthest, the ends of the earth. Study of the antique led to the
nurtured that instinctive feeling of recoil before the study of nature. From the Mannerist period on,
future which throws man back on his past. museums developed in two directions: science
Museums and libraries sprang up all over Rome museums with collections that included authentic
until the City of Cities was tilled with them. The discoveries as well as more or less fabulous
libraries have perished with their treasures but our "curiosities" believed to contain the secret of
museums are stocked with art recovered from the nature; and art and history museums, more limited
ruins of Rome's museums. in their scope, with no other objective than to
Perhaps we have been too insistent upon a affirm this longed-for identity with the classical
rectilinear conception of time, inherited from the world despite the immense difference in time.
Hebraic religion, which makes each man responsible There were few changes of principle in the
history of this prosperous institution, the museum, This is a means through which the museum
French Revolution, with the exception of
until the offers escape from time and even from absolute
the slow metamorphosis during the course of the time. But very often today's visitors to museums
eighteenth century of princely or royal collections seek a way to elude the relative time of the present.
into public museums, open to all for the advance- If the nineteenth century was the century of history,
ment of knowledge and the artistic education of the the twentieth devoted itself to prehistory. The
people. enormous success of the latter after the Second
The nineteenth century was the Century of World War is one of the most unexpected pheno-
History. Museums were flooded to the point of mena of contemporary psychology. This attraction
overflowing with products created by all kinds of the prehistoric man, is it not indicative of a cer-
of human endeavor, by all peoples of all periods. tain weariness with historical time and a profound
Thus was initiated a great idolatry of the past, aspiration for resurgence?
a counterbalance to a certain complaisance toward This taste for prehistory, for the period before
the present, a present that passed like a moment recorded time, does it not derive from confused
in the accelerated race toward the future, the desire for a reunion with absolute time, the time of
perspectives of which were nightmarish. the myths? On the part of modern men, little by
The appetite formuseums, still unabated in the little cast out from all private groups —
religious,
twentieth century, a complex phenomenon to
is familial, national, social —
which served as frame-
analyze. A temple where Time seems suspended, works for human life for millennia, to see them-
the museum procures for today's man those selves massed together atoms, this call to the
like
momentary cultural epiphanies in which, since farthest reaches of space —
does it not indicate at the
Gide, he has delighted. An entire literature for half same time a need to escape from the vertigo caused
a century has celebrated the supreme detachment by the acceleration of time, some secret nostalgia
from all appurtenances which makes of the instant for that past when man lived protected from history
a transcendent moment, lived in the innocence of a by the communal bonds of private groups? The
sensuality restored to place as a virtue anterior to
its evolution of the 'historical sense itself reveals a
Original Sin. To detach from Time one of these similar orientation. Does the prodigious success of
contiguous fibers that is an instant, to make it popularized historical novels toll the knell for the
vibrate like the string of a violin, is to give the real history of battles and heroes in order to affirm
being the illusion of knowing intuitively his the contemporary interest in and concentration on
essence and his strengths. The contemplation of the the uomo qualunque through the centuries, whose
masterpieces of art or nature, listening to musical or "happy life" we seek to evoke in our antique-filled
theatrical works and reading great literature can interiors? Museums, barometers of current taste,
induce in our contemporaries, educated by the have yielded to this desire by installing "Period"
Immoralist, this trance which can develop into a rooms, which have enjoyed such success in the
neurosis, as in the spectacle of the "happening." United States. But the museum has penetrated into
Since Taine, who considered the work of art a private life. Nothing is better proof of the need to
product of its time, the philosophies of art, which flee the present, to seek refuge in the warmth of an
in the twentieth century have defined it as having ancestral ambiance than this denial of modern furni-
its own existence, favor this tendency which in the ture and the concomitant vogue for "period"
museological situation manifests itself as the taste
for ascetic presentation. All modern art is, more-
interiors
copyists.
—Thus
quick money for antique dealers and
in his appeal for precedents, modern
over, founded on the supreme value placed on man seeks to regain his humanity even
tries to as it

shock, the discharge of which assumes the value of escape him.

a revelation. Each year, when the sun bathes the beaches,
humanity, as if bewitched, flees the city with its is collapsing. All over Europe priests are liquidat-
gradually more and more intolerable framework of ing the artistic treasures of their churches in Italv,
;

lifeand races to vacation places, to temporary para- where this negotiation is particularly fruitful, the
dises. Lacunae in the inevitable procession of days police recently discovered storehouses where mo-
when time seems suspended, vacations, which nasteries had been accumulating works of art-
tend to become "real life," are united from one building up stock for an eventual auction house.
year to the next in the memory and constitute in the In France, one can foresee the disaffection of
time which passes an oasis of everlasting time 18,000 churches. It is not always the hope of profit
—
which man uprooted, deprived of myth and which motivates the ecclesiastics but an icono-
religion, cut off little by little from all his tradi- clastic spirit which recalls that of the Huguenots;
tions —neither can nor will renounce. In these tem- in a village in the Landes district in France, a
poral oases, museums number among the enchant- curate, in a move to "modernize" his church, dis-
ed places they are besieged by crowds of vaca-
; mantled a baroque retable and, leaving to nature
tioners and thus the paradox arises that the the task of destroying a once sacred object, interred
museums of a country are often visited more by it in a field.
foreigners than by its own citizens (who cultivate The progress of erosion, accelerated in an
their artistic tastes in other countries during their industrial society,, threatening the most presti-
is

annual vacations). gious monuments and sites of the past. The

However, while masterpieces of art and nature Ravenna mosaics and the buildings on the Acro-
have become the object of a growing fervor, they polis are shaken by the roar of airplanes; the
appear to be more and more endangered. Two needle-thin heels on women's shoes have damaged
worlds are at odds today, the one slowly devouring the parquetry in the Grande Galerie of the Louvre
the other; technology threatens to engulf art and and the marble pavements of the Parthenon; the
nature, both allied in defense against a common cave paintings of Lascaux and of Tarquinia are
peril. Oddly, poverty preserves and wealth des- suffering effacement at the hands of their admirers
troys; peace, more than war, is a consumer of in Italy, acres of frescoes are about to break away
"cultural goods." A commission established in from their walls; the cities of unbaked brick in the
Italv to study the means of preserving the cultural Middle East piously exhumed by archeologists, are
patrimony of the country has disclosed that it is in disintegrating; Mohenjo-Daro is menaced by the
the process of rapid destruction; in 1962, two inundations of the Indus; thepietra serena of Tuscan
hundred university professors sent an urgent edifices is dissociating; sand dunes are building up
letter to the Minister of Public Instruction, and in time will re-bury Leptis Magna and Sabrata;
entreating him to act with haste. Half of Italy's the enchanting Renaissance gardens of the Chateau
5,000 miles of shoreline had become such an eye- de Villandry are in danger of dying because a
sore that even the tourists were fleeing; in three neighboring factory has deflected their source of
years 100,000 trees were cut down along the high- water; Venice is sinking into the sea, the waves
ways; from 1957 to 1964 about fifty museums and churned up by motor boats having weakened the
seventy churches sustained robberies and some pilings on which she rests —besides the fact that
900 pieces had disappeared from museums, galler- the water level in the lagoon has changed consider-
ies :\nd private collections; in 1963 alone 3,000 an- ably fine old cities
; —even those which are protect-
tique tombs were destroyed by clandestine excava- —
ed are encumbered with dismal apartment build-
tors. Until a few years ago, the Church was the ings whose tenants are quick to flee them for
bulwark of beauty and tradition; now, devitalized houses in the country or resorts; 400 French cities
by recent innovations in the liturgy and bv the ver- have been designated as sites for preservation but
tigo of "progressism," a once inviolable patrimony thus far only twenty-one have instituted protective

8
measures; Rome's pine trees are being asphyxiated
by the fumes from automobiles. Can one imagine
Rome without her pines? Rome, the city of seven
hills, become the city of seven bald promontories,
occupied only by the white bones of its ruins ? If the
men to whom the preservation of art works has
been entrusted are worried, those who guard the
riches of nature are at wit's end; they foresee a rapid
sterilization of flora and fauna, the very same flora
and fauna sought so eagerly by men on their vaca-
tions or even on brief weekends.
The danger is graver than is yet realized, espe-
cially by the political mind; in 1962 the German
architectural magazine Bauwelt criticized a foreign
government "for failing to express a feeling of tra-
gedy at the destruction of one of the most beautiful
countries in the world." The international solida-
rity behind the movement to save, through
Herculean efforts, the temple of Abu Simbel from
the waters backed up by the Aswan Dam is hearten-
ing. But which Head of State interpreted the pro-
clamation as a call to safeguard the beauty of his
own country? There was one. But was it the leader
of one of the nations which boasts of being a
"cradle of art"? It was President Johnson.
If he does not take heed, man will one day live in
a world demolished by six billion insects, with the
only remaining "culture" confined to a few geogra-
phical reserves and a scattering of museums where
the imprisoned remains of the world's beauty will
slowly perish.

Frontispiece, page 4.

1 The Cloister of Saint-Michel de Cuxa at The Cloisters,

.

Fort Trjon Park, New York. Opened in 1938, this museum was
constructed to present and regroup the medieval architectural
elements— chiefly from cloisters in France and Spain — which had
been -acquired originally by George Grey Barnard and were later
purchased by John D. Rockefeller Jr. as a gift for the Metropolitan
Museum.
10
 !

Chaptier

Prelude
Coccale: Ah, what beautiful statues, my dear Cynno! What sculptor could have carved
this stone and who is the donor?
Cynno: These are the sons of Praxiteles. Do you not see the inscription on the base?
And the donor is Euthies, son of Prexon.
Coccale: The blessings of the gods on them and on Euthies for such beautiful works.
Look, my dear, at this child with her eyes focused on the apple. Were you not just
going to say that if she cannot have the apple she will die? And this old man, Cvnno
By the fates Look at that child strangling the goose Were it not for the stone, one
! !

would say the boy seems on the point of talking. Ah, in time men will end up giving
life to stone. ,

270 B.C. Two courtesans have come to make an offering to Aesculapius in his
temple at Cos. In order to be the first, they have arrived at dawn, before the crowds.
To make the waiting pass more agreeably they chatter as they look at the statues
surrounding the sanctuary. The sacristan arrives to open the temple. Our two gossips
enter, Coccale marveling at the splendors she sees and Cynno, who already knows them,
comments on them to her friend. This time they talk about paintings.
2. Statue of Eros, signed
by Boethus, a second-century
Coccale: Look, Cynno, what works of art! Athena herself must have fashioned these
B.C. Greek sculptor from Bi- beautiful things! My respects to the goddess! The child there, the nude one if —
thynie. Musk du Bardo, Tunis. I pinch him, it will leave a mark, won't it Cynno? His flesh looks warm, palpitating...
This bronze, along with other The ox and the man leading him, the woman walking at the side, that man with the
priceless works, was salvaged in
hooked nose and that curly-headed boy... do they not seem to see the light of life?
1907 from the wreck of a ship
buried in waters about 30 feet If I did not think it would have been unbecoming for a lady, I would have uttered

deep off the coast of Madhia,

1

loud cries lest the ox —

what an oblique stare in his eyes, Cynno! hurt me. —
between Sousse and Sfax. The Cynno: Yes, my dear, the hand of the painter from Ephesus, the hand of Apelles,
vessel was possibly part of a revealed truth at every stroke of the brush and one cannot say of him, "There is an
convoy loaded with plunder tak-
artist who favored only certain subjects and shied away from others." Whatever
en from Greece by Sulla in
86 B.C. or, perhaps, part of a came into his fancy seemed to inspire him. One who is not in ecstasy, as is only right
shipment of works of art to before such an artist or his works, I would like to see hanged by the feet at a carpet
some Numidian prince. beater's.

II
 This idle talk and these proposals, which echo the art criticism of the time, animate a
mime of Herodas, Greek author of the third century B.C. One could hear analogous
conversations today while following visitors through the Louvre or the Metropolitan
Museum or, as a more exact comparison perhaps, through the Museo dell'Opera del
Duomo at Siena. Formed bv a slow accumulation of ex-votos brought by the faithful,
the treasuries of the temples were the first repositories of works of art in Greece.
Visitors were welcomed if they were willing to pay an obolus to the sacristan and to
offer obeisance to the local divinity. The hieropoei, committed to the guarding of the
temples, were also responsible for the treasuries; their task was not a sinecure. Intact
records — —
on marble from many of the temples, especially those from the Temple of
Apollo at Delos, inform us about the administration of the sanctuaries and, in particular,
about the management of the collections. The latter included objects of luxe in gold,
silver or bronze or some other precious material — depending on the wealth of the
—
donor and even paintings on pynakes. These works were often signed with the names
of the greatest artists of Greece. The hieropoti took charge of the inventories; upon
arrival the ex-votos were entered in a register the works were then included in the next
;

general inventory. Statues were placed in the parvis, statuettes and other objects in the
prodomos or in the twos where they accumulated on shelves the most precious or the
;

most fragile were put in cases. Periodically, there were attempts at some kind of general
arrangement and a consequent review of the inventory. This re-examination always
occurred at the time of a change of magistracy. A contradictory inventory was a credit to
an entering bieropei, a discredit to the retiring one. The inventories, like those of our
museums today, were very detailed, listing the name of the object, its material, its
weight, any specific markings, the name of the god to whom the offering was made, the
occasion of its consecration, the date, the name and nationality of the donor.

Sometimes it was around the temple itself that the citizens of a particular city
constructed a small monument or votive chapel (thesaurus), destined to receive their
donations. Many such treasuries were preserved at Delphi and one of them, that of the
Athenians, has been reconstructed.

Problems of conservation were already worrying the art lovers of the time. In the
Stoa Poikile at Athens, the votive shields, Pausanias tells us, were coated with pitch to
prevent corrosion from rust; in the Parthenon vats of oil were placed at the feet of the
3. Treasury of the Athen- Uhena Parthenos of Phidias as a protective measure against the excessive dryness of the
ians at Delphi. Fifth century atmosphere which was dissociating the complex structure of this chryselephantine
B.C. The first museological col- statue. Periodically, in order to make room, the hieropoei elaborated the lists of surplus
lections in Greea wen the trea- objects submitted to the council of the temple. As nothing was allowed to be destroyed,
suries of the temples, formed by the
objects of little worth were buried in offertory reservoirs or favissae; those of the
slow accumulation of votive offer
ings of the worshippers who paid Temple of Hera Argiva at the source of the Sele in the Campania yielded to contem-
tribute to the local deity. Near porary archeologists more than thirty thousand votive offerings for which a special
the Panhellenic sanctuaries at museum was built atPaestum. Objects of precious metal but with little aesthetic value
Oiympia and Delphi small monu-
were sent to the foundry to be converted into ingots which contributed to the fortune of
ments irere built to protect tin
the god. Pieces of artistic quality were guarded with care; the hieropoei attended to the
treasures. The treasury qj the
. Ithenians at Delphi has been repair of those damaged accidentally, by the weather or, as in the case of ritual objects,
reconstructed. by use.

12
 At the end of the antique world these treasuries
of the sanctuaries were visited frequently, not only
by devout pilgrims but also by tourists. One went
there to admire the chefs d'eeuvre of the great
masters of Greek sculpture —
at least those which
had not been carried away by the Romans. It is
these which Pausanias, in the second century A.D.,
was to see on a circum-Mediterranean voyage,
describing for us countless paintings and statues, the
pedestals of which have sometimes been found
/';/ situ but, alas, never the originals 1 .

The classical Greeks also grouped the most

celebrated works of their glorious schools of paint-
ing in pinakothekai, a word deriving from pinas,
meaning plank; the paintings called pinakes were
executed on wood. It is in the Acropolis of Athens
that one finds the oldest mention of a pinakotheke
in the Propylaea, built by Mnesicles in the fifth
century B.C., the northwest wing had been spe-
cially laid out to receive paintings it was lighted by
;

two windows opening on the south. There is some

doubt about the nature of these paintings they —
may have been executed on the wall it seems how-
;

ever that it was a question of separate pictures

which constituted a veritable museum because
Pausanias, who described them, cites the works of
4. Model of the Sanctuary of Athena at Pergamum. As is different artists, among them the great Polygnotos.
befitting, was situated in the Sanctuary of Athena, the
the library A strip of Eleusinian marble, comparable to the
goddess of wisdom. Above the great theatre is the ancient temple of
dado rail of our museums, blocked out the upper
Athena Polias Nikephoros, its oblique position being explained by
the fact that it was built earlier than the terrace of Ithena by Eumenie II.
section of wall where the works were exhibited.
On one side of the courtyard a two-story portico gave access to the Like medieval retables, the pinakes were provided
library. . 1 replica of the Athena Promachos of Athens decorated with protective shutters; the interior walls of the
the library, whichwas a kind of temple of learning, while a collect/on Temple of Athena at Lindus still bear marks left by
and busts of great men made it an historical museum. The
oj statues
the encasements around paintings displayed there.
museum of Greek sculpture assembled by the Atlalids was found divided
up among their palaces. These empty rectangles are haunting, poignant
reminders of the loss of a whole art, that of antique
painting.
As it was during the Middle Ages, the accumu-
lating of art treasures in sanctuaries preceded the
forming of collections bv the powerful of the
secular world. Not until the Hellenistic epoch did
Greek princes in the Near East begin to collect
statues, objets d'art and precious books. The excava-
tions at Pergamum, corroborating the rare written
testimonies, have brought to light some vestiges of
the taste of those Greco-Asian tyrants, the Attalids

14
who, although rulers of only a small principality, were at that time the bulwark of
the Hellenic civilization against the invasions of the barbarous Galatians. In the city
plan they had evolved for their capital, which called for public buildings to be terraced
up a hillside facing the sea, they had reserved an important place for the library, near
the Temple of Athena. Excavations have revealed that this library which, according to
certain investigations, numbered almost six hundred thousand volumes, was surround-
ed by a stoa, a colonnaded, sheltered walk. An architectural motif extremely popular in
antiquity, was frequently used to enclose the sides of libraries because it was believed
it

that walking stimulated thought. When Leo von Klenze, many centuries later, built
open-air loggias along the sides of the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, he returned to an old
Hellenic tradition.

In addition to the areas devoted to the storage of books, the library of Pergamum
had a reception hall which must have been used for academic conferences; pedestals
unearthed there bear inscriptions which prove they served as supports for statues of
poets, historians, philosophers it was a kind of small historical museum, a tradition that
;

Renaissance Italy was to revive. Those honored included Homer, Sappho, Alcaeus and
Herodotus. A colossal statue of Athena, a replica of the Athena Parthenos of Phidias, was
also found near the library along with a second representation of the same divinity.
Henceforth the Goddess of Wisdom was to have her appointed place in that pinnacle of
culture, the library. Rather than setting aside a special building for that purpose, the
Attalids disposed throughout the palace a whole collection of sculptures and paintings
that gave an insight into the evolution of Greek art; it comprised many originals,
notably a bronze by the naturalistic portraitist, Silanion, and a masterpiece by Cephiso-
dotus, father of Praxiteles, which was greatly admired by Pausanias. If original sculptures
were lacking, the kings of Pergamum had copies made, some of which have been
recovered in excavations. As for painting, archeologists at Delphi have exhumed an
inscription which mentions two Pergamenians who were sent to copy the celebrated
pictures of Polygnotos in the Cnidian Lesche at Delphi.

At epoch, with the birth of the historical sense, when man began to examine his
this
past, to plumbarchives for aid in the reconstruction of its course, when catalogs,
compilations and inventories were made, the collector-princes were not only interested
in works of art of the classical era but also in archaic works, evidences of the first steps of
Greek art. We know that they had a picture painted by one of the "primitives" of Greek
painting: Pythagoras of Paros. As for statuary, we find references to a work by the
Aeginetan sculptor, Onatas, to another by Bupalus, a sixth-century master from Chios,
and to statues resembling the famous Korai of the Acropolis of Athens. Out of this
ambiance of culture, with the resources of the library and the examples of the museum
easily accessible, came the first researches on the history of Greek art. Scholars wrote
critical studies on the works of different masters these were bound together in a collec-
;

tion, lost today, that was called the Canon of Pergamum. It constituted authority at
Rome where it served as a manual of taste of amateurs of art.
Courtiers scouted the entire cultivated world for rare books of art for the Attalids.
The Ptolemies of Alexandria, proud of their own library, grew restless over the vigorous
progress of the one at Pergamum attempting to paralyze it, Ptolemy Philopator forbade
;

the exportation of papyrus which scribes used for copying books. Eumenes II responded

15
to this cultural embargo with an invention which was to add to the luxury and longevity
of books — that of parchment, a word deriving from Pergamum. Made from prepared
animal skins, it is a process which was to be employed throughout the Middle Ages
until the invention of printing. We know that at Rome the Attalid king made an offer of
600,000 sesterces for a painting by Aristides which was part of the spoils from Corinth,
put up for sale in lots by the consul Mummius, conqueror of Greece. The Romans were
still parvenus in the art of amateurism the enormous sum offered for the work awakened
;

Mummius to its possible value. Proclaiming it the most precious piece in the booty, he
withdrew it from the sale and dedicated it to the Temple of Ceres. Thus it was the first
foreign picture on public display in Rome. Soon, with the downfall of their kings, the
Pergamenians were also to fear Rome's pillaging they fought ferociously to prevent the
;

exodus of their masterpieces.

Even if the Greco-Roman civilization had bona fide public collections, it had no
special institution to manage them. The very word museum {mouseion in Greek, museum in
Latin) designates something entirely different —
it applies to sanctuaries dedicated to the

muses, to philosophical academies or to institutions of advanced learning or of scientific

research, over which the muses quite naturally presided. Such is the case with the famous
Mouseion of Alexandria, founded by Ptolemy Soter or Ptolemy Philadelphus. It was a
college of scholars, analogous to the modern Institute forAdvanced Study at Princeton
or to the College de France in Paris. It did not contain collections of art but there was a
scientific museum comprising a botanical and zoological park, rooms devoted to the
studv of anatomy and installations for astronomical observation. Scholars lived there at
the expense of the state. As for the artistic collections of the Ptolemies, they were housed
in their palace. Since the modern city of Alexandria lies atop the ancient one, it has not
been possible to excavate there —
one of the reasons for the great lacunae in our know-
ledge of the Hellenistic era.
With the Romans the word museum was applied to specific villas, doubtlessly to
designate a place reserved for philosophical discussion. The word was never applied to a
collection of works of art —
the Italian Renaissance was to give it that meaning.
Works of art were so precious that there was great concern about protecting them
from the ravages of war. Some time after the year 174 A.D. Pausanias could see in
Alexandria a vast repository of statues from all periods which had been amassed there in
haste in order to protect them from pillaging when the city was menaced.
The position of the Romansregarding works of art can be compared to that of
contemporary Americans in relation to masterpieces produced by Western civilization.
To assemble them at great expense constituted an element of prestige associated with
power and wealth. Further, sheer market value became, as in our time, one of the essen-
tial factors behind the search for works of art. Announced by posters, preceded by
exhibitions, the public sales of Rome, a city with abundant, idle wealth, attracted
crowds of the curious who intermingled with the amateurs. Antique literature is filled
with anecdotes on this subject, like that, for instance, of the former usurer who fell
asleep at his seat during a sale and whose noddings of the head were taken for approvals
of the bids, so that by the end of the auction he found himself with 1,800,000 sesterces'
worth of unwanted acquisitions. More piquant is the story Pliny tells of a courtesan who,

16
having acquired bronze candelabrum and a hideous, hunchbacked slave
in a single lot a
whom the owner had paired with the masterpiece in a desperate move to be rid of him,
took the hunchback as a lover who, having become the courtesan's heir, made a god of
the candelabrum and founded a new cult.
The art dealers were clustered along the Via Sacra and in the Saepta Julia where under
the colonnades all kinds of shops could be found which, in contrast to those of the
Greeks, were luxuriously appointed. The Roman satirists Martial, Statius, Suetonius,
Juvenal and Seneca have caricatured the types of collectors, from the disdainful patri-
cian to the careful amateur who spends hours every day scouring the Saepta and
finishes by carrying off two porringers for a bronze as.

It was through contact with Greece, conquered in the second century B.C., that the
Romans acquired a taste for works of art. The spoils brought back from Greece and the
East were displayed in triumphal processions and were afterwards divided among the
temples, with the victor keeping his share. Such a transaction was regarded as a business
venture, as was the selling of the captured slaves. Occasionally it happened that the pro-
vincial governors would fleece their administrators and strip the temples, as did the
famous Verres, governor of Sicily, whose rapacity for art was condemned bv Cicero in
his celebrated Ierrine Oral ions. We can get some idea of his character by considering
another "amateur" of this type: Hermann Goering; he was so enamored of beautiful
intaglios that when he saw one which particularly pleased him, he would wrest it from
the owner on the pretext of looking at it more closely and would not return it. The
underwater excavations of Madhia on the coast of Tunisia, of the Phocian port of
Anticythera and off the cape of Artemision have yielded us magnificent antique bronzes
lost when ships that were transporting works of art either pillaged or bought by the
Romans were sunk. Repair work on a street in Piraeus in 1959, necessitated by a
disastrous fire in a warehouse, brought to light a whole series of beautiful fourth-
century statues, wrapped as if ready for shipment; the buried site had once been the
shop of an exporter. One tends to ascribe these maritime transports to Sulla, the con-
queror of Athens, who seems to have been particularly greedy for such riches. Epidaurus,
Delphi and Olympia lost their treasures to him; at Piraeus he confiscated a rich library
housing all the works of Aristotle. Their aesthetic sensibilities refined on the art they
pillaged, the Romans became impassioned collectors without ceasing however to mani-
fest the greatest scorn for artists. Singled out by destiny to dominate men and govern
nations, they considered artists to be simple entertainers on a par with ballerinas and
flutists. The remarks of Virgil, Horace and Cicero on this subject are well known.
Cicero, who out of snobbishness amassed collections for his palaces and villas, in order
to excuse himself for this "decadent" taste, attacked the amateurs who let themselves be
taken in by such child's play it is true that Verres considered him a Philistine (idiota) in
;

that sphere.

Originals or copies of Greek statues, objects of gold or silver, ivory or tortoise shell,
furniture of bronze, cedar, cypress, arborvitae or maple, Oriental carpets woven of gold
thread, and intaglios accumulated in the palaces and, still more, in the luxurious villas of
the Romans. Infatuated with intaglios, cameos and vases of precious stone, they con-
structed dactyliothecas for which objects in rock crystal and in amber from the Baltic

17
were particularly sought an amber figurine was worth more than a slave. Caesar had six
;

collections of precious stones which he gave to the Temple of Venus Genetrix, Pompey
possessed the collection of Mithridates, whom he had conquered; it numbered two
thousand pieces. Figurines of Corinthian bronze were worth their weight in gold, so
esteemed was the art of the bronze workers in that city. They constructed special
—
galleries pinakothekai — to receive paintings. A contemporary of Augustus, the
architect Vitruvius, assigned great importance to the orientation of the divers rooms of
a dwelling and recommended facing the galleries to the north, "because the light is the
same at every hour and therefore the colors always remain constant." In contrast, he
prescribed opening libraries to the east "because their usage demands the light of the
morning" and, further, "because the west and the south are subject to the humidity of
the winds" which encourages worms and hastens the growth of mold. The presentation
of such fragile books of antiquity required special precautions — for example, virtually
indestructible shelves were made out of cedar or ivory. Adorned with a statue of
Minerva and busts or terms of great men, libraries were also historical museums.
In their suburban villas, places of leisure in the country, the ancients loved the com-
panionship of works of art, especially of statues which they scattered in their gardens.
The most splendid and today the best preserved of these villas is the one Emperor
Hadrian built some twenty miles to the northeast of Rome near the town of Tibur, now
Tivoli, where it was protected from cold north winds but was open to the refreshing
breezes from the sea. During the course of his different sojourns in Italy this conscien-
tious emperor, who had toured the entire antique world, had a sizable complex of
buildings erected in a general area that earlier had attracted Sulla, Caesar and Augustus.
The royal traveler wanted to establish a sort of microcosm of the empire, reproducing
those places that had most impressed him on his visits: the Lyceum, the Academy, the
Prvtaneum and the Stoa Poikile of Athens, the Vale of Tempe in Thessaly, the Canopus
of the Egyptian delta; he had not even forgotten a representation of the Gates of Hell.
In the mass of buildings whose ruins have come down to us, only the Canopus and the
Serapeum can be identified with certainty; recent excavations have enabled us to
reconstruct the latter and have further yielded intact four copies of caryatids from the
Erechtheum, provided with arms, thus ending the long-lasting polemic about the posi-
tion of the arms on these celebrated figures. The Villa Adriana was, in a sense, an open-
air museum of the classical world which the emperor wished spread before his eyes.
This attempt of the Roman world to rival the Greeks in the sphere of art manifests itself
again in the innumerable copies Hadrian had made of famous statues. Excavated since
the sixteenth century, the ruins of Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli have yielded a mine of anti-
quities that has enriched all the museums of the world, particularly those of Rome.
These same ruins reserve still further surprises for archeologists.
This craze for copies should not be surprising they were accepted as, if not equals, at
;

least equivalents of originals in a period which attached especial significance to the

Platonic notion of the "Idea" participating in the form invented by the artist. Copies
were sold at high prices which, however, did not prevent forgers from providing them
with spurious signatures and passing them off as originals. Specialists — as many for
sculpture as for painting—restored damaged pieces. The Greek
masterpieces of classical
painting were overcome with decay by the time the Romans evinced an interest in them.

18
 ;

Then, as now, restorations were often worse than the evils they sought to remedy and
paintings were irretrievably lost through the intervention of unskillful restorers.
As it is today with primitives, archaic Greek works met with favor among collectors
in fact certain ones owned only pre-Phidian art. Quintilian mocked the preference for
"these almost crude works and what I call the infancy of future art over the productions
of the more illustrious artists who followed, but in my opinion this is mere pretension."
However, as early as the Augustan period this passion for "primitives," inherited from
the Hellenistic princes, raged as a mania and Horace tells usof a certain Damasippus
infected with it: "If a marble were awkwardly sculpted or a bronze worked in a dry,
hard fashion, he would quickly offer 100,000 sesterces for it." All aging civilizations are
haunted by a wish to return to their infancy Claudius had Etruscan antiquities researched.
;

Others preferred sketches to finished works because "these barely indicated strokes are
the thoughts of the Master," as Pliny said. Fastidious amateurs sought bo^etti — those
first attempts at creation— in paint, wax and terra cotta. Natural curiosities already had a
certain place among works of art they were found in temples, consecrated to the gods.
;

Suetonius tells a story about how Augustus wanted to keep in his villa at Capri the
gigantic bones from primordial animals and the unidentified stone weapons that
legendary or mythological heroes might have used which were found during the
digging of foundations for his villa.
Not all the marvels, however, were hidden in the palaces or villas of the emperors
and the rich the Quirites also had a rather large share. It happened several times that the
;

vox populi condemned the monopolizing of works of art. Nero was blamed for hoarding
so many wonders of art in his Domus Aureus out of the sight of all. When Emperor
Tiberius transferred to his sleeping quarters the celebrated Apoxyomenos of Lysippus
which Agrippa had placed before his baths, the populace grumbled so loudly that,
emperor though he was, he had to return it to its original place. Agrippa, the minister
and son-in-law of Augustus, delivered a magnificent speech, the substance of which
Pliny has preserved for us, about the advisability of "rendering public all paintings and
statues which would be of more value than exiling them to country houses." Imperial
authority was seated upon a demagogic concept which had to take into account public
opinion. Consecrated to the gods and given to the people by the emperors and the
illustrious, works of art encumbered the public ways, principally the forums, the public
gardens, the sanctuaries, the theatres, the basilicas and the baths. Filled with objects, the
temples were transformed into veritable curio shops. The idols of Hellenic divinities,
ravaged from temples in Greece or Asia, naturally found places in the temples of the
Roman divinities with which they became identified. Situated at the extreme northwest
of the Roman forum, at the foot of the Capitol, the Temple of Concord was rebuilt by
Augustus on a vaster scale in celebration of the end of civil strife and the return of
internal peace. "In his thoughts," statesLeon Homo, "it was destined to become one of
the principal museums of Imperial Rome." The collection deposited there included
statues, paintings, precious stones and jewels, several of which were owed to the muni-
ficence of the Empress Livia. Exhibited objects were distributed around or even within
the cella; one could see masterpieces by Zeuxis, Nikias, Euphranor, Sthennis of
Olynthus, Nikeratos of Pergamum but the simpletons admired the four black obsidian
elephants commended by the guide.

19
 Life in antiquitywas lived under porticoes where one could stroll along, sheltered
from the sun and inclement weather. To construct a portico was an excellent way to win
the gratitude of one's fellow citizens. It was an ideal place for displaying works of
art —not surprising in a country where people lived out of doors — and certain porticoes,
which can be considered veritable museums were constructed for that purpose. A case
in point is the Portico of Octavia. Originally the colonnade had been built by Metellus
to receive the collections of art which had figured in his triumphal procession, thereby
avoiding their dispersal. In 32 B.C. Augustus ordered the loggia rebuilt and called it
the Porticus Octaviae. A quadrangular enclosure surrounded by four open galleries, the
interior housed two temples dedicated to Jupiter and Juno and a schola which served as
an auditorium for certain Senate meetings, as a library and an art gallery. The collection
of this most extensive museum of Imperial Rome was exhibited under the portico, in
the two temples and in the schola. Flanking the central esplanade before the temple
were twenty-six bronze equestrian statues, the warriors known as The Companions of
Alexander, which the conqueror commissioned from Lysippus to commemorate the
cavalry of hetaeria who the Battle of Granicus; twenty-five of the statues repre-
fell at

sented the heroes and the twenty-sixth was of Alexander himself. Previously the group
had been exhibited in the portico of Metellus who had it brought from Dion, a city in
southern Macedonia.
Greatly admired in the Portico of Pompey was the entire gallery of paintings by
Antiphilus, Nikias, Pausias, Polygnotos and statues dedicated to the glory of Pompey.
Let us cite in passing the Portico of Marcius Philippus, the Saepta Julia, the Portico of
the Argonauts and the Portico Vipsania, a sort of geographical museum where one
went to contemplate a great map of the world erected under Agrippa'a supervision.
The Portico of Apollo was decorated with fifty statues of the Danaides, to which corres-
5. A scene from the Iliad or ponded, on the esplanade, fifty statues of their ill-fated husnands and four bronze oxen,
from the Cyprian Chants originals by Myron, celebrated for his skill in the representation of animals. Early
in the House of the Cryp-
toporticus at Pompeii. ( irca
Romans would find astonishing the great admiration we accord the debris of what was
30 B.C. The manner in which
once the wonder of the dying antique world.
paintings ire re arranged in the Among the varied pleasures offered at the baths, which served as social clubs to
homes of Roman collectors is which one was admitted for a small sum, there were conversation lounges, rooms for
known through of mural
the study
literary or musical recitals, libraries and collections of works of art; the spirit was the
paintings ; sometimes the master
object of as much care as the body. The Baths of Titus yielded to excavators in 1506 the
of the house had part of his col
lection of paintings copied on the famous Laocoon group which may have come originally from Nero's Domus Aureus.
trails, usually in the form oj a In the Baths of Caracalla, rich in divers collections, the colossal Rhodian group known
frieze. The artist would then as the Farnese ##//was found which Gaius Asinius Pollio, the benefactor of Rome's first
hare folding shutters installed to
public library, had placed in the museum he had annexed to his city of books.
ins/ire the preservation
of the
most precious works. Certain of
There were also public picture galleries, if we can believe Petronius who recounts
these false "cabinets" were de- for us a visit he made to one of them. He met there an old gentleman, a fine connoisseur
signed for still lifes while others, who explained to him that the decadence in painting was attributable to the passion for
sio chamber of paintings
h as the money. "In former times when the rewards of poverty were still appreciated, the fine
in the of the Crypto
I louse
arts flourished... To speak only of sculptors, Lysippus died of hunger at the base of a
porticus, showed a group of myth
ological scenes, the
statue he was passionately striving to perfect; Myron, that marvelous artist who made
subjects oj

which hare not been identified men as well as animals live in bronze, was so poor that he could find no one to accept his
with certainty. estate... Do you think 'they' go to the temple to ask for health?... One promises an

20
21
6.Pavilion under the Trees,
by Ts'ao Chih-po fhao, or
studio name, Yun-hsi) ( 1272-
1355). Musee Guimet, Paris.
This painting, ink on paper, is
a leaf from an album which
had been mounted on a scroll.

There are nine red stamps: one

is the artist's seal, six are the

seals of the limperor Ch'ien

Lung (reigned 1736-1796) and
two are those of the Emperor
Siuan-tong. Great importance was
attached to the pedigree of works
of art because of the veneration
which the Chinese felt for every
thing which touched the past or
one's ancestors. Thus the paint-
ings, which more than any other
objects were sought after by ama-
teurs, bore the seals of the owners
to whom they had belonged. The
number of seals of famous col-

lectors elevated the value of the

works even though they were some-
times forgeries.

22
 offering if he buries a rich relative; if hale and hearty, gets his third million...
another,
And you are astonished that painting dies when, to the eyes of all, men and gods, an
ingot of gold is another masterpiece than that which Apelles and Phidias, those little
hare-brained Greeks, could have fashioned !" This could as well have been a present-day
critic speaking about the starving impressionists, about the artists who followed them,
wholesale merchants in painting, and about these sanctuaries of Mammon that are the
armored, ingot-filled vaults of our banks.
In short, Rome had no museum per se but all Rome was^a museum. The museum
never was, in Rome, an institution with a structure and rules as were the public libraries
which, since the times of Claudius, were all under the direction of one literate procurator
or administrator; their surveillance and maintenance were entrusted to the individual
guardians, the aeditimui. Recruitment of custodial personnel varied greatly. For the
richest museums, like the Temple of Concord, there could only be Roman citizens; in
general, however, they were freedmen, sometimes even simple slaves. These guardians
7. Eight Dignitaries taking were responsible for the collections; they saw to their upkeep, aided by subordinate
a Springtime Ride, by Chao personnel, and served as guides for the public, which guaranteed them an appreciable
Jen (during the period of the source of revenue. Then, as now, thefts were frequent and the aeditimui were forced to
Five Dynasties - 907-960
. I.D.). Taipei Museum (For- put up security sometimes they were even directly answerable for collections, as in the
;

mosa) .
case of the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus or that of the Portico of the Saepta Julia.
Maintained by scholars, the vene- The frequent fires which devastated Rome destroyed many collections of art; little
ration for the past encouraged at by little the Greek paintings disintegrated. However, on the eve of the disaster to which
an early date in China the assem-
she would succumb and despite the appropriations profiting Byzantium, the Eternal
bling of collections of antiquities.
City abounded with works of art, precious and delicate masterpieces which in a century
Since the Han Dynasty
(206 B.C.— 220 A.D.j search- would become incomprehensible and, even worse, would be regarded as repulsive idols
es were undertaken to recover inspired by the demon, worthv of sending to the lime kiln or to the forge.
archaic ritual bronzes from the
The museological situation in Rome can be considered the historical parallel of that
Shang and Chou epochs. The
of today by reason of the great public interest in works of art. Not until the eighteenth
T'ang emperors were passionately
interested in ceramics, exotic ob-
century would this esprit public, as far as concerns works of art, be slowly reborn. It can
jects and paintings. Amateurism be said, moreover, that Roman museums stand out in history as those most nearly
reached its highest degree of re- comparable to contemporary American museums; like the latter they were not depen-
finement under the Sung rulers. dent on institutional jurisdiction nor on civil administration but relied on private
Emperor Hui-tsung, who was
initiative. The collectors, too, as we have seen, resembled those of the United States.
responsible for many excavations,
possessed 10,000 archeological
The more subtle art patrons in China and Japan bring to mind the princes and cardinals
piecesand 6,396 paintings signed of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
with 231 names. The palace oj The taste for collecting goes back to the very origins of the Chinese empire, corres-
Hsiian-ho was enlarged to hold
ponding to that veneration of the past peculiar to the Heavenly Beings for whom what
them. The collections, studied and
has been is proof of what is and what shall be. They had a cult for the great men of the
written about by a Tai-chao (a
were the past, the legendary emperors who had established the foundations of civilization and
critic), subject of an
illustrated catalog and printed who had known how to charm the forces of universal energy by mastering the elements
reproductions — the Hsiian- through the invention of astronomy, divination, the calendar, irrigation, silk weaving,
ho-hua-p'u (illustrated agriculture, music, dance and the arts and by formulating the eternal principles which
Repertoire of the Antiquities of
Hsiian-ho,).
govern relations between skv and earth on the one hand and men on the other. In
Today, vestiges of
the old imperial collections are contrast to the West, perpetually moved by an internal force toward the future, succes-
divided between the museums of sive generations in the East looked for direction to the past, which was considered the
Taipei and Peking. model to follow.

23
 — i ipi

A
d
t '

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1

24
Si

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I

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$»2&&i

""it.****"
25
 At very early time the Chinese had a feeling for history. They inscribed their edicts
a
on stone, and to assure their greatest diffusion, transferred them to paper by the method
of estampage, analogous to the process of engraving which served the same purpose in
the West. Later the invention of the paint brush permitted scholars and painters to copy
and recopy them in beautiful calligraphy. Thus movable paintings were born, the work
of scholars and poets as much as of artists.
At a time when
the Western world was succumbing to barbarism, the Chinese were
practicing, as they had for centuries, the art of amateurism. The first collectors were
undoubtedly the emperors, some of whom were calligraphers who encouraged that art
which was appreciated fully as much as painting in China. It is altogether possible that
the great Ch in imperialist, Shih Huang Ti (259-210 B.C.), founder of the Chinese
Empire and administrator of genius, commissioned calligraphies and paintings for the
splendid palace he had built at Hsien-Yang. The Han Dynasty (206 B.C. -220 A.D.)
raised still higher the scepter of the arts, practicing painting and calligraphy as phi-
losophical pursuits. Emperor Wu
founded an imperial academy where he amassed
from all the provinces of China the most renowned paintings and calligraphies.
The last emperor of the Han Dynasty, Hien-ti (190-220) formed a sort of national
grouping portraits of his ministers in a room called the Salon of the Unicorn
gallery,
good omen), a forerunner of the portrait galleries established in
(the fantastic animal of
Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A successor to the Han throne
commissioned from the painter Yen-Chou, a master at portraiture, a series of likenesses
of the ladies at court — an early parallel to the cabinet des dames of the seventeenth century.
8. Portrait of the Poet Li Tai In one of known as "The Two Mysterious Terraces," Emperor
his palaces, that
Po (circa 700-762) by Liang Wen Ti of the Sui Dynasty (589-604) installed two galleries; one, "Mysterious Calli-
K'ai (circa 1140-1210). Ink on
graphy," housed countless masterpieces of that art the other, "Precious Vestiges," was
;

paper. National Museum, Tokyo.

After the prehistoric and primi- devoted to painting. Calligraphy and painting were held in equal esteem.
tive periods which show an inde- The T'ang emperors were patrons of the arts as well as conquerors and were some-
pendent art, Japan was to a large
times artists themselves like the Emperor Hsuan-tsung who was both painter and
extent under Chinese influence.
calligrapher. During the Sung Dynasty (960-1260) the emperors often were more
After the rule of the T'ang
Dynasty, Chinese works of art interested in arts and letters than in politics and many devoted themselves to painting.
abounded in Japan. Japanese art This excess of refinement was to cost them their empire.
lovers became art collectors, espe-
This was the great era of art criticism in China collectors fought for masterpieces by
;

cially of paintings. The famous

portrait of the poet Li Tai Po by
artistsof the past or present. On these paintings, delicate and evanescent though they
the Sung Dynasty painter Liang were, they imposed their stamps and sometimes even their expressions of satisfaction
K'ai shows the signature of the and approval. This custom, followed through successive dynasties, resulted in the
artist on the left and on the right, disfigurement of Chinese paintings overburdened with stamps, they aroused monetary
;

above, the seal oj the Ish/kaga,

rather than aesthetic interest because value was attached to pedigree and, as today, a
a shogun family in power during
AVI thand X\ 'th celebrated provenance increased the worth of a piece.
the centuries,
to whom the painting belonged. was during the Sung era that Japan, having been in contact with China for several
It
Such seals or stamps of the centuries, began to imitate her example. Until then the only storehouses for works of art
collectors are found less frequently
in Japan were the temples. Japanese amateurs acquired, at great expense, masterpieces
on paintings in Japanese collections
than in those in China where they by renowned artists of the Sung period and, more respectful than the Chinese collectors,
reflected to a high degree the they refrained from affixing their stamps which, in our eyes, gives these works, preserved
value attributed to the works. in private collections in the Land of the Rising Sun, an especially precious character.

26
27
 Chapher

2
Interlude
The museum foundered and sank with other institutions of the antique world. This
work of art, to escape mortality, was incompatible with the new era in
gratuity of the
which all in human life was subject to a supreme finality in an afterlife. Moreover,
medieval man had a notion of time like that of primitive civilizations; he lived deprived
of one of its three dimensions: the past. History began with him, that is to say, with the
Christian era, preceded by a prehistory that was the world of the Bible. All which was
not of that order lacked reality, was cast again into the "outlying darkness," a sort of
world in reverse image dominated by evil forces. However, of the Christian past there
remained tokens which had to be preserved at all costs these were the relics, remains from
;

the instruments of the Passion, from the life of the Virgin, from the lives both of the
apostles and of those men struck by divine illumination, the saints. The early Christians
9. The Shoso-in in the To-
daiji Monastery at Nara,
were already infusing linen or plaster with the blood of martyrs. In the Middle Ages such
near Kyoto, Japan. To contain relics were vied for passionately and one stopped at neither theft nor murder in pursuit
the offerings sent from all over of them. They constituted, moreover, the best tool of medieval therapeutics, warding
the world to the colossal bronze off calamities, insuring good harvests, curing sicknesses, epidemics and infirmities.
Buddha at Nara, a special store-
— —was Nothing was too rich to use in paying homage to these distinguished remains: gold,
house the Shoso-in built.
silver, precious uncut stones (the technique of faceting was not yet known), cloths and
After the death of Emperor
Shomu in 756 A.D., his widow sundry other objects imported at great expense from distant lands. Accumulated in
bequeathed all his treasures to it. treasuries of the Church, these objects were museums in embryo which were frequented
Included were some invaluable bv pilgrims. All that had come near Christ was sacred, even the soil of the Holy Land
T'ang pieces, then known, as
little
which was made into broad, thin cakes stamped with pious images and called terrae
well as objects sent from the
sigillatae. Oil from lamps that had burned near sanctuaries in Palestine was also holy and
Middle Hast. Since 1873 the
Shoso-in has opened every Novem- was carried in ampoules of lead or silver. The Cathedral at Monza, Italy, houses antique
ber, that is to say, the beautiful specimens in silver from the seventh century on which are scenes recalling mosaic com-
season. It is the oldest museum in positions that decorated Palestinian basilicas before their destruction by the Arabs. The
the world. The reinforced wood
construction has been instrumen-
cloths in which the relics were wrapped — the shrouds — had the same efficacy and from
tal in preserving the objects through time to time pieces of them were distributed to the faithful. In Constantinople nothing
its natural regulation of the hu- was thought of dismembering or dividing relics to satisfy the demand while Rome, from
midity. the earliest Christian times, kept alive the traditions of respect that Roman paganism had

29
 always shown for the bodies of the dead, even for
those of the executed. The Codex Theodosianus for-
;f2^Sm\ bade "troubling the rest of a deceased, even by
disturbing the sarcophagus." Later, cloths that had
touched saintly bodies were considered relics,
which explains their multiplication; reverence was
paid to no fewer than fifty-seven veils of the Virgin.
The consecrated bodies were preserved in gold
or silver reliquaries, taking at first the shape of a
casket, later, that of a church. When only a portion
of the body had been conserved, the reliquary
repeated its form — hand, arm, leg, foot, head or rib.
Treasuries also contained frontals for altars in pre-
cious metal, portable altars, pieces of liturgical
orfevrerie (chalices, patens, ciboria, eucharistic
doves), many of which were considered the attri-
butes of some local saint, and manuscripts, pri-
marily gospels. The splendid Carolingian gospels
were much esteemed throughout the Middle Ages
they often were given sumptuous metal bindings,
even as late as Gothic times. Liturgical vestments
consecrated by former use were also kept with care.
The treasury stored the sets of tapestries used to
decorate the church during certain feast days in the
year. In addition to all these objects of occidental
craftsmanship, there were others from antiquity or
from the Orient which for the medieval man
signified the fabulously remote. Certain objects
created by the civilizations of antiquity or Islam or
the Far East, which the Middle Ages felt incapable
of reproducing, were considered infinitely precious
acquired at great expense, they were incorporated
10. Ivory Binding for a New Testament, /raced to the Ibbey
into shrines or reliquaries. Thus, antique gems and
-

of Lorsch, Germany. ictoria and Albert Museum, London. One of

I

the most beautiful examples of those magnificent iror\ plaques used as cameos, for which the Middle Ages had a veritable
bindings for the four Gospels. The two leaves of the binding from Lorsch passion, were kept intact for us. Without hesitation,
are today at Rome and London; the manuscripts are at Bucharest and sacred metalwork was ornamented with figures of
at/can. Originating in thede la dour de Charlemagne,
Ecok
the I
Caesar, Germanicus, Jupiter or other gods no
these monumental plaques, made about 810, represent the most important
longer understood. The Reliquary of the Three
ivory works of art which hare been preserved. Inspiration for the style
was drain/ from remote antiquity. Magi in Cologne is set with no fewer than two
hundred antique stones. Suger, abbot of Saint-
Denis near Paris, hunted as far as Sicily for cameos
and sardonyx carvings. For shrouds, silks woven
with gold (among them some rare Sassanian cloths)
were imported from Islam or Byzantium. We owe
to these treasuries what we now possess of Byzantine
objects and also of very early oriental fabrics.

30
 These treasuries were maintained in small rooms annexed to churches, cathedrals or
monasteries, which were always vaulted to lessen the risk of fire. In the Cathedral of
Bayeux the treasury room with its thirteenth-century cases is still intact. Upon occasion,
a simple armoire within the church served as the treasury (Cathedral of Noyon, the
Abbey of Souvigny). It sometimes happened that the treasury for precious objects was
attached to another kind of repository, the archives which contained the "treasure of
charters." There the abbey kept its property deeds and its documents justifying rights.
Saint Louis had a small structure annexed to the Palais de la cite in Paris to shelter his
most precious belongings in the lower room were the relics of the Sainte-Chapelle and
;

the crown jewels; in the upper room, his treasure of charters.

These treasuries were formed during the course of the Middle Ages in many stages.
The first were assembled in the seventh and eighth centuries. One of the oldest is the
treasury of the Cathedral of Monza, Italy, founded in the early seventh century by the
pious Queen Theodolinda, Catholic wife of Agiluf, the Arian king of the Longobardi.
But it was the Carolingian epoch which witnessed the first great treasures. Charlemagne's
overwhelming piety had given new life to monasteries and cathedrals. His personal
relations with the Byzantine basileus and the caliph Harun al-Rashid enabled him to
acquire, through purchases or donations, a great number of relics and precious objects
which were added to the booty captured from the Huns and the Arabs. Imitating
Byzantine and Islamic practices, he commissioned from his ateliers sumptuous pieces of
metalwork ornamented with gems and he vigorously encouraged sculpture in ivory.
Cameos, antique intaglios, Byzantine or Moslem ivories, silks and cloth of gold, gems
and objects in precious metals filled his coffers at Aix-la-Chapelle. Three years before his
death Charlemagne decided to divide his treasures keeping only one third for his heirs,
;

he distributed the remaining two thirds among twenty-one great cities in the realm.
According to legend he sent a different letter of the alphabet to each of the twenty-four
largest abbeys. Scholars still wonder whether an A-shaped reliquary preserved in the
Abbey of Conques in Rouergue, which houses some objects associated with Charle-
magne, corroborates the legend. Curiously, these treasures have vanished and all that
remain to claim a Carolingian provenance are the famous imperial crown in the Hofburg
in Vienna (in reality no earlier than Ottonian or Romanesque in date) and the purple
mantle with gold eagles that the emperor had given to the Cathedral in Metz and which
is there still. Except for some manuscripts and ivory plaquettes the mantle is probably

the only object contemporary with the great emperor that we have preserved. The post-
Carolingian epoch saw the enrichment of numerous treasuries that of the Abbey of
;

Sainte Foy de Conques has one of the richest stores of objects from this great period.
The treasury of the Sancta Sanctorum in the Lateran dates back to the same time. Although
lacking in Carolingian objects, the treasury of Aix-la-Chapelle contains beautiful pieces
from subsequent periods. All that recalled the Carolingian era was venerated as a relic
equal to those of the saints. The oliphant which Roland burst when he blew it at the
Battle of Roncevaux can be seen at Saint Seurin in Bordeaux. Even Roncevaux offered
to the cult of pilgrims Charlemagne's chessboard and the rock cleft by Roland with his
sword of steel so strong it resisted the shock; the latter was kept in the Abbey of
Rocamadour.
The Romanesque period saw the formation of the great treasuries of Reichenau,
whose most precious piece was the vase in which water had been changed to wine at the

31
 marriage in Cana; those of Hildesheim and Quedlinburg; and, in France, that of Sens,
one of the richest in early textiles. Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis, minister of Louis VII,
took the greatest care to enrich his collection of objects pertaining to the liturgy and the
cult when his church was reconstructed. The treasury he established is today divided
between the Bibliotheque Nationale and the Louvre; it contained many antique or
exotic objects such as a sardonyx vase in the form of a ewer, one of porphyry in the shape
of an eagle, an Arabian rock-crystal ewer and, most important of all, the rock-crystal
chalice which had belonged to the Sassanide king, Khosrau I, and was known as the
"plate of Solomon."
The enrichment resulting from the Crusades opened the second phase of the forma-
tion of treasuries in the Occident. The fabulous riches accumulated since antiquity by
the Byzantine emperors aroused the covetousness of the crusaders. \\ hen the Venetians
turned the forces of the fourth crusade on Constantinople and captured the city, King
Baldwin I, dazzled by such luxury, said that all Christendom did not possess so much.
Pillaging of the city lasted from the fourteenth to the sixteenth of April, 1204. Those
who had done the actual plundering were forced to relinquish most of what they had in
order to assure a more just distribution; half was given to the Venetians, half to the
crusaders. Nine tenths of the Treasury of San Marco in Venice comes from this booty.
Less obtuse than the crusaders, the Venetians coveted the bronze quadriga in the hippo-
drome, those original Greek statues from classical antiquity which had been stolen by
the Romans from Greece before being taken to Byzantium. No longer capable of pro-
ducing such works in bronze, the West carried them away and ended by placing them,
like a trophy, high on the facade of San Marco. Another treasury built up by relics
brought back by crusaders returning from the East is that of the Sainte-Chapelle in the
Palais des Rois de France in Paris. Built by Saint Louis, the chapel itself was an immense
reliquary of stone and colored glass, destined to shelter the numerous relics from the
1 A-shaped reliquary. Ca-
1 .

Passion sent by Baldwin II to the Saint-King as security for a loan. The king refrained
rolingian period. Treasui
from demanding repayment because he considered the security much more precious
the Ibbey 0/ Conques in Rouer-
gue, France. For bis collection
than the loan. Saint Louis commissioned magnificent orfevreries to receive the relics and
oj numerous relics acquired through to serve in the performance of the liturgy. Of all these riches only two antique pieces
his relations with Byzantine em remain today: the great cameo of Germanicus, taken to Constantinople by Emperor
perors, Charlemagne caw Mis-
Constantine, and a consular scepter in sardonyx which served in Constantinople as the
sioned from the palace nor/.
distinctive attribute of a dignitary at the court of the basileus. The gem was venerated as
>

magnificent pieces oj orfevrerie

which often incorporated antique representing the triumph of Joseph at the court of Pharaoh; the scepter was used as a
gems and cameos. These treasures cantoral staff in the Sainte-Chapelle.
hare disappeared. lecording to A great treasury linked to the history of France is that of the Cathedral of Reims.
legend, ( harlemagne gate to
It dates back to the very origins of that history since it preserves the famous vase of
twenty- four abbeys twenty-four
Soissons which Clovis gave to the cathedral. One of the most beautiful pieces is the
reliquaries in the shape oj

different letters oj the alphabet.

chalice which is supposed to have belonged to Saint Remi (437P-533) but which is
This was once accepted as an actually no earlier than the twelfth century. Pillaged by the Normans in 822, by robbers
explanation oj the I rbape oj in 941, by Carolingian princes in 991, it was rebuilt under the Capetians and the Valois.
reliquary
this in the Ibbey oj
The coronation regalia for the kings of France were also stored at Reims.
( ouqnes but detailed study has
These treasuries housed too many riches not to tempt public forces. Particularly in
now revealed it to be not earlier
than the abbacy oj Begon (
1087 France they were squandered by the many appropriations of successive generations.
1106). In periods of war kings demanded the use of precious metals. At the time of the Norman

32
invasions Charles the Fat had already made requisitions, principally at Reims. During
the Hundred Years' War the kings of France — Charles V, Charles VI and Charles VII—
drained the treasuries as a primary source of revenue for the demands of the war. At the
same time the monks of Mont Saint Michel did not hesitate to pledge at Saint Malo a
part of the treasury of their abbey to help pay the expenses of the struggle against the
English. In the sixteenth century Charles IX obtained from the pope the right to tax the
churches of France, who melted down pieces from their treasury to feed the war
against the Huguenots. However, the treasuries of French churches were still rich
enough under Louis XIV to attract his greed. The final act of destruction came as a
result of the famous edict of 1759, proclaimed by Louis XV
by which all civil and
religious pieces of metalwork were ordered sent to the foundry for the purpose of
meeting the deficit in the royal treasury. The Revolution carried away the last vestiges.
Thus can be explained why France is so poor in orfevreries of precious metals while
Germany, Italy and Spain are so rich. A vast exhibition of ecclesiastical treasures held in
Paris in 1965 proved that without exception the churches of France have pieces of no
more than secondary interest and often even of mediocre quality. Vandalism resulting
from contempt for the Middle Ages added further to this "martyrology." With the
suppression of the Order of Grammont in 1707, the Bishop of Limoges dispersed the
famous treasury of the church; finding the main altar too cumbersome, he had the
celebrated piece of Limousin metalcraft dismantled and sent to the foundry.
The "treasure" accumulated near a sanctuary is not an institution peculiar to
Christianity; it existed in antiquity and is also found in Islam, China and Japan. In

present-day Iran three museums were formerly treasuries. The most important is at
Meshed in the center of the Khurasan district in northeast Iran, near the sanctuary
which contains the body of Imam-Reza, the eighth Shiite imam, who was poi-
soned bv Caliph Mamum in the eighth century. His tomb is a center of pilgrimage for
the whole East; crowds from Iran, Pakistan, India, Iraq and Turkey converge to
honor the saint. Over the centuries princely donors amassed there the precious objects
which pilgrims come to venerate as sacred relics. About twenty years ago this treasure
was installed as a museum in a specially constructed building at the edge of the tomb.
Not far from Teheran the museum of Shah-Abdol-Azim was formed from gifts left at
the tomb of this ninth-century martyr and descendant of the prophet. About 110 miles
south of Teheran, near the tomb of Massouma-Ghom, sister of Imam-Reza, there is
an historical museum particularly rich in objects of the Safawid period. In An Najaf, a
holy city in Iraq, the great Ali, cousin and son-in-law of the prophet Mohammed and
the first Shiite imam, is interred; there too the treasury is a museum.
In Japan temples were the first repositories of religious and even secular works of art.
— —
The Nipponese venerated great men emperors, poets, artists and in their honor
erected temples in which were preserved objects that had belonged to or been created
by them. During illustrious periods the museum was, so to speak, crystallized around
the temple. Japan has kept intact such a treasury: Shoso-in, founded in the eighth
century in the monastery of Todaiji at Nara, near Kyoto. It still contains both utilitarian
and precious objects which belonged to Emperor Shomu (who reigned from 724 until
756) and which his widow, Komyo, gave to the Todaiji monastery. The terms of the
bequest stated that the empress, having collected all the national treasures left by the

34
emperor, offered them to the Buddha Vairochana whose colossal effigy in bronze had
been ordered melted down by the emperor a few years earlier. The gift included arms
and armor, monk's habits, mirrors, screens, musical instruments, furniture, medica-
—
ments in all, an inventory of some 650 articles. Within the grounds of the monastery
a wooden building was constructed to receive the collection. Although it has been
renovated several times, as often happens with wooden structures in Japan, it still
exists and is the oldest museum in the world. Preserved in its halls are objects offered
to Buddha from as far away as Iran, unique Chinese pieces from the T'ang Dynasty
and in the storerooms 66,000 pieces of textiles have been catalogued.
At the beginning of the fourteenth century authority was not the only attribute of
power. The bourgeoisie willingly paraded its new-found wealth. The upper class, intol-
erant of being outdistanced, answered with pageantry. The result was the prodigious
development of the luxury crafts, especially of goldsmithery, of which only a few
specimens remain. The inventories of the various mansions and chateaux which
belonged to Charles V, King of France, can give us some idea of the pomp and osten-
tation. There were no fewer than forty-seven royal crowns and seven tiaras (for the
princesses), belts of gold, seven dozen gold services, nineteen gold chandeliers, jeweled
chests, seals and magical objects, among which were "the holy stone which helps
women have children" and "the stone which cures gout." Antiquity was represented
by a very large number of carved objects; these intaglios, certain of which served as
seals, were in such great demand that there sprang up an active forgery trade. It is
estimated that only one fourth of the intaglios said to be medieval are authentic. Other
objects were reported to have been for "use across the sea" or were "Saracen," that is
to say, Byzantine, Islamic or even Chinese. Among these treasures of a sacred character
because they belonged to royalty were many jewels and metalwork pieces of an eccle-
siastic nature: twenty-seven crosses of gold, nineteen -gold statues of the Virgin and
various saints, twenty-nine bejeweled reliquaries, a large chalice lavished with sapphires
and rubies, twenty-seven silver crosses, six dozen silver statuettes or groups of sta-
tuettes, sixty-three complete "chapels" in various colors for the various feasts of the
—
year each "chapel" included all the liturgical vestments and vessels necessary for
worship.
The treasures served as a reserve supply for metal and, in case of need, jewels were
pawned and metals sent to the foundry. The King of France, Charles V, himself had
to resort to this practice. Our less imaginative era stupidly hordes gold bars in the
vaults of national banks the more refined princes of the past had them worked by
;

artists, thereby obtaining artistic enjoyment for themselves, but did not hesitate to
sacrifice them when politics required it. This custom continued until the time of
Louis XIV; he commissioned for the Hall of Mirrors and the great apartments at
Versailles an admirable suite of furniture in silver which was completed by the
beginning of 1660 but he was forced to have it melted down in 1689 to relieve the
deficit in the treasury caused by the war with the League of Augsburg.
Such was the custom at the French court; foreign courts, however, took better care
of their treasures. Of all the admirable French metalwork of the Middle Ages there
remain no more than a few pieces preserved by their passage into foreign hands: for
example, the enameled gold cup said to be from the kings of France and England and

35
 ;

now in the British Museum, London, and the ex voto to the Virgin, also of enameled
gold, which was presented by Elizabeth of Bavaria to Charles VI of France on the
occasion of their marriage on January 1, 1404, and which the following year was given
as security by the king to his brother-in-law, Louis of Bavaria, from whom he had
obtained a loan. Louis made a gift of it to the church at Allotting in Bavaria where it
still remains. The only piece of French metalwork extant from the Renaissance is the

gold cup of Saint Michel, given by Charles IX to his brother-in-law, Ferdinand of

Tyrol at the time of his marriage in 1570.
These precious objects were kept in the "garderobe," a term not then restricted as
it is now to a place where clothes are kept but which applied to the protection of all

sorts of possessions, in the sense that the Italian word roba has retained.
In Pisanello we find a brillant reflection of the growing princely pomp of the
cosmopolitan civilization of the early quattrocento. The grandees of that time appreciated
the aesthetic value of their possessions fully as much as their price or rarity. The man
who personifies all the refinement of that age is Jean, Duke of Berry (1340-1416), the
brother of Charles V. The garderobe of Charles was that of a king; the duke's was
the collection of an art lover whose taste was oriented toward the spirit of the Renais-
sance. His collections were disposed in the numerous chateaux of his immense fiefs,
12. The Royal Gold Cup reproductions of which appear in illuminations made by the Brothers of Limbourg for
of the Kings of France the celebrated work listed in the inventories as the Tres riches heures de Monseigneur.
and England, British Mu- The library of Charles V was made for study; the library of the duke was that of a
seum, London. Although stripped
bibliophile, rich in superbly lettered and illuminated books. A true bibliophile, he
of some of its jewels this ,

solid gold cup decorated with

borrowed books but did not willingly return them, as attested to by the quarrels he
translucent enamel in crimson, had over the Grandes chroniques de France which he borrowed from the abbey of Saint
blue, black and yellow is one of Denis. Only the intervention of his confessor induced him to return them. His brother
the most precious vestiges of Charles lent willingly but kept a register of loans, which still exists, and saw to their
princely treasures from the four-
return. The duke received a considerable number (356) ofobjetsd'artas gifts which came
teenth century. Itwas probably
made in Paris about 1 380 and
to him from all parts of the world, from Burgundian dukes, from his brother Charles V,
was given by Charles VI, King from his nephew Charles VI, from popes and prelates, from the Count of Tripoli, from
of France, to his uncle, the the Queen of England and even from officers in his household as well as from Genoese,
Duke of Berry in 1391 The .
Venetian and Florentine merchants who curried the favor of their clients by sending
Duke of Bedford removed it to
them gifts. He had many jewels, among them the "ruby of Alexander" and the "dia-
England in 1434 ; was inherit-
it

ed by his nephew, the young King

mond of Saint-Louis"; exceedingly rare relics, such as Saint Joseph's wedding band;
Henry VI, and figures in the a profusion of rings; Florentine and English embroideries; fabrics from Cyprus,
inventory of Elizabeth I. In Venice and the Orient, listed as "the work of Greece"; tapestries; family souvenirs;
1604 became the property of
it
collections of games; gold tableware; foot warmers; perfume flacons; three hundred
the Constable of Castile, Juan
manuscripts, some in the "style of Lombardy, or of Rome, or of Bologna" enamels ;

de Velasco, to whom it was

given by King James I; in 1610 and a host of small, often insignificant objects, proof of his insatiable curiosity. Princes
the constable gave it to the had already become interested in the bi^arreries of nature which were to become so
Convent of Santa Clara a popular in the sixteenth century; in that category were such antidotes against poison
Medina de Pomar near Burgos.
as the horns of unicorns (actually narwhal tusks), tongues of serpents and four bezoars.
In 1803 the convent sold it to

Baron Pichon; it remained in

Horns of stag beetles were mounted in gilded silver. There was a knife that could
France until 1892 when the "cut iron." The parks of his chateaux had menageries. The duke sought Byzantine
British Museum acquired it for vases, oriental cameos and medals. He prided himself on owning a gold portrait
the sum of £ 8,000. medallion of Constantine and Heraclius which inspired his miniaturists but was proved

37
 B^

13
38
 .

13. Portrait of the Duke a fraud by Scaliger and du Cange. It was sold to the duke on the second of Novem-
de Berry by Hans Holbein ber, 1402, by the Italian antiquarian Antonio Mancini and was doubtlessly made a few
the Younger. Based on a
years earlier by some Netherlandish, Burgundian or French metalworker. Jean de
Funeral Monument by Jean de
Cambrai in the Cathedral of Berry was also curious about history. He formed in his chateau at Bicetre a collection
Bourges, France. Basel, K/nist- of portraits of illustrious persons of his time, both lay and ecclesiastical, who figured
m use urn . Kupferstichkabinett beside princes of France and kings of the East and the West. The pictures hung in the
This drawing preserves for us main hall of the chateau and were destroyed when it burned in 1411. The gallery was
a record of the physical ap-
inspired by the idea of glory peculiar to the Renaissance. The Duke of Berry was a
pearance of the Duke of Berry,
whose statue was decapitated Maecenas a I'italienne; with him began the transition of the treasury into the museum.
when it was taken from the In the fifteenth century the taste for collecting became so widespread that it infected
Cathedral of Bourges during the the bourgeoisie. Let us take for example the account which Guillebert de Metz, secretary
Revolution. ( The head was later
and librarian for the Duke of Burgundy, gives of the town house of Jacques Duchie
remade from the drawing.) An
in his Description de Paris, written about 1430. In the courtyard there was a menagerie
impassioned art lover, the Duke
of Berry, with his fabulous of peacocks and other birds of pleasure. The first floor salon was "embellished with
collection of objets d'art and paintings and instructive scriptures on the walls." The practice of decorating rooms
precious books, was the first with mottoes, in vogue by the end of the sixteenth century and continuing in the
Maecenas of the Renaissance.
seventeenth, had already existed for some time. Another room was filled with musical
His collection, for which we
instruments: harps, organs, psalteries, vielles, citterns and others, which the owner
have a detailed inventory, forms
the transition from the medieval knew how to play. Beyond that was a room where all sorts of games were displayed.
treasury to the modern cabinet. The chapel contained two beautiful lecterns and the walls of a study were covered
with precious stones and "sweet-smelling spices." Rare furs were stored in one chamber;
fabrics, rugs and metalwork in another. It is quite surprising to learn that this merchant
who was interested in peaceful pursuits was also passionately interested in arms and
armor with which he filled an entire room. There were crossbows, standards, banners,
pennons, lances, halberds, floorings from trenches, axes, daggers, suits of armor in
lead and iron, shields, escutcheons, cannons and other engines and "all manner of
implements of war." In all this there were few pieces which could properly be called
works of art it was a collection of what was later to be called "curiosities," undoubtedly
;

acquired at little expense but of sufficient importance to merit the attention of a

chronicler.

39
 Chapter

3
Renaissance
In 1162 an edict of the Roman Senate decreed that the Column of Trajan "must
never be destroyed nor mutilated but must remain as it is to the honor of the Roman
people until the end of the world." The decree undoubtedly marks the earliest attempt
at the preservation of an historical monument in Western civilization. In truth, the
memory of the grandeur of antiquity had never been lost in Rome, as attested to by
the Mirabilia urbis Romae, a medieval guidebook for pilgrims which directed the city's
visitors as much to ancient monuments as to churches. If the tidal wave of Gothicism
had not submerged trecento Italy, the Renaissance would have arrived much earlier.
In the thirteenth century Emperor Frederick II had imitations of antique statues made
at Capua and Castel del Monte, thus proposing a new orientation to art that Niccolo
Pisano was to follow; Niccolo's son, Giovanni, working on the pulpit for Pisa's
14. The Torso Belvedere. Duomo, did not hesitate to borrow the attitude of the Capitoline Venus for his figure
This work dating from the first of Temperance. The emperor, who attempted a synthesis of divers cultures through
century B. C. and signed by the the reconciliation of Christendom and Islam, also sponsored excavations at Augusta
Athenian Apollonius, might well in Sicily. By the end of the twelfth century Cardinal Giordano Orsini had created in
portray Hercules, Marsjas or
Rome a cabinet of antiquities which he then turned into a public museum for souvenirs
Philoctetes left wounded on the
island of Lemnos. It is one of the
—
of ancient Rome if we can believe the assertion of a sixteenth-century panegyrist of the
first antique statues discovered in Orsini family. On the other hand, the antique inscriptions with which Rome abounded
Italy and can be traced back to were for a long time as indecipherable as the Etruscan and Cretan languages remain for
thePalavgp Colonna before 1463 us today. The founder of epigraphy was a friend of Petrarch, Cola di Rienzo, who,
and was mentioned as early as
obsessed with Rome to the point of mysticism, was hanged by his feet by an unruly
1433 ; it was, perhaps, discovered
during the reconstruction of the
Roman mob after self-aggrandizement deflected his avowed aims to restore liberty to
palace about 1420. Pope Clement the Eternal City and to Italy. In Florence the modern literary movement found its
VII had the torso transferred to sources in antique literature but neither Petrarch nor Boccaccio was concerned with
the Belvedere Gardens at the
archeology. The situation was entirely different in Venetia. There, thanks to Venice,
Vatican where Maerten van
contact with antiquity had never been broken; passage from a Roman to a barbarian
Heemskerck sketched it turned
over on its back about 1532- 1535.
world had not been felt in that city which had never been invaded and which keeps alive
This statue strongly influenced even today the spirit of a Hellenistic city. From relations with Byzantium, heir to
Michelangelo. the Roman Empire, Venice drew the feeling of an uninterrupted succession of

14
41
15. The Cardinal Virtues-
Temperance, by Giovanni
Pisano (c. 1250-1331). Pul-
pit in the Duo mo, Pisa.

16. The Capitoline Venus.

( opy after a Greek statue oj
the fourth century. Capitoline
Museum, Rome.

The Italians of the Middle Ages

lived in an ambiance in which
antiquity remained an ever-pre-
sent force. In the thirteenth cen-
tury Niccolo Pisano (-\ 1280)
turned to classical examples to
learn to restore to sculpture its
corporeal vitality; there are sever-
al examples of direct imitation
of the antique in Pisa no's pul-
pit in the baptistery in Pisa
( 126(1}. I orty years later \ic-
colo's son Giovanni, although
mon Gothic in spirit, contin-

ued the tradition; for his Tem

perancc he imitated some antique
monument which had it sell been
inspired by tht Capitoline
Venus.

42 15
 historical periods. As early as the fifteeth century
an active trade which must have been
in antiquities,
drawn in from sources in the Orient, was
part
being carried on in Venice. The earliest mention
of a cabinet of antiquities concerns one in Treviso
and is dated about 1335. We are fortunate to have
an itemized bill of purchases made in Venice by a
m Trevisan citizen, one Oliviero Forza or Forzetta;
he acquired manuscripts by Sallust, Seneca, Ovid,
Cicero and Livy fifty medallions, intaglios, pottery,
;

bronzes, and statues in marble; children from San

Vitale in Ravenna; and a lion, horses, oxen and
male nudes. In 1375 a Paduan doctor, Giovanni
Dondi, went to Rome to study antique monuments.
The archeological tradition continued throughout
the entire fifteenth century in the Veneto. Museums
of antiquities soon became art schools, such as the
collection formed around the mid-1 400's by the
Paduan painter, Francesco Squarcione. From his
travels in Greece and Italy he brought back anti-
quities which he set up as models before his
students. Under his tutelage Mantegna flourished,
the only archeological artist to realize Alberti's
dream of reviving the antique spirit; the Floren-
tines drew their principles more from the study of
nature than from works by the ancients. Following
his master'sexample, Mantegna formed an archeo-
logical museumin his house at Mantua. It was fine
enough to merit a visit from Lorenzo de' Medici.
Collector-princes regarded Mantegna as an expert
among connoisseurs. An art directly inspired by
the antique was born northern Italy: the art of
in
the medal, as exemplified by Pisanello. A phrase of
Valery's is truly applicable to the Renaissance: "on
e'litre dans I'avenir a reculons." To free themselves
of
the restraints the Middle Ages had imposed on the
flight of the intellect, Italians of the quattrocento
looked to the antique, sough to re-establish ties
with the Greco-Roman civilization, all the while
adapting it to Christianity.
At the interest of the Florentines in the
first

antique focused on the examination of manuscripts

buried in the archives of convents and this led to
the revival of Roman and Greek belles-lettres. In
their libraries, however, the humanists were fond

16
43
 of interspersing books with intaglios and medals. Aided by the Medicis, who inherited
his collections, Niccolo de Niccoli was one of the most active admirers of these
from
little objects, so suited for exhibition among books. The great discoverer of manuscripts,

Poggio Bracciolini, furthered the cause of antique art by finding works by Vitruvius,
Frontinus, Pliny the Elder, Lucian, Pausanias and Philostratus. He himself had a
collection of coins and sculpture and in his villa set aside a room for his museum. He
boasted proudly that Donatello had seen and praised one of his pieces. It is not surpris-
ing to learn that Ghiberti had a collection of antique bronzes and marbles for, of all
the Florentines, he was the one most moved by antiquity, in contrast to Donatello
who was inspired most by his observation of nature.
—
The great bourgeois families the Strozzi, the Ruccelai, the Pazzi, the Tornabuoni,
the Martelli, the Capponi —filled their palaces with both ancient and modern objets d'art
but the most important collections were put together by the Medicis whose power was
founded on the greatest banking wealth of the time. The various inventories which
remain intact help us to trace the evolution of their collections during the course of
the century. The nature of our subject matter precludes our discussing here the numerous
works of contemporary art that Cosimo the Elder commissioned for his pa/a^o on the
Via Larga and for his country villas we shall concentrate instead on the antique and
;

foreign works he amassed. He was fond of reliefs and statues which he had Donatello,
in the role of curator and expert, restore but he was more attracted by books and the
intaglios and cameos which were de rigueur in humanist libraries. He was aided in the
building up of his collections by his son Piero (Peter the Gouty) who was predisposed,
perhaps, by his infirmities to such calm occupations. Piero spent entire days contem-
plating his father's treasures and commissioned sumptuous settings for the precious
17. Tazza Farnese, Helle- stones and intaglios. The oldest preserved inventories of the Medici collections were
nistic period. Naples, Museo drawn up bv Piero in 1456 and 1463, before his father's death. They list only objects of
Nationals. This splendid sar-
precious materials and omit, therefore, all paintings and sculptures. The record lists
donyx cup, one of the largest
three hundred medals in silver and seventeen in gold, seventeen cameos and tavole
of known cameos, probably came
from the ruins of the ilia
\
greche or Byzantine icons. By 1463 the number of precious objects had doubled. The
Adriana, Tivoli. It was one of inventories also give an account of Flemish tapestries, musical instruments (most of
the most prestigious objects in which also came from Flanders) and Cordovan leathers. The third inventory, made
Lorenzo de' Medici's collection,
out in 1465 after the death of Cosimo, reveals the considerable growth of the collection
rich in gems and antique cameos
he had bought it at Rome in 1471
in two years.
where he had gone for the coro- The inventory of the palace on the Via Larga, drawn up in 1492 at the death of
t
na 'ion of Sixtiis I\ '; it had Lorenzo the Magnificent, shows some progress toward the evaluation of works of art
belonged to Pope Paul II the ,
for themselves. In some cases the artist who made a painting or sculpture is identified.
former Cardinal Pietro Barbo
Included in the list of pictures were some Flemish works, among them a Deposition by
who had brought from Venice to
Rome a taste for the antique.
Rogier van der Weyden and a St. Jerome by Jan van Eyck which certain scholars
The Tazza eventually passed consider identifiable with a painting of the same subject in the Detroit Institute of Arts
into the Farnese collection which (attributed bv others to Petrus Christus). However, paintings were still esteemed for
was removed to Naples in the littlein contrast to the value attached to jewels and oddities: thirty florins for the van
eighteenth century. Representing
Eyck. three florins for a work by the sculptor Desiderio da Settignano against 6,000
an allegory of the Nile with
florins for the horn of a unicorn. The term museum appears at this time; Lorenzo's
Isis and Horus, the cup must
have been made in Alexandria collection of books and gems is called museo dei codici e cimeli artistici.
for the Ptolemies. It has recently been denied that Lorenzo the Magnificent was as active a patron of

44
the arts as his father, Cosimo. This pleasure seeker seems to have been a usufructuary
rather than a creator; at any rate he was a more impassioned collector and searched for
pieces all over the peninsula. He returned from Rome after the coronation of Sixtus IV
with the finest of known antique stones, the famous Ta^a Farnese. In 1471 at a sale
ordered by Sixtus IV, he acquired for a small sum the collection of Pope Paul II, his rival
in the quest for antiquities. In 1483 Lorenzo succeeded in obtaining the cabinet of
Cardinal Gonzaga. Doubtlessly it was he who commissioned medallion reproductions
of the most beautiful intaglios in the Medici collection for the cortile of the palace on
the Via Larga.
Verrocchio assisted Lorenzo in matters of connoisseurship. The curator of antique
marbles was a sculptor, the bron^ista Bertoldo whose own creations were veritable
pastiches of classical works. Sculptures ornamented the gardens, both the one adjoining
the pa/a^p and the one within the great cloister of the Dominican Convent of San
Marco, built bv Cosimo and decorated with the mystical paintings of Fra Angelico.
The monks felt no uneasiness at contemplating sacred images placed side by side with
antique nudes for, at that moment in the Renaissance, the most enlightened spirits saw
in the doctrine of divine revelation a continuation of antique wisdom and dreamed of
reconciling the two, an attitude brutally denounced by Savonarola, precursor of the
Reformation. In 1494, two years after Lorenzo's death, the revolt touched off by the ar-
rival of French troops drove the Medicis from Florence; Lorenzo's son Piero fled to
Naples, making away with only a few of the most precious cameos. The rabble pillaged
the Medici palace and the garden of San Marco the Signoria confiscated what remained
;

of the collections, putting a part up for sale, an act which provoked passionate interest
among all Italian art collectors.
Rome the spirit of the Renaissance was kindled by Pope Nicolas V who, as
In
Tommaso Parentucelli from Sarzana, had been a librarian for Cosimo the Elder.
Pius II,of the noble Piccolomini family of Siena, had been educated in Florence and
was a well-known philologist. As pope, he fought against the destruction of Rome's
monuments by forbidding the use of antique stone or marble in new constructions but
he was the first to violate his own edict. The first pope to be a real collector was the
Venetian Pietro Barbo who became Paul II and who brought from the city of lagoons a
taste for antiquity. In 1455 while still a cardinal, he began the construction of the
immense Palazzo Venezia where he amassed his treasures, collecting series rather than
single, beautiful pieces. An inventory of the palace drawn up in 1457 enumerates gems,
cameos, series of coins, small bronzes (for which he had a particular fondness), tapes-
tries, oreficeria, paintings with gold backgrounds, portable mosaics, reliquaries and
—
Byzantine objects especially ivory consular diptychs. The capture of Constantinople
by the Turks in 1453 thrust upon Western markets great quantities of pillaged works
of art with Venice serving as intermediary in their resale. Certain notations in the
inventory reveal the subtleties of taste of a collector attracted by quality: "optimis operis
de aere, nee in ea est macula" which indicated of certain bronzes that they were in "mint
condition."
The successor of Paul II, Sixtus IV, did not manifest the same interest in works of
art. He did, however, issue a papal bull forbidding the exploitation of antiques, an
edict that was seldom respected. We owe to him the founding, in 1471, of the Museo

46
18. The Apollo Belvedere as it appeared toward
the end of the fifteenth century in a niche in the garden
of San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome. From a drawing
in the Codex escurialensis. The inscription "nel
orto di sa piero in uinchola" indicates that the
statue was found in the palace of Giuliano della
Rovere, Cardinal of the Order of San Pietro in
Vincoli from 1471 until his election as Pope Julius II
in 1503. After his ascension to the pontifical throne,
Julius had the statue removed to the garden of the
Belvedere in the Vatican. Attributed by modern
Hellenists to the fourth-century B.C. Greek sculptor
Leochares, the work was found near Nettuno, at the
present site of An^io. It was restored in 1 532 by
Giovannangelo da Montorsoli, a pupil of Michelangelo,
but has recently been stripped of his additions.

47
48
 ;

Capitolino for antiquities. In that year, the year of his

election, hemade a gift to the Senate of four antique
bronzes which were solemnly transferred from the
Lateran to the Capitol to stand as "symbols of the
virtue and excellence of the Roman people," but
his act was more a political move than a declaration
of his museological intentions. Among those bronzes
were the Spinario and the famous Etruscan she-wolf
with the twins Romulus and Remus, which was
placed above the entrance, the same position it had
occupied in the Lateran.
Like Louis XIV at a later time, Julius II was
tormented by a love of glory. Although, unlike the
Sun King, he did not have a long reign in which to
realize his designs, nevertheless one is astounded at
20. The She-wolf. Etruscan bronze in the Capitoline
all that he did accomplish or outline in project form
Museum, Rome. The famous Etruscan she-wolf of the
Capitoline was part of the ceremonial gift made by Pope during the ten years of his pontificate. Wanting to
Sixtus IV to the Roman Senate in 1471 , the year of his make the papal city as glorious as the Rome of the
election. This gift comprised many antiques which had, until Caesars, he left an indelible mark. In addition to the
of the Eateran.
then, been conserved at the pontifical palace
grandiose constructions he undertook and the cycles
It was at this time that the wolf was provided with the
of frescoes he commissioned, he found time to
twins, Romulus and Remus. At the Capitoline the wolf
was first placed above the entrance to the Palavgo dei amass a formidable collection of antiquities. While
Conservatori. still a cardinal, Giuliano della Rovere succeeded in

procuring a distinguished piece, the Apollo Belvedere

which had been found at the end of the fifteenth
century at Nettuno or Grottaferrata and which
Poggio had seen in the palace of Prospero Colonna.
When he became pope, Julius II transferred it from
his pa la^o near San Pietro in Vincoli to the Vatican.
His most beautiful trophy was the Laocoon; this
group of statuary was celebrated by the humanists
even before they had seen it because it had been
described by Pliny the Elder. In January 1506
it was found in a vineyard which covered the sites

of the Baths of Titus and, below them, the Domus

19. View of the Gardens and the Cortile of Aureus of Nero. Fearing the statue might be stolen,
the Belvedere in Rome. Detail of a painting by
Julius II had it guarded at night. The Laocoon was
Hendrick van Cleeve. Brussels Ancient Art Museum.
truly the great discovery of the century; the day of
This painting, dated 1 589, was based on a drawing executed
in Rome about 1550-1555. It shows how the Renaissance its removal to the Vatican was proclaimed a holiday

popes had disposed their antiquities to ornament the gardens the cannons of Castel Sant' Angelo thundered and
of the Belvedere, a sort of pleasure villa built at some church bells rang out over the entire city. Pope
distance from the old Vatican palace to which it was
Julius displayed his antiquities in a garden laid out
connected by Julius II with two long galleries. Among the
statues can be distinguished the Tiber, the Nile, the
between the Belvedere Palace built by Innocent VIII
Sleeping Ariadne and the Belvedere Torso, provided and the new constructions of Bramante; clustered
with a head from another antique statue. there were the Apollo, a Hercules, the famous Torso

49
 Belvedere, a statue oiCommodus, a Sleeping \riadne and personifications of the Tiber and
the Nile. The numerous drawings and paintings by Flemish artists depicting that
garden of antiquities are proof of the attraction it had for foreigners who visited Rome.
Leo X, succeeding Julius II, busied himself with organizing on a more national basis
the conservation of monuments and the acquisition of statuary. He appointed Raphael
superintendent of antiquities, putting under his direction the Capitoline and Vatican
museums as well as the program for the excavation and conservation of antique monu-
ments. The artist was further burdened with the task of surveying and drafting plans
for a restoration of the antique city, a project he never had time to complete. From
this period dates a report addressed to the pope about the vandalism which was
destroying the ancient citv; it is this report that contains the well-known criticism against
"Gothic" (Tedesto) art as the art of the ignorant. Since 1799 tradition has been inclined
to attribute the report to Raphael but recently the probability of his authorship has
been disputed. ^_
The most determined collector of antiquities in Rome was Pope Paul III. As
Cardinal Farnese, he persuaded Alexander VI to allow his exploitation of ruins near
San Lorenzo Fuori le Mura, preparatory to laying the foundations for his palat^o.
They yielded a mine of antiquities; from the wall of one ancient fortress he recovered
twenty busts of emperors. After having obtained from the pope the rights to all
the statuary he could carry away in one night, he is said to have mobilized a force of
seven hundred ox-drawn wagons to transport his windfall. Elected pope in 1534,
—
he continued his investigations that is he stripped several more sites and monu-
21. The Vision of Saint ments: the gardens of Caesar, the Forum of Trajan, the Temple of Neptune, the Baths
Augustine, by Vittore Car- of Diocletian and the Baths of Caracalla, one monument which still retains some of
paccio. Scuola di San Giorgio its marble revetments. No more than treasure hunts, the excavations destroyed more
degli Scbiavoni, Venice. Detail. history than they unearthed. The enormous collections amassed by Paul III were
Traditionally considered to repre-
not destined to enrich the papacy; after passing through the hands of various Farnese
sent Saint Jerome who, in the
XV heirs, most of them were eventually placed in the Museo Nazionale in Naples in 1787.
was the patron of
th century
the Humanists and whose history The embryo of the historical museum was contained in collections which, follow-
Carpaccio was commissioned to ing the medieval fashion, brought together portraits of the twelve Caesars but now
depict on the walls of the Scuola, with more historical confidence. Petrarch had already grouped together coins of the
this personage is now often consid-
Caesars which he offered to Emperor Charles IV. Numismatics had long provided the
ered to be Saint Augustine during
an event in his which cor-
material for these series. The first rational undertaking of a museum of great men was
life

responds to a similar episode in that of Duke Federico da Montefeltro (f 1482), the most accomplished prince of his
the life of Saint Jerome. Some century, a man of letters as well as of war, and such a paragon of refinement that all
scholars think that for the fea- of Italy sent young nobles to him to learn the art of being a gentleman. He had laid
tures of the saint Carpaccio 's
out for himself in his palace at Urbino a little room or studiolo, designed not to store books
model was Cardinal Bessarion
(1395? -1472) who, soon after but to serve as a place for meditation and reading; its walls were sumptuously fitted
its foundation, was one of the with marquetry which showed still lifes symbolizing literature, the arts, science
principal benefactors of the broth- and war; above them were hung portraits of twenty-eight intellectuals, the most
erhood. In any case, Carpaccio celebrated poets, philosophers and theologians of antiquity, the Middle Ages and
fashioned the saint's
the contemporary period. Scholars have now established that Justus of Ghent
cell after the
study of a Humanist during the
Renaissance, filled with books,
(loos van Wassenhove) painted these representations which are today divided
antique bronzes and scientific between Urbino and the Louvre, following an apportionment made by the family
instruments. in 1812.

51
 Collectors of antiquities were already numerous in Rome by the beginning of the
sixteenth century. In 1509 Francesco Albertini drew up a long list of them in his
Opusculum de mirabilibus novae et veteris Urbis Romae. The intense search for works of art
gave rise to fierce competition. Giovanni Cristoforo Romano of Milan wrote. "A great
many people are interested in these things [antiquities] but it is difficult to procure them.
If one is fortunate enough to be the first to espy a piece, one must then buy it on the
spot; they ask high prices..." In 1507 Giorgio Negroponte observed, "The moment
an object is dug up, a host of buyers miraculously appears. They give eight or ten
ducats for rusty medallions which they resell later for twenty-five or thirty..."
Fearing theft, owners often re-buried their antiquities. When an artist or collector
died, there was a rush to loot his treasures. Italian princes felt no scruples about plunder-
ing war-torn cities of their countrymen for rare pieces. During the pillaging of Lorenzo
de'Medici's collections in Florence, his own brother-in-law, Bernardo Rucellai, made
off with choice antiques to ornament his famous Orti oricellarii, where the Academy
of Plato convened. The sack of Rome, provoking the greediness of collectors all over
Italy, touched off a redistribution of art treasures among the princely courts of the
peninsula. When Duchess Isabella d'Este, wife of Giovan Francesco II Gonzaga of
Mantua, was informed of Cesare Borgia's capture of Urbino and the subsequent flight
of her sister-in-law, Elizabeth Gonzaga, she hurriedly wrote to her brother Ippolito
dTiste to procure for her from the ducal palace a Venus and a Cupid which she
wanted for her own studiolo. In the absence of originals, collectors contented themselves
with copies, often in miniature; Isabella d'Este filled her grot ta with a collection of
small-scale bronze reproductions of celebrated antique statues. The duchess was
passionately fond of works of art but lacked the funds to buy them. She compensated
for her pecuniary difficulties with obstinacy and ruthless opportunism, even at the
expense of relatives ruined or banished from their duchies by the vicissitudes of
politics. Her letters detail for us her many disappointments; we learn of her unsuccess-
ful attempts to procure a Giorgione and a van Eyck; because of their prices she was
forced to pass up some coveted intaglios, vases and cameos. She was inconsolable at
having been robbed by Barbary pirates of precious objects she had on her person when
she fled during the sack of Rome by imperial troops in 1527; she succeeded in buying
back some pieces when they turned up on the Venetian market and asked travelers to
Tunis to look for a Hercules and a Venus in marble which she was especially eager to
redeem. This imperious woman was often unkind to her artists, threatening them with
imprisonment when they were slow to perform. For a long while Isabella schemed to
get a marble bust of the Empress Faustina in the collection of Mantegna, the favorite
painter of the Gonzagas and the one who had decorated her studiolo with two of its most
beautiful paintings it was the very piece the artist most preferred but, sick and in debt,
;

he was finally forced to give in to her demands six weeks later he died, at the age of
;

seventy-five.
The whole of Isabella's museum was divided between the studiolo and the grotta
directly below it. Confined to one part of the immense ducal palace, with a minuscule
giardino segreto adjoining it, the retreat was not intended for use as living quarters but
as a place for delectation where the duchess went to pass calm hours in an atmosphere
of luxury and beauty resting from the fatigues of her active life. Now stripped of its

52
works of art, this ritiro evokes in its abandon a melancholy memory of a knowledge-
able and refined woman who set the style for her time. A virtuous wife, impassioned
mother and veritable statesman who governed for her weak husband, Isabella succeeded
inavoiding the political imbroglio in Italy and in the general tumult caused by the
French invasion and the rivalries of Milan, Venice, Florence and Rome, was adroit
enough to save the duchy of the Gonzagas.

53
 ft^M&ffti (^
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54
 Chapher

4
Mannerism
In the last few years the concept of the Renaissance era has been severely constrained
so that it no longer encompasses both the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries. If the
term is taken to mean the movement of ideas which, after having promoted rationalism
found its artistic conclusion in classicism, then the Renaissance knew its "primitivism"
in the quattrocento and its apogee under the pontificates of Julius II and Leo X.
It is natural to limit the scope of a term to the generations that invented it. Sustained

by his belief in the enlightenment generated by the restoration of the ideas of antiquity,
the man of 1430 truly had the impression of experiencing a "rebirth" after the dark
shadows of the Middle Ages. For an Italian in 1530 the Middle Ages were already too
remote in time for him to feel consciously opposed to that period of barbarism. For him,
"Barbarism" had a geographical rather than a chronological significance. Like the
Greeks, the Italians tended to attach the epithet to all that was not Italian, especially to
northern Europe. Events of considerable importance supervened, profoundly modify-
ing the equilibrium of the human soul. The man of the quattrocento, living within the
confines of the city, could conceivably feel that he was at the center of the universe and
that his thought dominated the world. Then, in 1492 Christopher Columbus discovered
America other men and other lands arose from the unknown and the field of human
;

consciousness was abruptly widened. Forty years later another, infinitely more serious
shock unsettled the simple humanism of the time. Copernicus, in 1543, published his
De Revolutionibus orbium calestium Libri VI. Not only was man no longer the center of
22. The Natural History the world but the world itself, which until then he had believed to be the axis of the
cabinet of the Neapolitan
naturalist and chemist
universe, was dispossessed from its privileged position by the sun.
Ferrante Imperato. After an Man, the deposed king, could regain his sovereignty only by attempting to embrace
engraving in his Dell'Historia the infinite in thought. Henceforth a humanist was truly a "universalist," priding him-
Naturale (Naples, 1599). Paris, self on his possession of the world through the intellect. His omnivorous appetite for
Bibliotheque Nationale. This is
knowledge extended to all kinds of questions about the earth and the heavens but a
an example of the natural history
cabinets where humanists assem-
science still in its infancy could supply few answers to his ardent demands. He expe-
bled collections of animals, fossils rienced anguish before such incomprehensibility and to him the world seemed a
and minerals. mystery, a situation which explains the revival of magic and sorcery and the sudden

55
prosperity of alchemists and astrologers. Irrationality began a vehement offensive
against the beautiful, rational edifice of fifteenth-century thought, pure as a church by
Giuliano da Sangallo and a recent historian could characterize this epoch as an "anti-
Renaissance."
Even architecture was to bear traces of this bizarre taste. Sixteenth-century man,
escaping his severe palaces closed in upon themselves, began in the humanist period to
create houses and gardens filled with fantasy, the pala\%j del giardino, the deli^ie, each an
attempt at a mundus symbolicus. A fine example is the Villa d'Este at Tivoli which is well
preserved today, unlike the villa which Buontalenti built for Francesco I de' Medici,
Grand Duke of Tuscany, at Pratolino where stones, trees and rocky ground yielded
themselves to all the intellectual subtleties of which Florentines of the Mannerist period
were capable. The Apennino of Giovanni da Bologna, in the English garden laid out in the
eighteenth century by the Lorraine, remains today as a lone example of the games which
men of that time believed approached in some measure the reality of things whose
meaning escaped them. A still more remarkable example is the cabinet of Francesco I in
the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence it is an obscure room, almost a cavern, consecrated by
;

the duke, fascinated with alchemy and astrology, to the four elements.
Man, in all of this, lost none of his arrogance. A new curiosity about the past incited
humanists of the time to examine history which seemed to them to have been created by
great men rather than by nations. Such feelings inspired an astonishing collection, that
of a prelate in Como, Paolo Giovio, humanist, historian and Latinist (1483-1552).
About 1520 he began building up an immense collection of portraits in his residence at
Como; it was divided into four categories, one grouping effigies of dead poets and
scholars; another, those of living poets and scholars; a third, those of artists; and the
fourth, those of men in politics: great militarists, statesmen, papal sovereigns and
monarchs. Paolo Giovio's sport was hunting icons. Agents throughout Europe tracked
down documents for him; renowned contemporary figures, such as Hernando Cortez
who sent him his portrait, vied for a place in his museum. There were few originals
among the paintings in the gallery most of the portraits were copies or even reconstitu-
;

tions based on medals, frescoes or miniatures. Paolo Giovio called his museum
"Sanctissimo tempio deW immortal virtu sede sacrata." Under each portrait there were Latin
inscriptions {Elogid). The museum quickly became famous; its contents were widely
known through engravings published at Florence (1551), at Paris (1552) and at Basel
(1577). Paolo Giovio's initiative was one of the elements which inspired Vasari to
undertake a history of Italian art by the biographical method (his Lives of the Most
Excellent Architects, Painters and Sculptors appeared in 1550). Princes, like Cosimo I de'
Medici and Ferdinand of Tyrol, sent artists to copy the paintings. The museum jovianum
was, for a long while, the established iconography of celebrated personages; the orga-
nizers of the historical museum at Versailles during the time of Louis-Philippe returned
to it as their model. As recently as thirty years ago history texts in European schools
were influenced by it. Only the taste for original documents which developed after
World War II was able to sweep away its last traces.
In the sixteenth century amateurism became one of the requisites of the princely life,
so indispensable to what we would call today a "man of the world" that treatises on
savoir-vivre offered counsel on the subject.

56
 -an Related to the great Baldassare Castiglione who
was the author of the famous UCortegiano (1 528), Sabba
de Castiglione, a Milanese gentleman who died in 1554
at the age of sixty-nine, conceived his memoirs (Ricordi)
as lessons in good breeding for the use of gentlemen.
Ricordo 109 is entitled ''''Circa gli ornamenti delta casa."
One's house, according to one's own taste could con-
tain different kinds of cabinets which grouped together:
a) musical instruments b) antique sculptures or, lacking
;

them, works by Donatello; c) sculptures by Michel-

angelo or Giovanni Cristoforo Romano or their con-
temporaries; d) antique medallions or, if need be,
modern ones in gold, silver or bronze; e) portraits or
paintings by Fra Filippo Lippi, Mantegna, Bellini,
Perugino, Raphael, Leonardo, Giulio Romano ;f) intar-
sias by Fra Giovanni di Monte Oliveto or Fra Raffaello
da Brescia; g) hangings from Arras, tapestries from
Flanders, carpets from Turkey or Barbary or painted
fabrics h) copper engravings or woodcuts by Italian
;

and German artists, particularly Albrecht Durer and

Lucas van Leyden.
Modern works figured only in the absence of
antiquities in this ideal collection though Michelangelo
;

might enjoy the privilege of being represented as him-

self, Donatello was no more than a substitute for the
23. Portrait of Paolo Giovio. /v-ow Me Zfoj?/ edition of ancients. The Antique retained its prestige in the pre-
the Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium (1575-1 577). sence of the Natural. Antiquities were searched for
The first historical museum was assembled by this humanist
with passion; forgeries were made, particularly for
in his residence at Como.
export; sumptuous galleries were built to house
sculptures exhumed from Italian soil. The oldest
building still in existence which was constructed for
use as a museum is an antiquarium an annex to the ;

Casino del Giardino in the curious town of Sabbioneta, it

is almost an evocation in miniature of Mantuan
pageantry which was built by the youngest of the
Gonzaga family, Vespasiano, Duke of Sabbioneta
(1531-1591). In a long gallery constructed between
1580 and 1584, Vespasiano placed statues, bas-reliefs
and busts which were, for the most part, spoils brought
back by his father, Rodomonte, from the sack of Rome
in 1527. The decoration, completed in 1590, was con-
ceived to complement the antiquities (which were,
however, carried off to Mantua in 1774 at the time of
the Austrian rule); the effect of perspective in the
gallery was accentuated by two trompe-l'ceil paintings.

57
 Sabba de Castiglione, born about 1485, was, when he wrote his memoirs, somewhat
reactionary, even demode. The kind of collection he recommended contained only works
of but the collections formed by the grand dukes of Tuscany in Florence (which,
art
frustrated by Rome in her role as pioneer in the world of the arts, became the great
center of Mannerism in Italy) give us a more exact idea of the complexity of the ornamenti
della casa during that period. The first grand duke, Cosimo I, found it difficult to retrieve
the ancestral collections, victims of three pillages: in 1492 when the rabble invaded the
palace of Lorenzo the Magnificent, in 1527 when the reassembled collections were
sacked by Leo X and in 1537 when Alessandro was assassinated and his palace devastat-
ed. To the works he was able to recover, Cosimo added artifacts found in excavations of
Etruscan sites in 1 554 he acquired the Chimera of Arezzo and ten years later a likeness of
;

the orator Aulus Metullus which was discovered near Lake Trasimeno. This interest in
Etruria revealed the desire of the Florentines to resurrect an antiquity of their own,
different from that of the Romans and more ancient. Engrossed in history, Cosimo I
sent the painter Cristofano delFAltissimo to Como to copy the 280 portraits in the
museumjovianum Cristofano worked there for sixteen years (from 1552 to 1568) and the
;

fruit of his labors was the famous Museo mediceo which, until World War II, graced the cor-
ridor which links the Palazzo Pitti with the Uffizi. Cosimo found ill-suited to ducal digni-
ty the modest bourgeois palace built on the Via Larga by Michelozzo for Cosimo the
Elder. He installed himself in the Palazzo Vecchio and, in 1559, commissioned another
palace opposite it to house the administrative offices of the Tuscan state: il pala^o degli
ffi%i. For the marriage of Francesco de'Medici, Vasari constructed within five months
T
I

in 564 the immense corridor which (in imitation of the one mentioned in The 1Had'which
1

connected Hector's palace to that of Priam) spanned the Arno River and connected the
Uffizi to the Palazzo Pitti, a pala^o del giardino bought by Cosimo's wife, Eleanora de
Toledo in 1549 and, at the duke's wish, enlarged by Bartolommeo Ammanati.
After the death of Cosimo I in 1 574, the Grand Duke Francesco I decided to regroup
the collections, using for exhibition space the upper stories of the Uffizi where Cosimo
had installed his artisans. Buontalenti was the mastermind for the project; he had the
halls decorated with vivid paintings and he himself designed the marble decor for the
famous tribuna, the composition of which we know through a description in an inven-
tory drawn up in 1589, two years after the death of Francesco I. The walls were covered
with works by Piero di Cosimo, Andrea del Sarto, Pontormo, Sodoma, Cristoforo
Allori, Raphael {Portrait of Leo X, John the Baptist, Madonna della Sedia). Antiquities
were dispersed through the halls. The successor of Francesco I was his brother Ferdi-
nand I, in 1 587 the latter while a cardinal in Rome, erected a magnificent residence, the
;

24. The Antiquarium, an- Villa Medici, a sort of villa-museo with facades encrusted with innumerable antique
nex Casino del Giardino
to the
bas-reliefs. The interior was filled with admirable antiquities which were transported to
in near Mantua,
Sabbioneta,
Italy. This long gallery was Florence in 1775: the famous Medici Venus found at Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli, the
laid ant between 1 580 and I 584 Arrotino and the group of Niobids, copies in the style of Scopas which were discovered
by the youngest of the Gon^aga in 1583 near the Porta San Paolo.
family, I espasiano, to

ollection oj antique statues

bouse
A commentary by Filippo Pigafetta on a canzone by G. B. Elicona, composed on the
occasion of the marriage of Marie de'Medici to Henry IV of France, contains a descrip-
and reliefs. It adjoins his plea-

sure palace, the Casino del tion of the museum in the Uffizi in 1600. In the east loggia were antique and Renaissance
( riardino. sculptures and the historical museum of portraits of the Medici family, painted by

24
58
 Bronzino either from life or retrospectively, and
the "giovannina" collection made up of copies from
the museum jovianum. The tribuna housed the most
celebrated paintings and Greek and Roman medal-
lions and coins. In another room were "precious
objects from nature and art." The attic stored
antique and modern armor, both domestic and
foreign, and sundry instruments for mathematics,
physics, geometry and astronomy. In the loggia dei
lan^i the grand duke established a laboratory for
alchemy.
To these riches must be added the "Medici
treasury," comprising objects in silver, gold, cut
glass and porphyry as well as cameos, antique
intaglios, gems and enamels. This collection was
started by Lorenzo the Magnificent and added to
by the first grand dukes. Florentine goldsmiths,
as well as many foreigners working in the city,
prospered under lavish ducal patronage. Although
subjected to many expropriations over the course
25. The Chimera of Arezzo. Fifth-century Etruscan bronze. of the centuries, especially by the Austrians, the
Archeological Museum, Florence. Believing that ancient Tuscany
diminished treasure still arouses the admiration of
had boasted a civilisation different from that of Rome, Florentine
visitors to the Museo degli Argenti in the Pitti
Humanists began searching for Etruscan works of art towards the
end of the 15th century. The Chimera of Ares^o was acquired by Palace. Gem cutting became a specialty of Florence
Grand Duke Cosimo I in 1554. artisans virtuosic in the art were summoned from
Spain and France. Francesco I spurred his artists
and alchemists to discover new techniques and he
himself found a laboratory method for smelting
rock crystal. Thanks to him, the art of porcelain
manufacture was discovered in Florence and was
ready to spread to the rest of Europe by the end of
the cinquecento. Known through imports from China
since the fourteenth century, this translucent
material which combined the qualities of porcelain
and glass seemed magical. By the beginning of the
sixteenth century, perhaps earlier, alchemists and
artisans in Venice were endeavoring to make
porcellanaficta.Around 1575 Bernardo Buontalenti,
working for Francesco I, discovered the secret of
making the paste, the recipe for which has been
preserved. Ceramists immediately began to exploit
his discovery but, at the death of the grand duke,
manufacture was curtailed and pieces produced up
until that time became exceedingly rare. Francesco
himself did not disdain working as an artisan; the

60

I i
26. The Tribuna of the
Uffizi, Florence, as it looked
before 1914. Decorated by Ber-
nardino Poccetti with a dado of
precious marble and crowned with
a curious cupola encrusted with
shells, the Tribuna housed, from
the end of the XVIth century to
the beginning of the XXth cen-
tury, the rarest pieces of the grand
ducal collection.

Frenchman Montaigne, visiting Florence in 1580, observed that the grand duke
delighted "in trying to copy Oriental stones or to work crystal, being a prince who is
interested in everything from architecture and the mechanical arts to alchemy."
Cosimo II undertook the colossal enterprise of decorating with a mosaic of
precious stones the entire inner walls of a rotunda more than ninety feet in diameter,
the capella del Principi de San Lorenzo, a gigantic chapel faced with lapis lazuli, marble,
bronze, nacre and coral where all that is suited to a bibelot is shown on a monumental
scale. The ateliers established to carry out this enormous task, started in 1604, are the
basis of the opificio delle pietre dure, a factory still active in Florence.
Art, history, nature — each had its place in the Medici collections which, taken as
a whole, were the quintessence of that teatro Male of which humanists in the mannerist
epoch dreamed. Cosimo formed a cabinet devoted to natural history, containing
I

actual animals, shells, fossils and minerals as well as casts made from nature by Delia
Robbia and Riccio in the beginning of the sixteenth century; there were albums of
botanical and zoological drawings, many by Francesco d'Umbertino, il Bacchiacca,
who was employed by the grand duke expressly for this work. The most remarkable
of these draftsmen near the end of the century was the Veronese, Jacopo Ligozzi,
who became court painter for the grand dukes his seventy-odd water colors pre-
;

served in the Gabinetto Disegni e stampi in Florence number among the most beautiful

61
ever executed in that realistic style which attempted to hold up a mirror to nature. The
archdukes helped the Bolognese naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi to assemble his famous
Natural History which comprised at least 2,000 drawings of plants, 2,000 of animals and
4,500 of minerals and gems, in large part the work of mediocre illustrators whose
poverty of talent grieved Aldrovandi.

Although European flora and fauna were not neglected, it was the botany and
zoology of the "Indies," introduced into the princely gardens, that most attracted
scholars. Aldrovandi was a great admirer of Mexican feathered pieces, going so far
as to find them "more beautiful than works by Apelles." All these exotic, manifesta-
tions were associated with, in the imaginations of the erudite of the time, the Historia
Naturalis of Pliny, which encouraged a taste for the monstrous but which is not so
much, as Baltrusaitis said, a resurgence of medievalism but rather a specific expression
of the mannerist period which was obsessed with penetrating the mysteries of nature
and was prepared bv the Metamorphoses of Ovid to expect the faculty of limitless
creation to manifest its profound essence more explicitly in monsters than in normal
creatures. The Italy of that time was a center for prodigious activity in diametrically
opposed directions. After the experience of classicism, the humanists of the peninsula
gave free rein to the most irrational speculations about nature. The prestige of the
works of art then produced in Italy exposes us to the danger of a distorted view of
the collections there during the second half of the sixteenth century; we would be too
much inclined to find, for the most part, art museums as opposed to the German
collections which would be richer in natural curiosities. In fact, Italian princes were
no less passionate than the Germans in their quest for the rare and al peregrino, filling
—
whole rooms in their palaces with curiosities mineralogical, botanical, zoological,
teratological, mathematical, physical and chemical. Such a room was not thought of,
as in Germany, as a Wunderkammer which is the exact equivalent of the French chambre
des merveilles. Despite all his interest in natural phenomena the Italian reserved his
wonder for works bv man, calling this kind of cabinet simply: museo naturale. One
historian counted no fewer than two hundred and fifty such museums of natural
history in sixteenth-century Italy.

France was the first country in northern Europe to be influenced profoundly by

the new spirit.For her the conquest of Italy was the opportunity to show herself for
the first time as a major European power in wars of invasion; even the delusion of
grandeur which led her to confront the Holy Roman Empire did not, in the end,
harm her politically. The first contact took place during the Neopolitan expedition
of Charles VIII; when he retreated from Italy, he was able to save only a small part
of booty, having been forced to abandon his immense baggage, supplies and the royal
treasure in order to escape the troops of the Italian League under the command of
Francesco Gonzaga at Fornovo in July 1495. However, the "specialists" with whom
he had surrounded himself followed Charles to France; the records of payment to
Italian workers at Amboise in 1497 and 1498 inform us about this eccentric band which
was composed of a few true artists and artisans but also included hairdressers, par-
fit nieurs and "des hommes habiles a faire eclore les poitlets."

62
 the beginning of the sixteenth century Italian paintings were finding their way to
By
France. — —
A Madonna of the Spindles by Leonardo lost today provoked great excitement
when it was bought by the financier Florimond Robertet. Louis XII, unsuccessful at
procuring the services of the great painter, was obliged to seek him out in Milan. It is
quite possible that the king brought back some works by Leonardo to France;
some historians think such was the case with the Madonna of the Rocks, now in the
Louvre. However, the impulse to collect was strongest in Francis I, whom Louis
Dimier calls "the father of curiosity in France," a description which somewhat dimi-
nishes his role. Francis, like Louis XIV a little later, wanted to be the first in everything,
in war as in love and in the patronage of literature and the arts. Without doubt he is
the paragon of a sixteenth-century prince, as Duke Federico da Montefeltro of Urbino
had been for the fifteenth century. In 1516 Francis I, victor at Marignano, succeeded
where Louis XII had failed; he lured Leonardo da Vinci to the castle of Cloux near
Amboise, w here the artist died in 1519. The atelier of Leonardo formed the nucleus
T

27. Leda and the Swan, after

Michelangelo. National Gal-
lery, London. This version of a
picture by Michelangelo was car-
ried to France by one of his pupils.
King Francis I. In
It iras sold to
1625 Cassiano del Po%%P is said
to hare seen at Fontainebleau a
painting on this subject which
was attributed to II Rosso.
According to Piles and Florent
Le Comte, Michelangelo s original '

was destroyed by des Noyer, Super-

intendent of Buildings from 1638
to 1643, who was overly prudish.
Marii tte refnti s this opinion, saying
that he had seen the painting attri-
buted to Michelangelo and that it

was sent to England. In truth

one finds at the sale of the Sir
Joshua Reynolds collection on
March 17, 1795, under the name
of Michelangelo, a Leda which
showed indications that it had
been in royal French collections
and also in the collection of the
Earl of Spencer. The latter bought
it in 1742. The painting was
offered to the National Gallery
by the Duke of Northumberland
in 1838.

63
of the royal cabinet of paintings; although we cannot assign an exact date to the king's
taking possession of the paintings, we do know that his collections included La
Gioconda, the Saint Anne and a John the Baptist, which might have been the half-length
representation of the saint or the one transformed into a Bacchus in the seventeenth
century. Another Leonardo owned by the king was a Leda which was later destroyed
as immoral. In 1536 he bought still another Leda, a work by II Rosso in the style of
Michelangelo but this too disappeared, another victim of prudery. The king acquired
many pictures by Andrea del Sarto who worked at the court; he commissioned
Titian to paint his portrait from a medal; he obtained a I "isitation by Sebastiano del
Piombo. Diplomatic gifts further swelled the collection; Pope Leo X offered him
The Holy Family and Saint Michael'by Raphael (dated 1517 and 1518) through Lorenzo II
de'Medici, Duke of Urbino, as intermediary. The king received as a gift from Cardinal
Bibiena Raphael's Portrait of Joanna of Aragon, which after a recent cleaning under
my direction reveals itself as an unrestored work of admirable quality, contradicting the
tradition which attributes it to a collaborative effort with Giulio Romano. According
to Vasari, Cosimo I, Grand Duke of Tuscany, commissioned from Bronzino An
Allegory of Time and Love (now in the National Gallery, London) as a gift to the
French king.
More than anything, however, Francis I wanted antiquailles, those trifling curiosities
without which no collection at that time was considered complete. He sent Andrea
del Sarto on a buying mission to Rome but the artist never returned, kept the money and
sent nothing. The king fared better with Francesco Primaticcio, who arrived at
Fontainebleau in 1532, one year after II Rosso. Dispatched to Rome in 1540, the
Bolognese returned with one hundred thirty-three cases containing one hundred
twenty-five statues, busts and torsos as well as molds of the most celebrated antiquities
in Rome. Giacomo da Vignola, then a young and unknown architect who had accom-
panied Primaticcio to Fontainebleau, supervised the casting of rather crude bronzes
from the molds. In the seventeenth century the Kellers, foundry workers for Louis XIV,
were to bring perfection to this art. The Louvre preserves some of the casts, among
them the Laocoon, Ariadne Sleeping, the Hercules Commodus and the Spinario. Only one
original has thus far been identified, the Diane a la biche carried off to the Chateau
at Meudon by Anne de Pisseleu, Duchesse d'Etampes. An unknown painter at work
during the reign of Henry II must have drawn inspiration from it for his Diana the
Huntress at the Louvre, doubtlessly an allegorical portrait of Diane de Poiters.
Antiquities were immediately restored or, so to speak, "completed," as was the
custom in Italy since the fifteenth century. The interest in bronze copies was nourished
by the Neoplatonic concept of the Beautiful, current until the eighteenth century,
whose advocates promulgated the Idea as opposed to Matter and consequently
preferred replicas of masterpieces to mediocre originals.
There was an active trade in antiquities by the end of the fifteenth century, with
French nobles avidly seeking them, especially busts of Roman emperors for their
chateaux. One of the inescapable laws of curiosity manifested itself at that time: success
breeds forgery. A remark made by the humanist Henri II Estienne is worth citing
for its humorous denunciation of the impudence of counterfeiters he coined the term
;

antiquaille, based on the Italian anticaglie, a word which, when uttered, he said "makes

64
 one automatically reach for one's pocketbook." The Hellenist mocked the snobbery
attached to antiquities: "Today the world is full of collectors of antiquailles at whose
expense forgers prosper." Estienne recounted the adventure of one fool who, parti-
cularly attracted to a certain piece, found he had selected the hopeful dealer's eighty-
year-old wife.
All the works amassed by the king were kept in the chateau at Fontainebleau:
tapestries, precious metalwork, and contemporary Italian creations, such as the bronze
Nymph of the Florentine Benvenuto Cellini who lived at the court. The palace, a
creation of Francis I, was situated in a game-filled forest thirty miles east of Paris;
later Vasari was to call it the "Rome of the North." Antique sculptures and bronze
replicas graced the gardens. The most precious pictures were set into stucco in five
vaulted chambers by II Rosso. Cool in summer, easy to heat in winter, these rooms,
laid out between 1541 and 1547 by Primaticcio, constituted the "baths" (which
disappeared with Louis XV). There the sensuous monarch sought to refresh both
body and spirit. It was a singular place for the conservation of paintings and the effects
of injudicious restoration could already be seen. Before going to Rome, between
1 538 an d_1540, Primaticcio had cleaned a Saint Michael, a I frgin and a Saint Margaret

by Raphael.
If the presentation was "mannerist," the composition of the collection of Francis 1

was classical, completely in the spirit of the Renaissance. The monarchs who succeeded
him were to be more eclectic. The taste for things Italian waned under Henry II with
the attitude prevailing that France had been able to create her own national style.
When Henry II received as a gift from Roberto Strozzi in 1550 the two Slaves conceived
by Michelangelo for the tomb of Julius II, he hastened to give them away to his favor-
ite, Anne de Montmorency. Portrait collections became the vogue. At the French court

the Clouets started the fashion for "having one's portrait done" either aux trots craions
or in oil, with the likenesses reduced to bust and face, expressive of man's consciousness
of himself, concomitant with the Reformation and the impetus behind the moralistic
literature of Montaigne. The representation in painting of the psychic life could have
originated only in France. The taste for portraiture spread to all of Europe, with
princely families exchanging likenesses; for that purpose several oil or chalk copies
28. South American Rat, by
Jacopo Ligozzi (c. 1 547- were made from the original portrait. The walls of small, specially designed salons
1626). Water color. Cabinet of were covered with these likenesses. Catherine de' Medici, who knew how to "esquicher
Drawings and Prints, Uffi^i et pourtraire elk meme," accumulated in her mansion (later the hotel de Soissons) more
Museum, Florence. leaf fromA than four hundred portraits, excluding her own crayon studies. They were installed
the natural history collection
in a number of apartments where they were set into the wood-paneled walls. In one
executed by Ligosgi for Grand
Duke Ferdinand II of Tuscany. room thirty-two portraits were paired with thirty-two Limoges enamels; in a "room
of mirrors" eighty-three hung next to one hundred nineteen Venetian mirrors. In my
29.The Alchemist, by Gio- installations for the Louvre in 1953 I tried to evoke one of these portrait galleries by
vanni Stradano. Detail. This using original frames and, in some cases, by making borders from old silver mirrors to
picture figures in the cabinet of the recall discreetly the cabinet des glaces. A great number of the five hundred fifty-one
Pala^o I 'ecchio, dedicated to
portrait drawings owned by Catherine have been preserved for France as the result of
the four elements and recalling
a curious detour. They had been bequeathed by Catherine to Christine of Lorraine,
the scientific and alchemistic re-

searches of Grand Duke Fran- the daughter of Ferdinand I de'Medici.

cesco I of Tuscany. In the eighteenth century the English collector Sir Henry Howard bought three

65
66 28 29
 hundred eleven of them which remained in the
Howard castle until 1890 when the duke of Aumale
purchased them for the collections of the Count of
Carlisle at Chantilly.
Many princes followed Catherine's example but
none outshone her. The taste for collections of
historical portraits also spread through France. The
museum jovianum, known through engravings, in-
spired emulation. Andre Thevet, a Franciscan
friar, published a collection of copperplate engrav-
ings in 1584 entitled Pour traits et vie des Hommes
illustres, the fruit of careful documentation in
which he criticized Paolo Giovo for the inadequacy
of his historical method.
In the second half of the century "curiosities"
began to accumulate at Fontainebleau, next to the
works of art brought together by Francis I. These
curiosities were kept in a cabinet in the donjon.
\ Brother Andre Thevet, who had traveled in the
Near East and Brazil, was named as their custodian
by Charles IX. All the bric-a-brac inherent in this
type of museum was kept in the cabinet in addition
;

to the Saint Servin cameo, there were many Chinese

and Turkish objects as well as esoterica brought
back by explorers and merchants from countries
the world over and, by Thevet himself from Brazil
(for example, the Mexican robe of ibis feathers now
in the Musee de l'Homme, Paris). The most extra-
ordinary object was unquestionably a seven-
headed hydra, the gift of the Venetian Republic to
"
*#•
V* the king. In his 1642 inventory of the "treasury of
wonders at Fontainebleau," Father Dan, caretaker
...'•
of the chateau, listed the ruins of the hydra, noting
that rats had eaten one of the heads. The hydra was,
of course, the fabrication of some charlatan. Clever
forgers supplied a knowledgeable but easily de-
m ceived clientele with monsters; the cockatrice, an
animal with the head of a cock and tail of a serpent,
widely used in medieval bestiaries as a symbol of
the devil, was very much in demand. During the
30. Elisabeth de Valois, daughter of Henry II of France, second half of the century an Italian by the name
drawing by Francois Clouet. Muse'e Conde, Cbantilly, of Tartaglio turned them out in quantities as well
formerly in the cabinet of Catherine de' Medici. This is typical of
as other kinds of stripe-skinned monsters.
the small portraits aux trois craions or in oil that were the vogue at the
time of Henry II and Henry III. Collectors accumulated them by the The "cabinet de curiosite^ was all the rage at
hundreds. court; Diane de Poitiers and the Montmorency and

67
68 31
 Guise families all had one. The ceramist Bernard
Palissy, who was the first to make geologic studies
in France, had a cabinet of fossils, enamels and
pottery. At Catherine de'Medici's hotel de Soissons
not far from the portraits and among the bibelots
which filled the house from cellar to attic, one found
crocodile skins, a chameleon, nuts from India,
lacquers from China and mummies, whose ground-
up ashes were supposed to ward off accidents.
The humanists imitated princes to whatever
extent they were able. Not content to keep only
the king's '''cabinet des rarete^," Brother Thevet
had his own collection of historical portraits (for
the most part antique medallions and chalk draw-
ings) to this he added natural curiosities brought
;

back from his own voyages.

The introduction of the term curieux into the
French language, with the connotation of amateur,
can be dated exactly; it is found in a lexicon edited by
Robert Estienne in 1538. He translates the term
antiquaries as ung homme curieux d'avoir ou scavoir
choses antiques; designates, therefore, a learned
it

person as well as a collector and pertains to works

of art of the past, principally to those of antiquity.
In the second half of the century the meaning was
broadened to include natural creations, which was
ultimately to evolve as its primary meaning. Anti-
quaire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
referred to a connoisseur of antiquities rather than
a collector. (In France the Antiquaires de Normandie
and the France have retained
Societe des antiquaires de
33. Slave, by Michelangelo. Louvre Museum, Paris. Con- this meaning.) In English the term can be traced
ceived originally for the tomb of Julius II, tiro Slaves were sent back at least to 1533 when John Leland was
as a gift Henry II France by Roberto Stro~~i. They came to
to oj
appointed royal antiquarian by Henry VIII. The
the Louvre as revolutionary plunder from the collections oj the Puke
de Richelieu.
word amateur (from the Latin amator, a lover,
admirer or devotee) might be equated with the
4 31. Saint Anne, by Leonardo da Vinci. Detail. Louvre
Museum, Paris.
Latin musarum cultor, a cultivator or supporter of
This of the three paintings mentioned
is one
by the secretary of the cardinal of Aragon as being in Leonardo '
the muses. From cavea, which in Latin meant a
studio in the castle of Cloux at Amboise in 1517. Bought for hollow place or cavity, developed cabinet, a piece of
Francis I it was removed from the royal collections by Richelieu.
,
furniture for the safekeeping of small objects,
i 32. An Allegory of Time and Love, by Bronzino. jewels, letters and intimate papers, later expanded
National Gallery, London. This painting is undoubtedly iden- to include small rooms where precious and rare
tifiable with a work by Bronzino which Vasari is said to have
objects were kept. By the eighteenth century the
sent to Francis I of France. It did not remain long in the royal
collections and was acquired in Paris in 1860 by the Xational
word also applied, in France, to gardens compart-
Gallery of London. mented by shrubbery and in England to summer-

70
34
71

J
 houses or bowers. Cabinet in French and English corresponds to the German kammer
and is now associated with the idea of an art collection. Cabinets aroused such an

interest among tourists that guides listed the collections and galleries to be seen in
the cities they visited. At the end of the sixteenth century a certain Lacroix du Maine
published a compendium of celebrated cabinets, of which we possess no more than
its eloquent title: "The most renowned libraries and cabinets (which some call cham-

bers of marvels) of France, with a listing of rare books, medallions, portraits, statues
or effigies, precious gems or other niceties and curiosities seen in the houses of
princes who collect such magnificences." Educated travelers, crisscrossing the whole
of Europe, were attracted to all kinds of collections, libraries and galleries. Formed,
for the most part, by artists, amateurs, aristocrats and scholars, they were liberally
open to the public. One Gabriel Symeoni, on a visit to Rome in 1557, described in
detail the new Villa Giulia, even recording the rules posted at the entrance for visitors
it seems there was, at certain hours, an admission fee. Pierre de Bourdeilles, seigneur

de Brantome, reports the same about the Paris residence of the Florentine Ghiaceti
(or d'Adjacet). Overflowing with works of art, it was, according to the author of
Vies des dames galantes, "the most beautiful, most superb house of the last century.
Anyone could go to see it for a sou."
Heirs to Burgundian extravagance, the Hapsburgs found themselves in a position,
by virtue of the location of their realms, to realize a synthesis of the different artistic
currents in Europe. As early as the beginning of the sixteenth century, Margaret
of Austria, regent of the Netherlands, set an example for refined taste by encouraging
music, literature and painting; though her library was eclectic, her collection (which
boasted Jan van Eyck's The Marriage of Giovanni Arnolfini and Giovanna Cenami now
in London's National Gallery) contained only paintings by artists from the Low
Countries.
Crowned emperor by the pope in 1530, Charles V played the role of a Maecenas
i 34. Gemma Augustea, <v/w«,
circa10 B.C. Kunsthistorisches
more from necessity than from temperament; in his eyes it behooved the state to
Museum, Vienna. Purchased by support artists. To be sure, he liked Titian but he did not set about collecting to satisfy
Rudolf II, this cameo is the any artistic taste nor to nourish a connoisseur's instinct. He was first and foremost a
most beautiful piece from the political man, preoccupied with maintaining an immense empire, the equilibrium
emperor's Schatzkammer. // is
of which was constantly being threatened by wars and religious struggles. The Fugger
a representation of the Emperor
family, bourgeois Augsburg bankers, were more amateurs than was Charles, whose
Augustus with a personification
of Rome as a goddess, crowned
election they secured by bribing the electors.
bj the Orbis Romanus, in com- Munich was the scene of the birth of amateurism in Central Europe. William IV,
memoration of the victory of duke of Bavaria (reigning from 1508 to 1550), formed a cabinet of curiosities and
Tiberius over the Pannonians.
commissioned humanist paintings like Altdorfer's The Battle of Alexander on the Nissus
4 35. Nautilus mounted in a
River (1529), one of the most philosophical pictures of the century. His successor
goldsmithery setting. Resi- Albert V (reigning from 1550 to 1579), married to Anne, daughter of Emperor Fer-
den^museum Munich. Made
, dinand (brother of Emperor Charles V), was profoundly affected by an Italian sojourn
about 1570 by \\"cn~el /amnit-~er in his youth. This was the time when contact with Italian civilization was deemed
'

151'8-1'585) for Duke Albert \

(
indispensable to the forming of a prince. Albert resolutely introduced ultramontanism,
of Bavaria. An example of the
manner in which natural curiosities
or extended papal supremacy, into Munich. He set about collecting, without much
were often given an extravagant personal taste however, an extraordinary group of curios and objects, totaling no
presentation. fewer than 3,407 items, according to a catalog drawn up by Fickler in 1598: paintings,

72
drawings, engravings, coins, ivories, armor and glassware. We are especially indebted
to him for his encouragement of the minor arts, particularly goklsmithing. He
bought countless antiques (among them a great number of counterfeits) and had a
large gallery built to hold them, which his successors transformed into a ballroom
between 1586 and 1600, following plans by Friedrich Sustris. This oldest museological
structure in Europe was partly destroyed in the 1944 bombings but has since been
rebuilt. The antiquities, even more than at Sabbioneta, are here incorporated into a
mannerist decor, somewhat like cameos set in a coffer. The Bavarian world is joined
to an evocation of antiquity through a series of frescoes representing cities and
villages of the duchy.
The first Hapsburg who seems to have been possessed by the demon of collecting
was an archduke of Austria, Ferdinand of Tyrol (1529-1595); he was given Castle
Ambras near Innsbruck by his father, Emperor Ferdinand I in 1563. He filled the
castle with divers collections which, until most were removed to Vienna in 1806,
constituted, so to speak, a sanctuary of mannerism in Europe. All the elements of a
princely cabinet of the time were there: a Kunstkammer or art gallery, a Schat^kammer
or treasury of objects in precious metals, a Wunderkammer or cabinet devoted to
natural curiosities, a Riistkammer or wardrobe for parade armor and a history museum.
The art gallery was the least developed. One of the most precious treasures in the
Schat^kammer was a gold saltcellar made by Benvenuto Cellini which had been bought
by Francis I and given by Charles IX to his brother-in-law Ferdinand upon the occasion
of his marriage to Elizabeth of Austria Charles also presented a gold chalice tapestries
; ;

from the Fontainebleau atelier, which today are unique pieces; and the monarch's
own portrait by Francois Clouet. It is fortunate that the famous saltcellar left France
where, during the course of the centuries, most objects in precious metal were melted
down; the gift made by Charles IX has preserved it for our admiration.
The history museum contained copies made for Ferdinand between 1576 and
1579 and was based on the museum jovianum at Como. The Riistkammer is a peculiarly
Germanic type of collection and is strongly appreciated in Eastern Europe. The
Kremlin Museum owes its origins to a Riistkammer and is still called an "arms museum."
During the mannerist period European princes were fond of elaborately tooled and
damascened armor which took years to make. Innsbruck was one of the great centers
of production, rivaling Milan and Nuremberg. The catalog of the Riistkammer at
Ambras was published in 1601 under the title A.rmameritiorum heroicum serenissimi
principis Ferdinandi Archiduci. The collection included a whole array of the prince's
own parade and tournament armor; Turkish armatures; the ceremonial helmet,
shield and sword of Emperor Charles V; suits of fluted Maximilian armor as well as
others a la polonaise; and Alessandro Farnese's parade armor designed by Piccinino.
Almost all of the pieces are now in Vienna, with the exception of one very beautiful
suit preserved in the Musee de l'Armee in Paris, the gilt armor which belonged to
Francis I. This sumptuous armor was commissioned in 1539 from the Innsbruck
workshop of Jorg Seusenhofer by Emperor Charles V's brother, Ferdinand I, king
of Bohemia and Hungary and archduke of Austria, as a gift for the king of France;
however, an armature of such splendor took a long time to execute; before it was
finished, Charles was at war with Francis and so the French king never received it.

73
 In 1583 itwas listed in an inventory of Ambras
Castle. On February 9, 1806 it was noticed by
Napoleon as he returned to Vienna at the head of
his armies and was ordered sent to Paris where it
was eventually united with the sword surrendered
by Francis I at Pavia and carried off to Madrid and
finally given royal honors by Napoleon. Hitler
had the celebrated armature returned to Austria
in 1940; when French troops found it near Inns-
bruck in 1945, they returned the coveted trophy to
Paris, to the Musee des Invalides.
Without doubt the richest collection in Ambras
Castle was that of the W
underkammer; it contained
a superabundance of everything which was sup-
posed to be in this kind of collection: optical tools,
musical tools, instruments and mechanical clocks
which were made by German artisans and were
vied for throughout all Europe. There were col-
lections of various games, costumes and exotic
objects. The castle's 1596 inventory mentioned
two " Indianisch fuech" which are the two Chinese
36. Gallery of Antiques in the Residenz, Munich. Built for paintings of the Ming Period (a landscape and
Duke Ubert \ between 1 569 and 1571 this gallery was transformed
'

still preserved in the Museum of

,
aquatic birds)
into a reception ball between I i86 and 1600 with lavish new decorations
which incorporated the statues into the decor. Natural History in Vienna. Among the exotic
objects were ivory horns and spoons from Benin,
an African kingdom discovered by the Portuguese
which had an active trade with Europe at this time
in ironwork and carved ivory. The naturalia in-
cluded a great number of freaks or monsters, the
accidents of nature which were thought to have a
quasi-metaphysical character which might give an
insight into the secret of the universe. Abnormal
fetuses, which were very much in demand, were
well represented; if they were human, they were
believed to have been produced by dreams during
conception or pregnancy, a belief still held by
some, even today. The strange attraction for
dwarfs and fools, a taste the Spanish court kept
until the eighteenth century, was explained thus:
these deformed creatures were "marvels of nature."
At Ambras there was a section of portraiture
devoted to dwarfs, giants and cripples; the por-
traits of some of these W
under menschen still survive,
among them that of Fruher von Munchen and his
daughter, veritable "dog people" with an over-
developed pilose system.

74
 ;

Mannerism was at its glittering best on the eve

of waning at the court of Emperor Rudolf II at
its

the end of the century. Archduke of Austria, king

of Hungary and of Bohemia, he chose Prague as
his official imperial residence upon his election as
king of the Romans in 1576. He was a wretched
statesman; in concession after concession he lost
his domains and was finally deposed by his brother
Matthias who succeeded him in 1612. Disinterested
in power, this Saturnian prince devoted himself to
learning; preoccupied with astrology, he pro-
tected the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe and
the great Johannes Kepler who was his astrologer
and imperial mathematician; at that time observa-
tion of the stars was linked with the art of fore-
telling the future. Artists from all over Europe,
especially from the Netherlands, Germany and
Italy, converged on Rudolfs court at Prague. At
Hradcany Castle he formed a fabulous collection
which was to have a disastrous fate. A true Haps-
burg, he was interested in many kinds of European
art, in Titian's Danaeas much as in Durer's Martyr-
dom of the 10,000 Christians; he particularly liked
Diirer and Bruegel, whose works he had in abun-
dance. His most glorious trophy had been Durer's
Madonna of the Rosary, painted for the Church of
San Bartolommeo in Venice he paid an enormous
;

sum and, because of its fragility, took great

for it

37. Various objects in silver at Ambras Castle. Amongst precautions in transporting it: enveloped in sheets,
these objects can be seen in the background a carved rhinoceros horn; linen and carpeting, it was carried by hand from
in the center is a be^oar (calcareous stone from the stomach of Tibetan Venice to Prague. Rudolfs Schat^kammer con-
goats) set in silver. The rhinoceros horn and the be^oar were said to tained some of the most precious examples of Ger-
be protections against poison and sickness.
man metalwork as well as admirable antique pieces
it was he who bought the famous Gemma augustea. He

commissioned a crown and scepter for himself

(today conserved in the treasury of the Hofburg,
Vienna) which were among the last great works
produced by mannerist goldsmiths.

His preferred painters reveal to us something

of his intellectual interests. He sent to Milan for
Arcimboldo, who was his master of ceremonies
for festivals and who, for the edification of the
court, painted those "composite heads" which
were not meant as clever conceits but represented
an effort to express the existence of a profound

75
 unity between man and the world. It was probably not on his own initiative that the
Milanese painter undertook these bizarre figures because his work before he left Italy
was quite modest, but was rather at the instigation of the emperor or of some erudite
at court who was tormented by the problem of the essence of things. Rudolfs
melancholy spirit found itself in intimate accord with Durer's. The art of Bruegel
corresponded exactly to the philosophical position of mannerist humanism with its
universalist tendencies. Other artists at Rudolfs court ardently studied natural creations
with the hope of understanding the essence of nature itself through the analysis of
its forms. Two such were the nomadic Fleming Joris Hoefnagel, whose motto
artists
was " Natura and the Nuremberger Hoffmann, to whom reality meant
sola magister,"
Durer. He so completely adopted the latter's style that he eventually made pastiches
dated and signed with the famous monogram, thus supplying the great market demand
for Diirers.
It not surprising that Rudolf II, surrounded as he was by alchemists and
is

astrologers, had at Hradcany one of the most fabulous W underkam mem of the epoch.
He collected tools of magic, mandrake roots, deformed fetuses, bizarre animals,
monsters and bezoars. Calcareous concretions formed in the stomachs of a certain
kind of Persian mountain goat (capra aegagrus) bezoars are very rare because their
,

formation depends on the diet of the animal. Through the use of special formulas,
it is possible, however, to "cultivate" them in the stomachs of more common ruminants.

Valued for their antidotal powers, bezoars were much sought after in a period when
princes lived in terror of being poisoned by their enemies; one did not venture
abroad without a bezoar on one's person. They were even given sumptuous gold
mountings. Curiously enough, modern science has corroborated to a certain degree
their therapeutic powers. As late as 1808 the Shah of Persia could find no more precious
gift than three bezoars to send to Napoleon.
Unlike his aristocratic contemporaries who were eager to show off their collections,
the mentally ill Rudolf, a life-long celibate, jealously hid his. Reserved for a privileged
few, a visit to his treasures had all the character of an initiation; the paintings were
hung behind draperies in a room where the windows were opened only for the emperor.
Prague succumbed to a sad fate in the seventeenth century. During the first fifty
years, the treasures of Emperor Rudolf were pillaged several times. During the course
of the Thirty Years' War, certain pieces were sold at Nuremberg in order to meet
military expenses. Others were sent to Vienna. After Tilly's victory at White Mountain,
Maximilian of Bavaria, in command of the imperial troops, left Prague with fifteen
wagonloads of spoils which were to enrich the collections at Munich. In 1631 Prague
was occupied by the Saxons; this time fifty carts and several boats carried off captured
trophies to Dresden.
38. The Tower of Babel, by The reputation of Prague was legendary and as the Thirty Years' War drew to a
Pieter Bruegel the Elder. close, enough art still remained to arouse the covetousness of Koenigsmark. With
Kunsthistorisches Museum negotiations for peace already under way, the celebrated general led the Swedish army
ienna. From Rudolf II' s collec-
[
on a forced march to Prague and entered the city on July 25, 1648, seizing Hradcany
tion at Hradcany Castle, Prague.
Bruegel's art corresponded exactly
and the Mala Strana quarter. He was unable to take everything, thanks to the keeper
to the philosophical position oj
of the collections, the sculptor Eusebius Miseron, who had succeeded in removing
Manneristic I In /nanism. some of the paintings to Vienna; he had to be tortured before he would reveal where

76
the keys to the treasury were hidden. Boats laden with spoils moved on the Elbe and
the Moldau towards Mecklenburg where they added to loot brought by an overland
route; from there, all was expedited to Stockholm. Queen Christina ordered an
inventory drawn up by her librarian, Freinshemi, and her curator, the Marquis of
Fresne; the report covered no fewer than 137 pages in folio. In contrast, the inventory
taken at Prague on the order of Emperor Ferdinand III after the Swedish invasion
listed no more than ten paintings and a handful of objects. The treasures of Prague
seem truly inexhaustible; emperors as late as Joseph II in the eighteenth century
still found things to sell. Recently the art world was startled by the discovery of seventy

paintings that had long lain forgotten in the attic of Hradcany Castle; the majority,
however, were acquisitions made after the time of Rudolf II.
Only a small number of the pieces captured by the Swedes remained in Stockholm.
As the goods of the crown were the personal property of the sovereign, Christina,
when she abdicated, took along her collections, in great part comprised of loot from
Hradcany. Trunk after trunk accompanied her on her triumphal procession across
Europe which ended eventually at Rome. There the queen, already enamored of art
and the sciences (and who had hastened the death of Descartes by persuading him to
move to her cold country), proved herself an ardent archeologist as well and amassed
a fine collection of antiquities. After her death her collections were sold in lots by her
heirs to the Spanish Crown and to Roman princes. In 1720 the financier Pierre Crozat
acquired for Philippe II, Duke of Orleans and Regent of France, the most beautiful
paintings belonging to the Odescalchi family; these were sold in London when the
duke's collections were liquidated during the French Revolution.
Thus are collections made and unmade. Gathered together by one man, whose
personality they reflect, pieces, once they are dispersed, fall into other, equally
ephemeral groupings. The dismantling of the Prague collections is, however, very
regrettable; their assemblage was the fruit of a certain kind of culture which flourished
in Europe at the end of the sixteenth century, a culture which lives today only in the
imagination. The work of the enigmatic Rudolf II is gone forever.
Koenigsmark captured at Prague other works of art which postdated Rudolfs reign.
He carried off, for example, some of the bronzes made by the sculptor Adriaen de Vries
for the palace of another great militarist: Wallenstein. The monumental fountain that
Christian IV, king of Denmark and Norway, commissioned from the same sculptor was
seized by the Swedes in 1660; it is in the park at Drottningholm, outside Stockholm,
where one can best study the auvre of this Dutch artist who did not work in his own
country. The unity of Europe is created out of such movements of flux and reflux
which very often behave like whirlpools, depositing alluvia far from the source.
The Hapsburg family was responsible for a great concentration of works of art
beginning to form at this time in another of their European realms. This collection
was not to know the misfortune which befell that of Rudolf; it remained more or less
intact, eventually becoming the nucleus of Madrid's Prado Museum. Philip II of Spain
had much more artistic feeling than his father, Emperor Charles V. Titian lived long
enough to paint portraits of both father and son; favored by Charles, he was also
extensively patronized by Philip. The latter, true to the Hapsburg instinct for the
universal, amassed works from all over Europe in his palaces: the Escorial, the

78
39. One of the capitulary rooms of the Escorial Palace, near Madrid. In the Royal Monastery of Saint Lawrence of the Escorial
which consisted of a monastery, a church, a palace and a mausoleum, Philip II of Spain brought together his books for the library and bis
works of art which had been purchased throughout Europe. Originally shown in the capitulary rooms and the sacristy, the Escorial paintings
have recently been regrouped in a special museum.

79

-:
Alcazar and the Prado. In his collections Flemings such as Rogier van der Weyden,
Patinir, Quentin Massys, Bosch and Jan Gossaert (called Mabuse) hung beside Germans
like Baldung-Grien, Cranach and Durer. As for the Escorial, it is indeed an institution
in the mannerist spirit, a teatro totale embracing a monastry, a royal residence, a
hospital and a university; it is an image of the harmony of the world brought about
by the accord between God and monarch. The library served all branches of learning;
as the focal point of the sanctuary, its location at the entrance to the mass of granite
buildings and its church-like fagade are symbolic: the temple of learning prepares
one for the temple of faith, seat of the highest knowledge. Without a museum, this
teatro totale would not have been complete; Philip II grew old there, surrounded by
some of his most beautiful paintings, principally Flemish ones, which were reverenced
almost as sacred images. Rogier van der Weyden's Descent from the Cross, acquired by
Maria of Hungary, sister of Emperor Charles V, and sent to Spain, was the most
distinguished piece; it was put up in the Escorial in 1574. The king dreamed of even
more; he tried to procure van Evck's Ghent Altarpiece from the Saint Bavo church.
Unsuccessful, he had to content himself with a copy made by Michiel Coxcie in 1557
at the request of the church vestry.
Mannerism has recovered from the condemnation meted out by Romain Rolland
in his Latin thesis of 1895. It could not be otherwise; the anticlassical tendencies of
our era have helped critics and historians to see the value of the movement. For some,
like Bousquet, it is the true western tradition, and it is classicism which is guilty of
bringing creativity to a standstill. Without going to either of these extremes, one
must acknowledge the great speculative worth of mannerism. If it engendered many
mediocre works, it also produced masterpieces but, above all, it was the painful gestation
of the modern world. In the years between 1530 and 1600 the museum evolved an
extensible form that would never stop growing. The following centuries were to
bring new orientations of taste and greater interest in the work of art per se. The
seventeenth century witnessed keen competition among European amateurs. New
centers sprang up and museums took on greater significance in culture and pedagogy.
Itwas reserved, however, for the eighteenth century to turn it into a public institution.

80

..r.
81
82 40
 .

Chapher

5
Royal Art
In the seventeenth century the great collections formed in the north of Europe and
not, as before, in Italy. Overflowing with antique and Renaissance treasures, Italy, how-
ever, proved to be an inexhaustible reservoir for dealers and amateurs. Ardent competi-
tion pushed prices high and works of art changed hands all over Europe; sometimes
entire collections were affected. The Reynst brothers in Amsterdam, sons of a ship-
owner who made a fortune in the Indies, succeeded in acquiring the cabinet formed by
the Doge Vendramin at Venice. Christina of Sweden took with her to Rome her
collection, largely comprised of spoils from Prague. One of the most important trans-
actions ever made in works of art was the purchase en bloc of the Gonzaga cabinet at
Mantua; this was effected in 1627 by Daniel Nys, a Flemish dealer established in Venice,
on behalf of King Charles I of England. The agent's letters to his Britannic Majesty are
well worth reading for the way in which he boasts of his adroitness, details the enormous
expenses he went to and declares that he earned nothing from the deal, having done all
for the glory of the king; the Correggios alone, he said, were worth what he had
charged for the entire group. Ruined by the extravagance of his family and the expensive
fondness for horses that had been traditional with the Gonzagas for a hundred years,
the duke offered for sale the whole of the Mantuan collection, quite possibly the most
beautiful of those formed during the Renaissance; he kept only the Triumphs of Man-
tegna, which were also acquired by the Stuart king only two years later. The sale
stunned all of Italy and filled the inhabitants of Mantua with consternation. "They
40. View of Arco, water would have put up double the price," wrote Daniel Nys, "if the duke had been given
color and gouache by Al-
the slightest opportunity to buy back his treasures from England."
brecht Diirer. Louvre Museum,
Paris. This admirable water color Just as it happens today, entire collections changed countries such was the case with
;

was found among the group of the Earl of Arundel's famous collection of paintings and objets d'art; following his exile
5,542 drawings which the minister in 1642, the nobleman had it removed from London to the Netherlands, where it was
Colbert bought for Louis XIV sold after his death.
from the financier Jabach in 1671
This purchase was the basis for
The greatest sale of works of art in the seventeenth century involved the collections
the finest such collection in the
of Charles I; confiscated by the Puritan government after his execution in 1649, they
world. were liquidated between 1650 and 1653 through private sales and public auctions. The

83
 king of Spain, Queen Christina of Sweden, Arch-
duke Leopold-Wilhelm, governor of the Nether-
lands, Cardinal Mazarin and the Parisian banker
Jabach shared the booty.
The purchase of works of art was generally
handled by courtiers who sometimes indulged in
all sorts of unscrupulous dealings. Alfonso Lopez,

sent by Louis XIII to Holland to buy ships and war

materials, profited from the stay by acquiring paint-
ings destined for Richelieu and forming a collection
of his own. The Dutch traded on an international
scale; the Fleming, Daniel Nys, set up in Venice,
effected the sale of the Gonzaga cabinet to Charles I.
Guillaume Forchoudt of Antwerp had branches in
Paris, Vienna and Cadiz. Certain subjects which
were in fashion at the time were more salable than
others. In 1677 the Forchoudt brothers wrote their
father: "Business flourishes in Vienna and we
41. The Market Place at Prague. Detail oj a pictun in the \\"iir~-
r
would sell many more paintings if we had a greater
burg Museum. During tin .VI lltb century it was of/en passible to stock of The Four Elements, Landscapes and
obtain paintings or curiosities /row baskets in the open air or /row the Battles r
shops in the market phut
During the course of the seventeenth century
the art trade organized itself. Paintings were still
sold at fairs but more and more these were only
second-rate works. The fairs at Saint-Germain,
Paris, and at Leipzig kept, however, a certain luster
down to the eighteenth century. Heirs to the com-
mercial methods of the Italians, the bourgeois of
northern Europe were clever enough to corner for
themselves the profitable art market. By the six-
teenth century the city of Antwerp was regulating
the sale of art objects only the guild of Saint Luke
;

was authorized to issue licenses for the sales. For

the express purpose of selling their works, painters
banded together in exhibitions, the first of which
was held in 1540. Trade in antiques was set up on
the stock exchange. The most active of all was the
Schilders-Band which exported Flemish paintings
and imported Italian works. Art dealers in Antwerp
were affiliated with the guild of Saint Luke in an
accessory position, like the gilders and framers. In
the city of Amsterdam art dealers were likewise
obliged to comply with the rulings of the brother-
hood of Saint Luke. There and at the Hague pri-
vate associations of artists obtained the right to hold

84
exhibitions, with a view to selling pictures by their members. During the course of the
seventeenth century, Amsterdam became the trade capital of the art world, especially
for paintings. It witnessed the first modern auctions, complete with appraisers selected
by the burgomaster, auctioneers and sales catalogs. One townhouse, the Heer logement,
was set aside for these sales, which were held'in the open air, altogether in keeping with
this kind of transaction. "To auction off' in Portuguese is por en praca, literally, "to set
up in the public square." To close a sale, the auctioneer tapped a copper basin with his
ring; eighteenth-century London instituted the ivory mallet. In order to be seen by all
the public, the auctioneer was at firs*- mounted on horseback and later was put on a
stage. During the van Uffelen sale in 1639 Rembrandt did a rapid sketch of Raphael's
Portrait of Ealdassare Castiglione, one of the chief attractions under the hammer in this
;

drawing one senses, even after three hundred years, something of the fever of a great
sale.
Ambassadors whose functions took them all over the globe often became involved
in dealing in art.Lord Dudley Carleton, Great Britain's ambassador to the Netherlands,
had a multitude of agents and clerks. He amassed in Italy a veritable countinghouse of
antiquities, planning to export them to London. Named to a post at the Hague, he
sought to trade antiquities for paintings. He began negotiating with Rubens and soon
each was trying to cheat the other. After a round of epic bargaining, the ambassador
sent the artist some mediocre and much-restored antique works in exchange for eighteen
paintings by Rubens. The artist included in the lot several works by his pupils and later
managed to rid himself of some of the antiquities by selling them to the Duke of
Buckingham for the considerable sum of 100,000 florins.
The great collectors themselves did not disdain plying the dealer's trade. Mazarin,
for instance, greatly enjoyed being in the center of art transactions. He would choose
the best of what was sent him from Italy and liquidate the remainder at auction.
Amsterdam owed its reputation to the severity of its commercial customs. The story
of Gerrit Uylenburgh is had sold to the Elector of Branden-
a case in point; this dealer
burg thirteen old masters, chiefly Italian,a painter at the Berlin court, one
which
Hendrick van Fromantiou, thought were forgeries; the paintings were returned to
Amsterdam in 1672, arousing great excitement in all the artists' quarters because each
faction called in painters to support its opinion. Thirty-one of the fifty-one consulted
decided the works were authentic. Nevertheless, the dealer was discredited; he went
into bankruptcy and retired to England after a public auction of all his goods.
Experts were as divided then as they are now and, in theLatin countries, were often
less than scrupulous. When Jabach sold the Duke of Liancourt a small Virgin by Anni-
bale Carracci and a Portrait of Gaston dc Foix by Giorgione for 150,000 livres each
although they were unquestionably copies by Sebastien Bourdon, the public made sport
of the financier's trickery. Bourdon, a dealer himself, did not hesitate to add to his store
of art by exploiting his talent for copying he turned out quite good pastiches of Poussin
;

and Le Nain. In his Memoires Lomenie de Brienne warned against the flood of copies in
circulation; some merchants even managed to sell the same painting several times.
Trade in counterfeit antiquities stimulated the market while trade in forged paintings
inundated it because it was so profitable. Rome abounded with forgers who hired poor
young artists to work for just enough to keep themselves alive. Terenzio da Urbino, an

85
imitator of Raphael, went so far as to execute his pastiches on old, worm-eaten panels,
coating the finished picture with tinted varnishes. These practices were in use by the
beginning of the seventeenth century, proof of how active the art market was at that
time. Forgers found easy prey for their tricks, especially among their clientele in
northern Europe where people had not yet learned to be connoisseurs. Giulio Mancini,
the pope's physician, who wrote his Consider-a\ioni sulla pittura in 1620, devoted an
entire paragraph to aids for distinguishing copies from originals. He remarked, "Those
who wish to pass off copies as originals often blacken them with smoke from damp
straw to remove from the colors all trace of newness this gives an appearance of age to
;

the pictures and, to perfect the deceit, they paint on old wood." Later, the Neopolitan
Luca Giordano (so well-known for his rapid work that he was called "Luca Fapresto"
or "Luca the Speedy") showed himself capable of imitating everything, ancients as well
as moderns: Ribera, Cambiaso, Pietro da Cortona, Guido Reni, Lanfranco, the Carracci,
Tintoretto, Bassano, Raphael, Caravaggio and even, it seems, Rubens and Rembrandt.
Painters often supplemented their incomes by acting as dealers the Carracci were
;

doing this as early as the sixteenth century. Rembrandt was not very successful at it but
Rubens, painter, courtier, connoisseur, made a fortune in dealing. Artists often per-
formed expertise or gave artistic counsel to great personages, the position we call
"adviser." Court painter to Vicenzo I, Duke of Mantua, Rubens advised the ruler on
his purchases; in 1617 the painter brought off a brilliant coup with the acquisition of
Caravaggio's Death of the Virgin which had been refused by the church of the Madonna
della Scala despite the admiration its novelty had aroused in artistic circles in Rome. We
possess all the correspondence exchanged on the subject between Rubens in Rome and
the duke in Mantua; the painter himself supervised all the formalities of packing and
transport. Rubens served also as counsel for Philip IV of Spain; he left Madrid for
Flanders in 1639 with a royal commission to buy paintings. The purpose behind the trip
made by Velazquez in 1649 to 1651 was the purchase of old masters and antiquities for
the king; the artist was, however, not too successful because, succumbing to the charm
of Italy, he applied himself, it seems, to things other than his mission.
A curious story revolves around Nicolo Renieri, a French-born artist living in
Venice, who, while working as a painter, simultaneously acted for forty years as a not-
so-scrupulous dealer in Venetian art; it has been told that he tried to pass off as a Gior-
gione a Pietro della Vecchia which he himself had commissioned. In 1655, in order to
keep his collection within the "glorious Venetian state" (or so he said), he asked the
Council of Ten for authorization to raffle it off. The catalog from this lottery is one of
the oldest printed sales lists we have.
A taste for works of art was not the sole motive for buying. Speculation began at
this time. In August 1675 the abbot of Coulanges wrote to Madame de Sevigne,
"Paintings are as good as ready cash; there never was a better investment. You can sell
them whenever you wish at double the price you paid."
Collectors now specialized more than they did during the preceding epoch. Curio
cabinets aroused greater interest than ever; scientific discoveries were being made but
leaders in that field were seldom art collectors. However, an extensive museum related
to science was organized in the seventeenth century at the College of Rome by the Jesuit
priest Athanasius Kircher (1601 P-1680). In rooms decorated to evoke the terrestrial and

86
celestial spheres, the father among a collection of antiquities and pre-Christian
disposed
objects, ethnographic artifacts brought back from all over the world by Jesuit mis-
sionaries who were noted for their immense knowledge of linguistics, geography and
ethnography. This museum, whose holdings were dispersed in 1870 and again in 1915,
formed the nucleus of the present-day Museo Pigorini in Rome with its ethnographical
collections and was a materialization of the intellectual, scientific and spiritual empire
symbolized in Jesuit iconography by the image of St. Ignatius of Loyola.
Nicolas Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580-1637) serves as an example of one of the most
picturesque "curieux' of the seventeenth century. A member of the parliament of Aix-en-
'

Provence, he filled his mansion with an extraordinary number of objects pertaining to

natural history, numismatics, linguistics, archeology, history, ethnography and astron-
omy. He maintained emissaries in Asia, Africa and America; when a foreign ship
arrived in Marseilles, Peiresc ran down to the docks to see if he could procure some rare
token from a distant land for himself. An observatory surmounted his house. He lived
among columns of books and curiosities of all sorts in every salon: statues, mummies,
stuffed animals. Peiresc kept an army of cats for which he had a great affection; the
enemies of rats, they were, as Bonnafe remarked, "the conservators of his library." A
scholar of repute, Peiresc corresponded with all of Europe. Some of his letters to Rubens
have been preserved; he was one of the men who negotiated the contract with the
artist for the Medici Gallery in the Palais du Luxembourg.
The art collector became a connoisseur or, in Italian, conoscitore or cognoscente; the
Spanish painter and art historian Palomino spoke of the aficionado or amateur. Curieux
remained the preferred term in France, Lomenie de Brienne listed the requisite qualities
of the curieux: he must paint, have money, know Greek and Latin and cultivate con-
noisseurship to avoid being duped "by underhanded picture dealers."
Latinisms such as cimaliarchium cimelium, cimeliotheca and rarotheca were sometimes
,

used to designate a collection of art and curiosities. The word cabinet, before its adop-
tion in Great Britain had its English equivalent in closet, in a sense that is now archaic.
The Germans created a whole gamut of expressions based on the purpose of the col-
lection: Raritdtenkabinett Curiositdtenkabinett Naturalienkabinett Mun^kabinett (collec-
, , ,

tion of medallions), Mineralienkabinett; Kabinett was used concurrently with Kammer, a

word which was still in use.
The arrival in Paris of a painting from Italy was an event. News spread quickly and
collectors gathered at the unpacking. When Poussin's Four Seasons arrived in Paris, an
audience formed at the residence of the Duke of Richelieu in a long and scholarly dis-
;

course Le Brun and Sebastien Bourdon celebrated the merits of the pictures. The educa-
tion of the amateur was then in an experimental stage; no works on the history of art
existed, only biographies of great national artists compiled by historiographers in their
respective countries. Engravings were the only mnemonic aids available for retaining
the memory of a work of art and were extensively used in expensive volumes in which
masterpieces were grouped according to an iconographic format. The Ridolfi Brothers
in 1646 published a work on the Venetian painters entitled Meraviglie a" arte. Archduke
Leopold-Wilhelm, in order to publicize his gallery, of which he was very proud,
commissioned Teniers to prepared an engraved publication of its principal paintings.
—
The artist made small-scale reproductions of the works called "poncifs" or "pas-

87
<*5
 tiches" —to serve
models for the engravers. This was a labor of patience which un-
as
doubtedly lasted for years since two hundred forty-five copies had to be made. These
"pastiches de Teniers" aroused the interest of amateurs; the Duke of Marlborough
succeeded in bringing together one hundred twenty of them and they still turn up here
and there in museums today. In 1658, two years after the archduke had left Brussels, the
volume of engravings appeared under the title Theatrum pictorium Davidis Teniers antver-
pensis. An exhibition of the most beautiful paintings in all of Europe was organized by
the Dutch collector Jean de Bischop who commissioned hundreds of copies as well as
drawings after the originals.
The treatment occasionally inflicted on works of art would seem to us most dis-
respectful; mutilated antiquities were rather badly completed and the critical study of
originals was not yet a matter of course. Restorations were entrusted to the most
talented artists. Bernini began his career as a restorer of antiques; one of the most
remarkable examples of his virtuosity is the Lodovisi Ares in the Museo delle Terme
in the National Museum, Rome; the Eros he added to the statue is somewhat baroque.
When the city of Aries presented Louis XIV with the Venus found in the amphitheatre,
Francois Girardon was commissioned to give it arms; his completed work flatly con-
tradicted the original sense of the statue. Paintings were often transformed, that is, cut
down or enlarged to fit their settings. At the end of the Sun King's reign, the new
austerity which followed an epoch of libertinism stirred up a wave of prudery which
destroyed or mutilated countless mythological paintings works by Poussin, Titian and
;

Rubens suffered. The garrulous Lomenie de Brienne tells us that his Venus by Poussin
caused him many worries whenever he entered his private chapel because the position
of the legs "revealed too much of the seat of love." Although he had seen many others
like it in Italy in cardinals' houses, he continues, he felt obliged to reduce his Venus to a
bust by cutting off the legs.
During the seventeenth century the greatest artists made fortunes and enjoyed a
consideration which permitted them to live in a princely fashion, a situation they were
to lose in the eighteenth century when aristocratic and bourgeois snobbism returned
them to their former status as artisans. However, during their golden age, they too
formed collections which were often quite revealing about their own artistic tendencies.
For example, it is not surprising to learn that Anthony van Dyck owned nineteen
Titians and that Rubens had ten, in addition to the thirty-two copies he had made during

42. The Collection of Arch-

his stay in Madrid —
what an indefatigable worker At Antwerp Rubens built a palace
!

duke Leopold-Wilhelm at a I'italienne (which has recently been reconstructed) for it he built a rotunda in imitation
;

the Coudenberg Castle, of the Pantheon to house his antiquities.

Brussels, by David Teniers. Although they were in private hands, all these cabinets, museums and galleries were
Detail. Kunsthistorisches Mu-
accessible to the public, as corroborated in the innumerable guides and itineraries com-
'

seum, Vienna. The arrangement

piled for travelers at that time. Let us mention a few of the earliest publications on
of the archduke's collection is

well known to us thanks to the northern collections: Itinerarium Galliae in 1612, the Ulysses Belgico-Gallicus of 1631
numerous copies painted by Da- (published by Zinzerling and Abraham Golnitz), the Voyage de France pour f instruction et
rid Teniers the Younger, the la commodite tant des francais que des etrangers (1639). This type of guide enjoyed great
ruler's curator and adviser. The popularity in Italy; the Nota delli Musei galerie e ornamenti di Statue e pitture ne'pala^i e
,
representation of an art lover's
ne'giardini di Roma appeared in 1 664. The Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris contains an
cabinets was one of the most
successful subjects for painting
international compendium, dated 1645 and in manuscript form, which lists Curieux des
in the Netherlands. diverses villes.

42
89
 England's first great amateur was the Stuart king, Charles I. The Tudors had a
passion for jewels and sumptuous vestments but they hardly bothered about art. An
accomplished but politically inept prince, Charles brought England to the fore as a cul-
tivated nation. Among his outstanding achievements were his acquisition of the Gon-
zaga cabinet at Mantua, his commissions to Rubens for great cycles of decoration and
his purchase, following the advice of Rubens, of Raphael's original cartoons for The
Acts of the Apostles, at that time still in the possession of the tapestry works where they
had served as models for the hangings ordered by Leo X. The keeper of the collections
of Charles I was a Dutchman, Abraham van der Doort, who was so scrupulous that,
unable to find a miniature the moment the king called for it, he hanged himself. The
catalog of the royal collections listed 1,387 paintings (460 of which were at Whitehall)
and 399 sculptures this scientific work was brought out by Vertue-Berthee in 1757 and
;

has recently been republished.

Some of the notables at the English court imitated their prince, among them the
famous Duke of Buckingham and, in particular, Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, who
was an excellent connoisseur. The king acquired the paintings in the Gonzaga cabinet
and, through the same agent, Arundel managed to buy the drawings. In his youth he
spent several years in Italy with the architect Inigo Jones and became infected with a
passion for archeology. At a time when most antiquarians had eyes only for Italy,
Arundel sensed the importance of Greece and Asia Minor. Precursor of Lord Elgin,
he dreamed of unearthing the bas-reliefs of the mausoleum at Halicarnassus and tried
to obtain permission from the Sublime Porte to cart off to London the reliefs from the
Golden Gate of Constantinople. The mirage of ancient Troy lured him long before it
haunted leinrich Schliemann. The salons, galleries and garden of Arundel House were
1

filled with antiquities. Savants and men of taste congregated there; Bacon was a
frequent visitor.
Save for the Greek and Roman works, Lord Arundel removed all his collections to
the Netherlands. The government of the Commonwealth dispersed the royal collec-
tions, keeping at Cromwell's request only the Triumphs of Mantegna and the Raphael
cartoons. Most of the art found its way to the continent. Alonzo de Cardenas, ambassa-
dor from Spain, had to hire eighteen mules to bring the works bought by the Spanish
king from La Coruna to Madrid.
The 1697 fire atWhitehall destroyed whatever else remained of the collections of
Charles Stuart. The scepter of amateurism passed from England to France. King
Henry IV, fanatic builder, restorer of the State, showed little taste for this kind of royal
activity. It was he, however, who initiated a program for the conservation of the Italian
masterpieces at Fontainebleau he had them moved from the insalubrious bathing cham-
;

bers (where they were replaced by copies) to a main wing. A Dutchman, Jean de Hoey,
whose maternal grandfather was Lucas van Leyden, was keeper of the collections of
Henry IV. In 1608 he was entrusted with the restoration of "paintings and old pictures,
whether on panel or canvas, belonging to His Majesty at the Chateau of Fontainebleau,
and was at the same time to clean the borders of all frescoes in the chambers, galleries
and cabinets of that chateau." His family continued as conservators to the king until the
royal collections were transported to the Louvre under Louis XIV. It was an Italian,

90
43. Portrait of Abraham van
der Doort, by William Dob-
son. Hermitage Museum Lenin-,

grad. This man, keeper of the

collections of Charles I of
England, committed suicide
because he was unable to find
part of the collection as quickly
as he thought he should.

91

-—
 Queen Marie de'Medici, who renewed traditions of pageantry at the French court.
When she was regent for Louis XIII, she commissioned from Rubens a gallery retracing
her exploits for her Palais du Luxembourg. Louis XIII appointed artists to decorate the
royal residences but showed no interest in collecting. During his reign Cardinal Riche-
lieu, who assumed the task of governing, filled his Chateau de Richelieu in Poitou and
the Palais-Cardinal in Paris with French and Italian paintings. During the Piedmont
campaign in 1629, he succeeded in buying Leonardo da Vinci's Saint Anne; it is a
mystery how it escaped the royal collections. Those who sought the favor of the power-
ful minister and knew his passion for collecting gave him works of art. For example, the
Duke of Montmorency presented him in 1632 with a truly royal gift, Michelangelo's
two Slaves from his family's chateau at Ecouen however, the implacable stas.tesman did
;

not hesitate to have the duke beheaded when he joined a conspiracy against the king. It
was undoubtedly through a gift that Richelieu acquired before England's Charles I one
of the prizes of the Gonzaga cabinet, the five pictures from the studiolo of Isabella d'Este,
among them two Mantegnas and one Perugino. The Gonzaga Duke Vicenzo II was
intriguing at that time to obtain an honorary title from the French court quite probably
;

to win the favor of the Cardinal, he sent him this princely gift on the advice of his repre-
sentative in Paris. Richelieu bequeathed to the Crown his collections in the Palais-
Cardinal along with the palace itself (now known as the Palais Royale), out of devotion
to the person of the king who had resided there during one of the Frondes. One can
argue that politics as much as taste motivated Richelieu's collecting, if one bears in mind
that he willed his library to his nephew Armand de Vignerod "to serve not only the
family but also the public" and that he added the sum of 400 livres for the librarian's
salary and 1,000 livres for acquisitions.
Cardinal Mazarin was not then, as Pierre du Colombier claimed, "the man who intro-
duced into France the virus of collecting." He did, however, have an insane passion for
art and typified the fanatic collector. He loved jewels and, like an oriental prince, delight-
ed in letting them flow over his hands; but above all he craved paintings. His life as a
collector was shattered in 1651 when the leaders of the Fronde of the Princes con-
fiscated his art and books (40,000 items in all) and subsequently sold them to provide the
reward offered for his capture later, through secret agents, he succeeded in repurchasing
;

most of them. Mazarin was one of the most eager purchasers of the collections of
Charles I when they were put up for sale in London; the financier Jabach, who bought
for himself as well, acted as his agent. The cardinal's collections were divided between
his apartment in the Louvre and the two-story gallery of his mansion, incorporated
44. Antiope, by Correggio. today in the Bibliotheque Nationale. Inventories attest to the incredible luxury of his
Detail. Louvre Museum, Paris. lodgings: 21 cabinets, 411 tapestries, Florentine tables and buffets, lacquer chests from
hi 1627 this painting was
China, chests in ebony and mirrors of all kinds. The prelate did not recoil from indelicate
acquired by ( barks I oj England
along with other works /row the
maneuvers to procure for himself a rare piece. He persuaded Cardinal Barberini to give
collections oj the duke of Mantua. the queen Correggio's Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine; Anne of Austria received it
When the king's collections wen with pleasure but was forced to relinquish it to the minister the next day. At Mazarin's
sold. Antiope was bought by death Cardinal Barberini, who had not appreciated the trick, had the painting restored
I abaci) if ho in turn sold it to
to the Crown. Like all collectors, Mazarin was exceedingly jealous of his collections and
( ordinal Mazarin from u
heirs it was pure based feared depredations by visitors. When Queen Christina ofSweden asked to see his
Louis AVI .
apartments in the Louvre, the cardinal, who was away, wrote to Colbert to beg him to

92
93
94 45
 "keep the crazy woman out of my cabinets at the
Louvre for one could so easily take some of my
small paintings." Colbert answered that he had
taken the necessary precautions and had had the
queen watched. If one can believe his secretary,
Lomenie de Brienne, a fantastic character who led
a most adventuresome life, on the eve of his death
the cardinal was far from preparing himself for an
encounter with his Maker by meditating on the
transitoriness of this world; instead, there he was
in his nightshirt, pacing up and down in the middle
of his collections, lamenting to himself: "I must
leave all this. What trouble I had to acquire these
!"
things I'll never see them again where I'm going
!

Did he fear he was headed for Hell or did eternal

46. Portrait of Jabach and his Family, by Charles le Brun. happiness seem to him a mere trifle beside the joys
Formerly in a Berlin Museum. Destroyed during the bombing of his art had given him?
Berlin in 1945, this painting portrays the family of the financier At Mazarin's death on March 9, 1 661 Louis XIV
,

EvrardJabach who was without a doubt the greatest collector in France ordered an inventory taken of his possessions. His
at the time of Louis XIV. Almost all of his most beautiful works
apartments contained 877 paintings, 386 of which
passed into the royal collections and are today at the Louvre.
were masterpieces. The king bought the most beau-
tiful pieces for his own collection. Later Colbert
succeeded in producing for the Crown, under
advantageous conditions, the J abachchefsd'ceuvres.
Originally from Cologne, a banker and business-
man, Jabach epitomizes a type of amateur that
came to the fore in the eighteenth century the —
great financier. Director of the Compagnie des
Indes and sole supplier of buff leather to the royal
armies, he built a great fortune and filled his man-
sion on the Rue Neuve Saint Merry with art. He
bought widely at the London sale of the collections
of Charles I. He had one of the finest collections of
drawings at a time when an interest in drawings
was evidence of refined taste. The first to amass
a collection of this kind was Giorgio Vasari
who used them to illustrate, after a fashion, his
history of art and had them mounted in magnificent
mannerist frames. Later dispersed, these drawings
are today the pride of several cabinets. When Ber-
45. Cardinal Mazarin in the Gallery of his Town House. nini arrived in Paris in 1665, Jabach entertained
The so-called "Mazarine Gallery," which occupied two floors oj
him, along with some of the greatest Parisian ama-
the cardinal's mansion, was constructed by Mansart and is today
teurs, at a dinner in his mansion on the Rue Neuve
incorporated in the Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris. The collections
which were displayed here are noir for the most part at the Louvre and Saint Merry; after the feast the collection was
were purchased by Louis XI\ ' from the cardinal's heirs. admired. Portfolio after portfolio was opened and

95
96

.~j
 after scrutinizing the drawings for a long time, Bernini, reports Chantelou, got up
brusquely, saying that he had worn out his eyes with looking at so many beautiful
things. According to recent investigations, some of Jabach's finest paintings were
acquired at this time by the king but the conditions of the transaction are vague. In 1671
the banker was facing grave financial difficulties when Colbert bought from him
101 paintings (for which the inventory is lost) and all his drawings (5,542) for a price
that made Jabach groan. Ill and on the verge of bankruptcy, he beseeched Colbert, who
was dragging out the negotiations, to "consider, in the name of God, that I find myself
before the mouth of Hell and that I am fighting forces that spare no one." Jabach made
a financial comeback and set about forming another collection, which proves that he
bought works of art for aesthetic reasons and not merely for ostentation. The inventory
compiled* after his death lists 687 paintings most of which were, it is true, of secondary
quality. His real passion was for drawings at the time of his death he owned more than
;

4,000, some of which were exceedingly beautiful.

The Richelieu, Mazarin and Jabach collections and the cabinet of the Gonzaga
family in Mantua, which Charles I had enjoyed for twenty years, all eventually came
into the possession of the king of France. Here are some of the works in the Louvre
today which came originally from one or the other of these collections: the small
Si. George and Si. Michael of Raphael Correggio's Allegories and Antiope Giorgione's
; ;

Concert Champetre; Titian's Man with a Glove, The Entombment, Supper at Emmaus,
Woman at her Toilet, the pseudo Allegory of Avalos and the Pardo Venus; Caravaggio's
Death of the Virgin. All the Holbeins in the Louvre came, via the royal collections, from
Jabach who had bought many of them from Arundel. As for Leonardo's St. John the
Baptist, given by Louis XII to Charles I, it re-entered the French royal collections, as
had the Saint Anne thirty years earlier, through Richelieu. Until the very end of his reign
the collections of Louis XIV were continually being enriched by gifts or acquisitions.
The city of Venice, desiring the favor of the monarch, offered him Veronese's Supper
in the House of Simon. Most of the Poussins in the Louvre came from the Sun King who
Kermesse, by Peter Paul
4 47.
Rubens. Detail. Louvre Muse- acquired many of them from the Duke of Richelieu who, according to contemporary
um, Paris. Not until the closing sources, was obliged to forfeit them in payment of a gambling debt. Near the end of
years of the .VI 'Hth century did the reign some paintings by the artists of northern schools finally entered the royal
the first paintings by artists <

collections: the Kermesse, Queen Thomyris and Madonna of the Innocents by Rubens and
northern school conn into the
Rembrandt's Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man. These acquisitions attest to the gra-
I niieh royal collections. Ker-
messe dually widening influence the "partisans of color" were achieving in their struggle
Rubens was purchased
by
by Louis AVI from
the Marquis
'
against the entrenched aesthetic of form.
de Hauterive in 1685. Charles Le Brun, premier peintre to Louis XIV, was put in charge of superintending
the royal collections. The pictures were at first grouped in the Louvre where the
4 48. Bacchanal, by Titian.
cabinet from Fontainebleau had been brought. Later, they were taken to Versailles
Prado Museum, Madrid. Phis is
one id the bacchanals ordered firs! where the most precious were placed in the king's chambers while others decorated the
trow Bellini and then from Titian many grand apartments. At the Louvre they had been confined to veritable storerooms
for Dukk Ufonso d'Este for his with great numbers of them arranged on movable shutters. The most valuable had been
camerino d'alabastro in /hi du- kept in armoires.
palace at berrara. It entered
the collection oj Kino Philip I\
The drawings acquired from Jabach in 1671 formed the basis of the drawings
of Spain after going to the Ludo- cabinet at the Louvre, today one of the richest in the world. The cultural policies of
risi family o/ Rome. Louis XIV were truly worthy of a great king; blessed with logic, foresight and a sense

98

. «.
49. The Three Philo-
sophers, by Giorgione. De-
tail. Kunsthistorisches Museum,
Vienna. One of the most precious
paintings from the collection of
A rchduke Leopold- U ilhelm n
'
'hose

aide-de-camp and keeper of the

collection was David Teniers the
Younger. The Archduke's col-
became the property of
lection the
Austrian Crown.

of economy and with Colbert as his able minister who well knew how to take advantage
of any situation, the king sought to provide the State with all institutions necessary for
the progress of the arts and advancement of the work of artists and scholars — libraries,
museums, academies and manufactures. It would be a digression to detail here the
founding of the Royal Library, nucleus of the present Bibliotheque Nationale but we
shall discuss one of its finest departments which grew into today's consummate Cabinet
des Estampes. It owes its origins to the acquisition in 1665 or 1666 of the massive col-
lection of 235,000 engravings brought together by the Abbot of Marolles. This erudite
exemplifies yet another type of collector, one who tracks down complete series.
La Bruyere in his Caracteres presents De'mocede ou le curieux as a parody of this type and
has him say, "I have all of Callot save one which is not even a significant piece quite the
;

contrary, it's one of his poorest works but it would complete Callot for me. I have
hunted twenty years for this engraving and despair of ever finding it; what a pity."
Many have believed that Michel de Marolles was the model for this Democede while
others have pointed to another fanatical amateur, Charles de l'Orme. The abbot had
a passion for classification; he volunteered to catalog the archives of his friends for the
pleasure of it. Within five months he completed an inventory of the Nevers family
library of more than 19,000 volumes, classifying the titles according to a numerical
system of his own invention. Even he was stupefied by the finished work and said he

99
 i%p*yMvii

100
 would not have believed it ifhe had been told the story by someone. He sold his
engravings en bloc to the king to avoid their being dispersed after his death and so
that "a body which grew slowly and with difficulty should not be dismembered." At
every stage in the history of the museum the public has profited from this instinct of the
amateur to seek immortality through the inviolate collection. Immediately after the sale
of the 580 volumes of engravings, the abbot began collecting again and at his death in
1681 left 111,424 new items, of which 10,576 were drawings.
IV of Spain was an exceedingly poor statesman; he brought about the down-
Philip
fallof his kingdom by entrusting the reins of government to the incapable .Oljva'res. A
man of learning arrd culture, Philip was a patron of the arts and a great collector. The
friendship he tendered Velazquez and the honors and title he bestowed on him can be
cited as an example of the high esteem princes had for artists in the seventeenth century
especially if one considers the snobbery and severity of etiquette cultivated at the
Madrid Court. The king had a passion for paintings, gave lavish commissions to
Velazquez and Claude Lorrain and bought works by Correggio, Titian, Veronese,
Tintoretto and Raphael. One of the principal jewels of the Italian Renaissance, the
Bacchanals painted by Titian for the camerino d'alabastro in the ducal palace at Ferrara,
was given him by Cardinal Ludovisi. Eclectic in the Hapsburg tradition, Philip was also
interested in Flemish art, buying works by Velvet Brueghel and profiting from
Rubens's ambassadorship at Madrid by giving him massive commissions.
Ties between the courts at Madrid and Vienna enriched the latter with magnificent
works by Velazquez; however, it was the admirable collection of paintings, principally
Venetian, assembled by Archduke Leopold- Wilhelm which guaranteed a priviliged
position to Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum. Both a Prince of the Church and a
man of war, this son of Emperor Ferdinand II was attached at first to the Madrid Court,
later named representative to Portugal and then, in 1646, made governor of the Nether-
lands. He had Coudenberg (since destroyed by fire) built as his official residence and
his collection of 517 Italian masterpieces was installed there. The painting we now
consider his most important is Giorgione's enigmatic The Three Philosophers. He
appointed the painter David Teniers the Younger as keeper of his collection and aide-
de-camp. Following the artist's counsel, he acquired many fine Flemish paintings,
including Jan van Eyck's Cardinal Niccolo Albergaii, Hugo van der Goes's Adam and
Eve and an incomparable series of works by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The pictures
50. Portrait of John the
Good of France, French School, were placed among statuary, intaglios, medallions and tapestries. Gravely ill in 1656,
XIVth century. Louvre Museum, Leopold-Wilhelm resigned from his official duties and left for Vienna, taking his works
Paris. This painting, the oldest of art with him. Upon his death in 1662, his collections went to his brother, Emperor
known portrait in European paint-
Ferdinand III. Just as works by Leonardo gravitated to Paris, those by Bruegel seemed
ing, was bought by the scholar
destined to converge at Vienna, where the Brussels pictures joined those of Rudolf II
Roger de Gaigniires at the Cha-
teau at Oiron. In 1717 was
it
from Prague.
withdrawn [row the sale ofGai- The end of the seventeenth century and beginning of the eighteenth witnessed the
guieres' collections, which he had flowering of the Wittelsbach collections. Duke Maximilian I (1597-1651), especially
given to the Crown but which he
fond of Diirer and other sixteenth-century Germans, began an assemblage of master-
was allowed to enjoy for the
pieces that was to make Munich one of the museological capitals of Europe. Interrupted
remainder of his life. The portrait
was at that time installed in the by the Thirty Years' War, this effort was resumed by Max Emanuel (1679-1726) and
royal library. continues into the present.

101
102 51

. «
 At the same time Roman princes and cardinals were building up collections par-
contemporary paintings. This was the formative period of the famous
ticularly rich in
Borghese, Doria, Colonna, Spada and Pallavicini galleries, today all public or private
museums. The archeologist Cassiano del Pozzo had a house full of famous antiquities,
where Pietro da Cortona and Poussin, from whom Pozzo commissioned a Seven Sacra-
ments, went to absorb history and inspiration. In Milan Cardinal Federico Borromeo
founded a library, the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, and in 1625 a painting and sculpture
academy with an adjoining pinakotheke. At Genoa, too, most of the great princely
collections were formed in the seicento, certain of which are still in private hands. One
of the most beautiful, that of the Brignole-Sale family, was given to the city in 1874,
along with the Palazzo Rosso, by the Marchioness Maria; it became the nucleus of
Genoa's Museo Civico.
The impetus given to historical studies in the seventeenth century resulted in the
creation of great collections devoted entirely to portraiture. Henry IV amassed in the
little gallery of the Louvre (the Apollo Gallery) portraits of the kings and queens of

France, of which there remains but a single, splendid vestige, the Portrait of Marie
de' Medici by Pourbus the Younger. For his Palais-Cardinal, Richelieu commissioned
from Simon Vouet and Philippe de Champaigne a series of twenty-six historical por-
traits having a very special connotation in regard to the statesman's politics the choice
;

was limited to those French statesmen, militarists and ecclesiastics who had unfailingly
supported the Capetian monarchy. The collection constituted, therefore, an affirmation
of the fierce loyalty to the royal person imposed by the cardinal on a France split by
civil and religious struggles. In addition Richelieu's library contained fifty-eight por-
traits of illustrious men. The inventory of Cardinal Mazarin's collection lists 241 por-
traits of popes from St. Peter to the minister's contemporaries. In 1675 Grand Duke
Ferdinand de'Medici inherited the collections of his brother, Cardinal Leopold. Thev
included a series of portraits of artists which became the nucleus of that iconographical
museum which was long one of the innovations of the Uffizi the portraits are no longer
;

all hung together. France has kept rigorously intact a seventeenth-century historical
museum, a rare accomplishment for a country so ravaged by vandalism. This gallery is
that of the Chateau de Beauregard in the Loire valley. The museum was the work of the
lawyer, Paul Ardier, who bought Beauregard in 1617, retired there in 1631 and died in
1638. Before retirement Ardier had served as "Secretary of Defense," handling admi-
51. View of the History nistrative matters for the French army. He installed his historical museum in a long
Gallery of the Chateau of gallery; the floor was paved with Delft tiles depicting in great detail the French
Beauregard, near Blois.
gallery of the history of France
This —
army its dress, arms, insignias and musical instruments. Because of these "incunabula"
of Delft faience, the chateau became more celebrated in Holland than in France. On the
which groups the illustrious men
around each king,
walls the history of France unfolded in 363 portraits, disposed by reigns. Around each
of his time
was made by a lawyer, Paul king of France were grouped the statesmen who served him as well as contemporary
Ardier, who had served as the foreign princes, popes, emperors and sultans. Each panel bore the dates of the reign,
minister of war and retired to the accompanied by mottoes and devices. These likenesses are all rather monotonous, bust-
chateau in 1631. In 1627 the
length portraits with the exception of two equestrian ones of the monarchs who were
floor was pared with Delft tiles
representing various army corps
contemporaries of Ardier: Henry IV and Louis XIII. The kind of idea which motivated
(after the engravings by Jacob de Paul Ardier was later to inspire King Louis-Philippe to create the Musee de Versailles:
Gheyn). to affirm the continuity of French history, accomplished at Versailles despite the vicissi-

103
tudes of the different regimes and at Beauregard because of the allegiance of subjects to
their dynasty. We begin to realize that museology is not a new thing and that its forms
perpetuate themselves across the centuries.
Another, still almost intact, musee historique in France was the fantasy of a great lord
exiled from court by the royal authority he had defied; to enliven the tedium of banish-
ment to the distant reaches of his province, he converted his chateau into a museum of
portraiture. A correspondent of his cousin Madame de Sevigne, the bizarre and tur-
bulent Bussy-Rabutin had a gallant pen that he used with elegance in his lively, satirical
observations. When Madame de Sevigne remained in Paris while the city was besieged
by the king's army, he wrote to her: "How weary I am of all this; were it not for the
hope of pleasing you somewhat with the sack of Paris and of having you' fall into my
hands, I believe I would desert; but this life mitigates my peevishness." Disgraced, he
was imprisoned in the Bastille until 1666 and was then compelled to live at his chateau in
Burgundy where he remained until his return to favor in 1682. He chose museology as
a divertisement. One entered the chateau through a "salon of heraldry" decorated with
reproductions of the great houses of France paired with their emblemata, those canting
arms or rebuses which were the delight of Latinists from the sixteenth century on.
Other rooms were devoted to the kings of France, distinguished militarists from
Du Guesclin to Bussy-Rabutin himself, royal mistresses, great statesmen, men of letters
and the dukes of Burgundy. The theme in one rotunda was the glorification of women;
there one could admire the most beautiful ladies at court, from many of whom Bussy-
Rabutin boasted of having obtained favors, and in the center was enthroned the gallant
author of Histoire amoureuse des Gaules himself, in Roman costume and blond peruke.
Such a gallery of beauties was not unique in its time; the chateau of Pibrac, near
Toulouse, contains one, albeit incomplete, which dates from the period of Louis XIII ( 1 ).
Charles Emmanuel duke of Savoy, commissioned from the Frenchman Ferdinand
II,

Voet contemporary beauties the gallery so pleased Cardinal Fabio

portraits of thirty-six ;

Chigi that he had it copied for his own villa by a certain Veglia. About the same time,
the Constable of Naples, Lorenzo Colonna, married to Marie Mancini, a niece of
Mazarin, installed a similar gallery in his palazzo in Rome; the artist was probably
Paul Mignard, son of Nicolas Mignard and nephew of Pierre. This type of gallery was
fashionable even before the seventeenth century; one was formed by Duke Ferdinand
of Tyrol at his chateau at Ruhelust in the sixteenth century and Frans Pourbus the
Younger painted one for Vicenzo Gonzaga at Mantua early in the seventeenth century.
By the eighteenth century the vogue has spread to Russia; Catherine the Great acquired
Prince Yussupov's collection and had it installed in her palace at Peterhof in the
"Cabinet of Muses and Graces" ( 2 ).
Savants collected portraits of their friends or of great contemporaries these pictures
;

generally hung in their libraries. One has only to read the correspondence of Peiresc to
learn how the portraits were obtained; the amateurs at that time showed no more
discretion than those who collect the photographs of celebrities today.
The vogue for historical galleries spread throughout France. In his townhouse in
Le Mans a certain de Tesse had the baroque idea of hanging in one cabinet portraits of
the horses in the royal stables and in a second, portraits of queens of France and royal
mistresses on horseback. The two series are on exhibition today in the museum at

104
Le Mans. Equestrian iconography was an old tradition at that time, having appeared
at the end of the fifteenth century in the Palazzo Schifanoia at Ferrara and in the
sixteenth in the Palazzo del Te at Mantua.
In a like vein was the sculpture collection in the eighteenth-century galerie des
illustres in the Capitole in Toulouse lamentably, it was destroyed some fifty years ago
;

to make room for a gallery of history created by the worst official painters of the time.
All these galleries derive from the example set by Paolo Giovio a century earlier. One
collection which has been kept intact and continues to grow proceeds directly from it:
the gallery of artists' portraits in the Uffizi Museum in Florence; it was started by
Cardinal Leopold de'Medici in his apartment in the Pitti Palace and, along with other
paintings in the cardinal's quadreria, was inherited by Grand Duke Cosimo III, in 1675.
During the reign of Louis XIV France gave birth to a modern concept of history,
no longer based on quasi-legendary chronicles but on actual events and on written or
visual records. Toward the end of the 1600's the scholar Roger de Gaignieres wished
to found a colossal national historical museum; he amassed thousands of documents
for the "clarification of French history": either original engravings, drawings and
paintings, or drawings after paintings stained-glass windows and funerary monuments
;

executed by a team of copyists in his employ. Gaignieres had direct contact with the
Benedictine college of Bernard de Montfaucon, who at that time was attempting to
define the critical bases of French history. Jean Adhemar has shown that one of the
motives behind Gaignieres's forming his collection was to teach history to the Duke
of Burgundy whose tutor he was because of this the royal treasury covered many of
;

the expenses incurred during the establishment of this documentation. Gaignieres was a
methodical scholar; he classed the documents in series, intending to make them into a
catalogue rat'sonne eventually In addition he had a collection of three centuries of playing
.

cards, a topographical series on principal European cities, costume drawings dating

from the time of St. Louis and a file of autographs. He had 27,000 portraits, including
many sixteenth-century miniatures and some medieval portraits; in a single purchase
he bought twenty-one from the Benedictines at Oiron, including what was unquestion-
ably the finest piece in the chateau: the oldest portrait in occidental painting, that of the
French king, John the Good, now in the Louvre. In 1711 Gaignieres, acknowledging
that the Duke of Burgundy and his governess Madame de Montespan had provided
the funds for his museum, made a gift of it to the king; the latter, in recognition,
granted him a pension and the right of perfect usufruct. When the scholar died in 1715,
the documents and some portraits, notably that of King John II, were transferred to the
royal library. In 1717 the majority of the portraits were, unfortunately, sold. Cleram-
bault, "keeper of the cabinet of nobiliary titles," at the Couvent des Grands Augustins,
was entrusted with the Gaignieres inventory; he managed to withdraw some portraits
—
from sale, filing them among the papers of the relevant families and alloting some
pieces to himself in the process. Thus, most of the sixteenth-century miniatures in the
Louvre have been resurrected from a long entombment among old documents.

105
 Chapter

6
Museographia
The prodigious growth of amateurism during the eighteenth century was a direct
consequence of an economic prosperity and the social transformation it initiated.
Whereas the old aristocracy founded its wealth on the exploitation of land, a new class
of society owed its affluence to a sudden expansion of trade and to the slow rise of
industry which permitted better use of capital through the formation of corporate
partnerships and a more rational organization of labor. Commerce in money, in other
words the banking business, proved the most fertile field for the rapid build-up of
colossal fortunes. The bourgeoisie profited from these advantages, particularly in France
where commercial activity of any kind was forbidden the nobility, an interdict not so
rigorously upheld in England. Italy and central Europe were the last to succumb to the
socio-economic revolution and throughout the whole of the century collecting in those
countries remained what it always was, an affair for princes. In France and England the
number of "consumers" was considerably swelled by the increase in wealth and its
wider distribution; during the entire century the result was a constant rise in the price
52.L'Enseigne de Gersaint, of art objects, determined not only by the increased demand but also by a more or less
by Jean-Antoine Watteau. avowed speculative intention, which also affected many other sectors of the economy.
Charlottenbnrg Palace, Berlin.
In 1720 the Parisian merchant
The vogue for public sales was as great then as it is now. Amsterdam kept her
Gersaint commissioned this paint- position of importance but was first challenged by and then, in the second half of the
ing from Watteau to serve as a century, eclipsed by Paris. In the seventeenth century the various guilds, exercising
signboard for his shop on the their rights to sell all objects similar in kind to those they themselves manufactured,
Notre Dame bridge ; it was
paralyzed auctions in France. Gersaint, Watteau's dealer, introduced the Dutch system
completed in eight days. The
sign did not remain
of sales; there was an expert who prepared the sale, edited the catalog, saw to the
in place
very long was first purchased
;
/'/ publicity and hired the services of an auctioneer who was paid by the day but was also
by the amateur Jean de Julienne given a percentage. Sales were usually held under porte-cocheres, often at the dealer's
and then, bejore 1760, by King place of business but by the last third of the century there existed special halls, like
Frederick II of Prussia who had a
those in the Hotel Bullion, the Hotel d'Alligre or in the townhouse of the artist-dealer
passionate love Jor contemporary
French works. When the painting
Lebrun, husband of Madame Vigee-Lebrun. Upon occasion the king lent his palace for
was removed Jrom the shop, its certain sensational sales; for example, the Jean de Julienne collection was auctioned
format was changed. off in the Salon Carre of the Louvre in 1767; the de Lassay sale in 1775 had for its

107
 setting a room in the These auctions
Tuileries.
attracted not only collectors and dealers but also
secondhand shop owners and idlers. As happens
today, a fever gripped the public as it watched the
prices rise and saw masterpieces change hands in
the gradual stripping of the salesroom. Artists like
Beaudoin, Cochin and Gabriel de Saint Aubin
made quick sketches during the transactions. Saint
Aubin, who lived with pencil in hand, drawing
whatever impressed him in the street or in the
salon, never missed a sale; with a few cursive
strokes he could record a painting in the margin
of a catalog while it was being auctioned off.
Aubin's illustrated catalogs offer modern scholars
a fund of information on pedigrees and attributions.
Businesses of questionable merit sprang up
around the well-known auction houses. An equi-
vocal character, the secondhand dealer prospered
from dubious transactions. Confessions of a Second-
hand Dealer, a pamphlet published in 1776, reviews
the tricks of the trade. The profession was already
practicing collusion; that is, a group would agree
to refrain from bidding against each other in order
to divide the loot later for a good price; in the
event of a dispute, accomplices were quick to
arrange a second auction.
In the second half of the century, the growing
financial crisis in France made Paris a place for
selling rather than for buying. Like Italy, France
was mined for art treasures by German princes,
English lords, Russian boyars and Dutch mer-
chants. The Revolution extinguished this brilliant
trade. England, collecting all during the eighteenth
century, profited immeasurably from the liquida-
tion of the French collections after 1789. France
did not recover her position of eminence until a
century later.
London's two great auction houses, Christie's
and Sotheby, were founded in the eighteenth
century. In 1744 Samuel Baker established the
auction house which at his death assumed the name
of his nephew, John Sotheby. Christie's was opened
at 125 Pall Mall in 1766 by the thirty-six-year-old
James Christie; its salons were used not only for
public sales but also for exhibitions devoted to

108
 56. Sir James Christie, by
Thomas Gainsborough. Paul
Getty Collection, Sutton Place.
In 1766 James Christie opened
at 125 Pall Mall in London a
public hall for exhibiting and
selling the works of English
artists.

* 53. A Sale at Christies in

London about 1805. Thomas
Rowlandson. As a result of
the French Revolution, London
became the main art dealing center
in Europe ; many collections were

brought from France to England

for safety.

< 54. Prince Eugene of Savoy

at Somer's, the art dealer,
in Amsterdam. Van den
Berge. Rijksmuseum, Amster-
dam. Similar to L'Enseigne de
Gersaint, this drawing shows
Prince Eugene kneeling down to
examine a picture shown to him
by the painter Van den Berge,
at Somer's, the art dealer (ex-
treme right).

<55. Portrait of Samuel Baker,

by Charles Grignon. Detail.
Sotheby Collection, London. In
1744 Samuel Baker began at
Russel Street, Covent Garden,
the first in a series of sales
which eventually brought about
the establishment of Sotheby's
as an auction house.

56 109

J
 living artists,among them Gainsborough, a personal friend of James. The exodus of
art from revolutionary France provoked great activity in the London market. In 1791,
on the eve of the Reign of Terror, the Duke of Orleans, one of the most violent agita-
tors of the Revolution, foreseeing the events about to convulse the French nation, sold
in several lots to the English the celebrated collection in the Palais Royal; he benefited
but little from the transaction, for this sans-culotte duke who called himself Philippe

Egalite and was instrumental in having his cousin Louis XVI beheaded, was himself
guillotined in 1793. The sale was a veritable liquidation, profiting only the buyers; the
pre-auction exhibition of the paintings caused a sensation in London. This dispersal
of France's finest princely cabinet consummated the fall of Paris and the ascension of
London as the world's art market.

Eighteenth-century France boasted several expert dealers whose opinions were

sought by foreigners: Gersaint, Basan, Glomy, Remy. The most erudite was Jean
Pierre Mariette (1694-1774), print dealer and engraver, who had inherited the business
from his family. Knowledgeable and well-traveled, at the age of twenty-three he was
recommended by Prince Eugene of Savoy to Emperor Charles VI to catalog the print
collection at Vienna. He was responsible for several publications, in particular a Traite
des pierres gravees (1750), which was the finest synthesis of dactyliologic knowledge at
that period, and his Abecedario, a collection of biographical notes on artists of all time,
in imitation of the Abecedario pittorico by the ecclesiastic Antonio Orlandi (1709). The
business of refuting the Italian's errors took Mariette a lifetime. The manuscript of
this monument to scholarly criticism, so different from the usual anecdotal biographies
of artists, was withheld from the market by the dealer's family after his death and
deposited in the royal print cabinet. There Chennevieres and Montaiglon discovered
it and eventually published it, an enterprise which took ten years to complete (1853-

1863). Mariette had also envisaged publishing a corpus of the work of all engravers;
the following century Bartsch drew copiously from his notes for his own monumental
work, the Peintre Graveur. Mariette did not content himself with accumulating his-
torical documents; he also sought to analyze the individual style of each artist, as is
proven by his Reflections on the drawing styles of principal painters (1741). The keeper of
the royal print cabinet invited him to collaborate on the remounting of the collection
and his erudition opened for him the door to the Royal Academy of Painting and
Sculpture, which he entered in 1750. Mariette collected not only prints but also draw-
57. Agony in the Garden, by
ings, a magnificent group which was dispersed in several celebrated sales in 1775 and
Giovanni Bellini. Detail. Na-
1776. Jealous of his collections, which served him in his scholarly research, he refused
tional Gallery, London. Purchased
in 1863 by //>< National Galle- to show them; it was said of him that "he was like a miser hiding his gold; he opened
ry, this work was undoubtedly his portfolio only for those whose love of art he knew or who were at least initiated
among those taken from 'etlict I
into its mysteries."
by the British consul to that
city. Joseph Smith, who was a Joseph Smith, generally called "Consul Smith" although he did not serve as
professional art dealer in the England's consul to the Venetian Doge until near the end of his life, exemplifies
A' tilth century. The painting
I
another type of dealer. Born about 1675, the British subject had established himself in
s to hare figured in the
sale of the collection of the artist
Venice bv the beginning of the eighteenth century and entered into a partnership with
Sir Joshua Reynolds on March I i. an English merchant, Williams. After the latter's retirement in 1712, Consul Smith
1745. conducted the business alone. For the most part his first clients were English tourists

110
57
111
 in Venice whose ardent souvenir hunting touched off the mass production of vedute,
in Romeas well as in Venice. Somewhat later Francesco Guardi began to paint such
views a number of his small-scale vedute and capricci still remain in English collections.
;

Countrymen tended to patronize their fellow countrymen: French painters in Rome

turned out views for French travelers; English painters, for English travelers. The
cicerone who guided tourists in London procured works of art for them by such
Englishmen as Colin Morison and James Byres.
At this time the industrious Joseph Smith worked diligently to recruit new
customers; even the great Elector of Saxony became a client. Aware that Canaletto's
vedute seemed to have special appeal for the British, he sent the artist to paint in England.
His contract with Canaletto seems to have been quite similar to the arrangements
current by the end of the nineteenth century it reserved for him the right of first choice
;

and provided for a commission on each painting sold. Smith also handled rare books
and drawings; according to rumor, his integrity left something to be desired. He
collected art for pleasure and the crowning achievement of his career was the sale of
his entire collection to George III of England in 1762. Among the paintings, which
included a number of seventeenth-century Venetian works, figured the singular
Agony in the Garden by Giovanni Bellini, the quattrocento master who was little appre-
ciated then; this picture is today one of the jewels of London's National Gallery.

Dealers combed Europe in search of lucrative business. One of the most picturesque
— —
of these agents who denied being one was Count Francesco Algarotti, the son of a
Venetian banker and a man of great culture and refinement. After rounding out his
education with stays in London and Paris, he betook himself to St. Petersburg in the
company of Lord Baltimore. He afterwards divided his time between the courts of
Prussia and Saxony, receiving the title of count from Frederick the Great; he advised
the Elector of Saxony on supplementing and re-arranging his collections and procured
for him many beautiful paintings. Algarotti lived in Berlin from 1747 to 1753; he died
in Venice in 1764 at the age of fifty-two.

In this feverish world of art speculation, intellectuals did not disdain to act as
intermediaries upon occasion, hoping to profit from the commissions paid them;
Diderot, Grimm and Madame Geoffrin fulfilled such roles in Paris for Catherine II of
Russia. Grimm procured for the czarina the entire collection of the Comte de Baudoin.
The prudent Diderot sought the counsel of his painter friends Vernet, Cochin, Vien
and Chardin; in 1772 he succeeded in buying en bloc the celebrated Crozat collection
for the sum of 460,000 livres which, he wrote to Falconet, at that time engaged in casting
a statue of Peter the Great at St. Petersburg, "is not the half of its worth." The deal was
58. The Holy Family, by
Rembrandt. Hermitage Mu- negotiated privately, thereby avoiding a public sale. A cynic, Diderot flattered his
seum, Leningrad. This work nuts august client by belittling his own country: "We (French) are as poor as church mice;
purchased in Pons for Ca- we sell our diamonds and strip our galleries to pay the controller general." As in the
therine II along with the collec- preceding century, artists willingly served as advisers to the illustrious; Hyacinthe
tion of 119 paintings of the Rigaud counseled Augustus of Saxony, King of Poland, whose portrait he had painted
Comte de B undo in in 1784.
in Paris in 1715, the Duke of Savoy and the King of France himself. The American
Diderot, Grimm and Madame
Geoffrin acted as agents for Ca- painter Gavin Hamilton, one of the early champions of the neoclassical aesthetic,
therine in Paris. handled antiquities in Rome, selling chiefly to England; much of what he traded came

112

^
58 113

J
 from sites he had excavated himself in the city or its

environs.
As today, news concerning the sale of works of
art and the high prices they commanded provoked
passionate opinions. The removal of Raphael's
Sistine Madonna from the Convent of Saint Sixtus at
Parma by Augustus II of Saxony caused a sensation
all over Europe. More than a year of bitter nego-
tiations preceded the sale; a law forbidding its ex-
portation, imposed by Philip, Duke of Parma, had
to be lifted; the price paid — —
25,000 ecus seemed
enormous. The prestigious work arrived in Dres-
den at the end of winter 1754. According to
tradition, the entranced King of Poland yielded his
throne to it because the lighting in that particular
spot showed the painting to its best advantage.
"Let one make room for the sublime Raphael," he
supposedly cried out.
The loss of rich collections to foreigners
was deeply felt. Paris deplored losing the Crozat
collection to Catherine of Russia. In his Memories
secrets Bachaumont wrote on March 25, 1771,
"The Russian Empress has obtained all the
paintings in the collection of Monsieur the Count
of Thiers ( 1 )... Monsieur de Marigny, lacking the
funds to acquire them for the king, has had the
misfortune of seeing these riches pass into the
hands of a foreigner." In his preface for the catalog
of the Tallard sale in Paris (which required thirty-
three sessions from March 22 to May 14, 1756) the
connoisseur Remy appealed in a pathetic tone to
all French collectors: "Can we not hope that the

sale of this precious cabinet will attract the notice

of our amateurs and that there will be a renascence
59. Catherine II walking in the Tsarkoye Selo Park, by
V. Borovikovski. Russian National Museum, Moscow. It was
of this great taste which not long ago prevailed in
( atherine II who, with ber purchases oj entin collections throughout France... Already our too frequent losses have
Europe, founded the imperial collections oj the Hermitage. sufficiently warned us that foreigners have pro-
digiously enriched themselves at our expense and
that, if we do not take precautions, they will
succeed in stripping us of all our excellent paintings
which have been the glory of our country and
which were procured in Italy only after great effort
and cost." Was Remy sincere or clever? At the
time of the sale the financial crisis was not yet so
grave in France; but the taste for collecting had

114

^^k.
modified. One by-passed the noble compositions of the Renaissance and of the preced-
ing century, preferring in their stead small Dutch pictures, fetes galantes, porcelains,
bronzes, precious furniture and chinoiseries.
The purchases of Catherine II provoked another scandal, this time in England. In
1778 Horace Walpole put up for sale the celebrated collection his father Lord Robert
Walpole, Whig prime minister to two kings for twenty-five years, had assembled at
his country house, Houghton Hall (Norfolk). Collectors in London waxed indignant
when the czarina declared, "I have already laid my hands on them and I will not let go
my prey any more than a cat would a mouse." John Wilkes convened the House of
Commons and proposed raising funds to acquire the collection of Houghton Hall,
which would form the nucleus of a national picture gallery within the British Museum;
Parliament was not of the same opinion and the credits were refused.
Collecting was so in vogue that treatises were published to guide the amateur. The
oldest of these bears the date 1727 entitled Museographia, it was written in Latin, which
;

assured it an international distribution. Its author was a Hamburg dealer, Caspar

F. Neickel. He advised on the choice of likelv locations for finding objects, on the pro-
cedure for caring for them in a controlled climate, on problems of classification. He
suggested placing a table in the middle of each salon on which pieces taken from the
repository could be examined. He grouped objects under two headings: naturalia and
curiosa artificialia; paintings and objets d 'art formed part of the latter category and were
prized not for their aesthetic qualities but as objects. The collections Neickel extolled
were closer to the old curio cabinets than to the more modern cabinets of art. Both were
cultivated to an equal degree throughout the century.
The museum also invaded the monastery. In the eighteenth century, abbeys tended
to evolve into vast centers of culture, particularly in Central Europe where their meta-
morphosis into sumptuous palaces expressed the close association of Church and State.
Located near the refectory, the imperial apartments, the theatre and the library and
decorated like a temple to human learning, the museum was indispensable. Each
monastery had its Bildersaal and its W underkammer; the monastery at Seitenstetten in
Austria has preserved intact a cabinet of curiosities with all its objects and baroque
armoires. In its Mathematische Turm the monastery at Kremsmiinster has a veritable
scientific museum and an observatory where the first meteorological notations were
taken. The monasteries at Herzogenburg, Melk, Kremsmiinster and Heiligenkreuz in
Austria still have their Bildersdale where the walls are covered with paintings locked
frame to frame. The monastery at Sankt Florian contains two museums; one, installed
in 1767 is baroque and is composed of contemporary works either bought or received
as gifts; the other is devoted to medieval and Renaissance pictures carefully arranged
in a baroque setting, a juxtaposition of periods which reveals a remarkable museological
sense. It is to this monastery that we owe the conservation of the major portion of the
auvre of Albrecht Altdorfer who shares with Diirer the distinction of being Germany's
finest sixteenth-century painter. Austria retains some fine examples of the monastic
museum; the museological form was not unknown to the rest of Europe (excepting
Spain) but it fell victim to the vandalism that ravaged wherever the effects of the French
Revolution made themselves felt. Let us mention in passing the museum of the Bene-
dittini in Catania, founded by the prelate Vito Amico and Father Placidio Scammacca.

115
It contained antique and Paleo-Christian objects turned up in local excavations or
purchased in Naples or Rome, as well as Chinese and Japanese curiosities brought back
bv missionaries. After the last World War, the collection joined that of Prince Biscari
in the municipal museum at Castello Ursino, once the Catanian residence of Frederick II,
King of Sicily. The convent des Genovefains in Paris boasted a fine cabinet of curiosities,
which grew out of several magnificent gifts; the scholar Peiresc gave a portion of his
antiquities and the Comte de Caylus bequeathed his collection. In 1753 Louis d'Orleans
provided the abbey with superb rococo style cabinets to hold its collection, to which he
added his own. Louis d'Orleans was as pious and virtuous as his father was dissolute;
he lived a secluded life within the convent his generosities had so handsomely enriched.
—
Now a lyce'e, it still retains its cabinets but they are empty the collections were con-
fiscated during the Revolution. The celebrated series of glyphs is today in the Cabinet
des Medailles.
As connoisseurship evolved into an art, the question of authenticity became an
essential factor in determining the value of works of art; in his treatise Caspar Neickel
recommended extreme caution in the matter. All this, however, did not prevent the
copy from finding collectors and even partisans. "I do not fret over acquiring originals
bv the great masters," declared Charles de Brosses. "For certain reasons of my own, I
make no case for having originals by minor masters; I prefer beautiful copies of
famous paintings, available at a price I can afford." Impoverished artists found in copy
work a way to survive. Between 1730 and 1745 Gian Antonio Guardi eked out a
living tirelessly copying Venetian masterpieces, including Veronese's Marriage at
Cana for Mattia von Schulenburg, the Doge's marshal. Picture galleries were formed
with choice copies. The great French jurist and president of the Cour des Cowptes,
Paulin Pondre, created for his chateau at Guermantes, near Paris, a gallery that he had
decorated in 1709 with paintings by Merelles after the old masters. This picture gallery,
which still exists, documents artistic tastes at the end of the reign of Louis XIV. There
are reproductions of Raphael's Parnassus and School of Athens; Guido Reni's David and
Goliath; II Domenichino's Judith and Holo femes; van Dyck's Bacchus and Ariadne, Venus
Requesting Arms for Aeneas, the Bagpipe Player and a Portrait of a Man; a Bacchanal hy
Rubens and a Saskia bv Rembrandt. This vogue for copies explains the abundance of
so-called "original replicas" which have been troubling the art market since the
eighteenth century. This interest in the reproduction surprises us today and yet the
taste reflourishes under our eyes. An amateur like Carlos de Beistegui, who could well
have afforded originals, preferred for his chateau at Groussaye a melange of period
rooms, all of contemporary manufacture. For this type of collector the commissioning
of copies undoubtedly satisfied the creative impulse better than the mere acquisition of
old pieces.
The pervasive rationalism of the eighteenth century manifested itself museo-
logically through advances in the fields of restoration and conservation. The trend was
still to "complete" antiquities; however, the progress made in archeology, due prin-

cipally to the excavations in the Campania, brought with it a better respect for the
original document. The Comte de Caylus was fond of saying that when he formed a
cabinet, he was not concerned with showpieces but that his interest was in "shards
of agate, stone, pottery and glass which served better to re-establish the original use or

116
 —

the artist's intention." He carefully cleaned each of his fragments, analyzed its material
to determine the composition and authenticity and often consulted chemists or mathe-
maticians for help in his researches. He was an early champion of the scientific study
of archeological documents and would have liked to see this mode of experimental
investigation applied to paintings to corroborate the connoisseur's judgment.
As for paintings, the significant improvement of methods of restoration added to
their longevity. One finds mention of conservators of paintings from the sixteenth
century on it was common practice at that time to summon the greatest artists to recon-
;

dition the masterpieces of their predecessors. For example, Primaticcio cleaned and
revarnished the Fontainebleau Raphaels —
The Holy Family and Saint Michael between
1537 and 1540. In 1603 the young Rubens journeyed to Valladolid with copies of
Raphael paintings by Pietro Facchetti, a gift from the Duke of Mantua to the King of
Spain. Finding them at the time of their unpacking greatly damaged by the humidity,
the artist set about restoring them. "All the injuries they had sustained," he wrote the
duke's secretary, "had given them the look of age." Works that had suffered terribly
from long and difficult transports or radical changes in climate imposed upon them bv
commercial transactions were subjected to restoration. Old paintings had their dark-
ened varnishes removed; they underwent cleaning, retouching, treatment for craque-
lure— interventions often carried to the extreme. In the seventeenth century the
Florentine Baldinucci complained about the hazards of even careful restoration: "One
runs the risk of losing the velatura, the halftones and even the retouches which are the
final strokes responsible for a great part of the perfection of a work."
By the seventeenth century paintings whose supports had decayed were being
reinforced with new backings bonded to the old. The technique of transferring a layer
of paint by "lifting" it from its original canvas to a new one was invented during the
following century. The process had been used with frescoes even earlier in Italy;
documentary evidence dated 1507 proves its existence in Naples. It is true, however,
that a portion of the wall was removed in these early attempts. The transfer of mural
paintings became an acute problem with the discovery of Herculaneum and Pompeii.
It seems strange that despite the presence of specialists in Naples, the Bourbons

summoned Francois Canast whose crude technique was to quarter the intonaco and
re-assemble the sections on a bed of gesso. Later, Giocchino was able to transfer a fresco
in one piece. To Italy goes the credit for developing the process in the beginning of the
eighteenth century and making it possible to transfer even panel paintings to canvas
supports. The first conservators to use the process in France were Picault and Godefroy
and, later, the latter's widow. In 1750 at the first exhibition of the king's paintings held
in the Palais du Luxembourg, the astounded public could admire Andrea del Sarto's
Charity on canvas, displayed next to its original wood support.
The program to follow in the restoration of any painting was the object of painstak-
ing studies and conferences among experts before the work was entrusted to the
conservator. In France, the Academy of Painting and Sculpture was called upon to
give advice. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, Naples had a conservation
center. The one at Venice, founded in 1778 with public funds, was particularly active;
work proceeded in a room in the convent attached to San Zanipolo under the direc-
tion of Pietro Edwards. Even before the opening of this workshop, the Venetian

117
 government was seeing to the conservation of its masterpieces; from 1725 to 1777
reports were made on 751 "sick" paintings. Between 1779 and 1785 Edwards had
restored, under the Accademia's watchful eye, 405 paintings. The Accademia Clemen-
tina at Bologna likewise supervised the restoration of pictures. These interventions
often excited ardent debate. The value of patina —
whether or not to remove it was —
already being disputed. It is striking how close the methods of conservation and
restoration and the controversies they aroused then are to those of today.
In the first half of the century the great French collections took shape. Not entirely
aloof from the market, the king participated only upon occasion and at little expense.
The most beautiful collections in France were eventually to pass into the hands of
foreigners. The Duke d'Orleans boasted the richest cabinet, which was installed in the
Palais Royal in an area with overhead lighting. This prince, who rivaled Augustus the
Strong of Saxony in the number of bastards he fathered, hunted art as passionately as
he hunted women. He had for a son a hypocritical prince who all but sold the entire
collection after his father's death, destroyed some works he deemed licentious and
bought only a few devotional pictures. The regent began collecting toward the end
of the preceding century, devoting himself wholeheartedly to the task after the death
of his father in 1701. His greatest coup was the purchase, negotiated in Rome by the
financier Crozat, of a block of paintings belonging to Christina of Sweden. In time he
amassed 478 paintings and an admirable collection of engraved gems.
Royal favorite against her will, offered in the prime of life by her husband to
Victor Amadeus II of Savoy, the Countess de Verrue escaped the ducal court in 1700,
building a townhouse for herself in Paris. To console her bitterness, she began
assembling a collection; more modern than the regent's, its four hundred pictures
included Dutch masters and contemporary French and Italian works. Everything was
auctioned off in March and April of 1737 the English bought widely at this sale which
;

interested the entire art world.

Originally from Toulouse, Pierre Crozat made his fortune in a banking venture
with his brother Antoine Crozat, Marquis of Chatel. While the latter continued to
pursue his career, Pierre Crozat retired at forty to enjoy his fortune. An enormously
rich man, he was called "Crozat le pauvre" to distinguish him from his even richer
brother. His was the finest collection of the century. Encompassing "all aspects of the
rare in art," it comprised 1,500 intaglios, 400 paintings and 19,000 drawings; an
important part came from Venice where the regent had sent him on a buying expedi-
tion for paintings. These treasures and the proceeds from the sale of a portion of them
60. The Sistine Madonna, were divided among his heirs after his death in 1740. The engraved stones were bought
by Raphael. Gemaldegalerie,
en bloc by the Duke d'Orleans; the drawings were put up for public sale; the oldest
Dresden, In 1753, after long and
of his nephews, Louis-Francois Crozat, Marquis of Chatel, inherited the sculptures.
difficult negotiations, Fi derick
, \ugustus II oj Saxony, succt t ded in The paintings were divided into three lots, the most important of which went to the
obtaining this painting from the vounger brother of the Marquis, Louis Antoine Crozat who sold them to Catherine of
( Unreal of Saint Sixtus at Plai- Russia in 1772. As for the paintings bought by the regent, they were eventually sold in
sance for a considerable sum.
I.ondon, where they had been sent in 1791.
thus provoking a great sensation
among the princely amateurs of
The eighteenth century witnessed the flowering of amateurism in England. The
I: n rope. The famous work arrived loose control of a foreign monarchy fostered a broad and intense development of
in Dresden in 1754. society life which enjoyed great luxury because of the general economic prosperity.

118

*&.
60 119

J
London was not the sole beneficiary provincial life, centering around the great country
;

houses, also flourished. Among the twenty-eight most important collections enu-
merated in his English Connoisseur (1776), Thomas Martyn credited no fewer than four
to the Duke of Devonshire: Chatsworth, Hardwick Hall, Chiswick and, in London,
Devonshire House. Englishmen traveling in Europe bought up masterpieces every-
where: Rome, Venice, Paris, Amsterdam. This passion for the painting of the past
ended up by incurring the wrath of the moderns who rebelled against the "grand style."
Hogarth used his talent for polemics to further the cause. Out of this movement of
protest emerged the Royal Academy of Arts, founded in 1769 to defend the rights of
artists it originated in an export trade to benefit the Foundling Hospital. The society's
;

first president was Sir Joshua Reynolds who, more than any other artist, manifested a
lively taste for earlier schools of painting!
—
Another passion gripped elegant English society the taste for antiquities. More
than other Europeans, the English were responsible for reviving an antique influence
which was to convulse the evolution of styles and lead to neoclassicism. An association
was founded in London in 1739 to propagate the classical taste: The Society of
Dilettanti; in the beginning this was a group of jovial drinkers who met for dinner the
first Sunday of each month, at which time they exchanged la%%i and epigrams in Latin.
Sir William Hamilton, husband of the celebrated and scandalous Emma Lyon, Nelson's
mistress, brought back an archeological collection from Naples where he had been
ambassador. The finest ensemble of antiquities graced the Westminster home of
Charles Towneley, intimate friend of Hamilton; this maison-musee became a meeting
place for connoisseurs and artists. Charles Towneley was especially interested in
sculpture while Payne Knight collected medals, intaglios and small bronzes. The
Hamilton, Towneley and Knight collections eventually enriched the British Museum.
In eighteenth-century Germany amateurism remained an attribute of the royalty of
the various principalities but the passion for collecting was second to the desire to
dazzle with splendid buildings. Certain capitals, however, because of their enlightened
monarchs, began to amass works of art. At Brunswick, Duke Charles William Fer-
dinand consolidated into a museum the collections brought together by Anton Ulrich
during the seventeenth century and enriched it which his own acquisitions. The prince
of Hesse-Kassel formed an admirable picture gallery which the vicissitudes of history
later removed en bloc to Leningrad. At Dusseldorf William of Pfalz-Neuberg (who
reigned from 1690 to 1716) collected paintings by Rubens and van Dyck and managed
to acquire Rembrandt's celebrated cycle of The Passion, which had been commissioned
by Frederick Henry, Prince of Nassau and Stadholder of the United Netherlands.
Dusseldorf lost this cabinet to Munich at the beginning of the nineteenth century. At
an even earlier date, the Bavarian capital received the Mannheim collections, rich in the
Netherlandish school, when in 1777 the Wittelsbach line died out and the duchy passed
to the Palatinate. Fortune favored Munich; not only did the collections of others
converge upon this metropolis in southern Germany but the city boasted an admirable
gallery of its own based on the collection of the Elector Max Emanuel. The elector had
a particular liking for the Flemings and collected so zealously that he went into debt.
In a single transaction on September 17, 1698 he bought from Ghisbert von Ceulen
120 works for 90,000 florins. The lot included twelve paintings by Rubens (including

120
Helena Fourment and The Rape of the Daughters of Leudppus), fifteen van Dycks, ten
Velvet Brueghels and eight Brouwers. Later, he bought paintings by Poussin, Murillo
and Titian. Conforming to an eighteenth-century vogue, he built a special edifice to
house his collections: Schloss Schleissheim, near Munich, the work of an Italian
architect, Zuccali. For his paintings he commissioned beautiful and elegant frames, all
patterned after a single model.
Frederick the Great of Prussia infused with new life the rudimentary Kunstkammer
inherited from his ancestors. His taste for things French inclined him toward the
Parisian painters of the eighteenth century. He bought thirteen Watteaus, twenty-six
Lancrets, thirty-seven Paters, four Chardins and works by Boucher and de Troy. He
had wanted to broaden the range of his collections but the necessities of war obliged
him to curb his desires. In 1763 Catherine II acquired in Berlin a group of northern
paintings originally intended for him. Frederick envied the Elector of Saxony who
preferred art to soldiers but who was to repent his choice when Frederick's troups
occupied his territory.
The museological capital of eighteenth-century Germany was incontestably
Dresden. In her two successive electors, both called Frederick Augustus and both
elected kings of Poland, were combined the virtues of East and West. Each had the
occidental's refined taste as well as the oriental's sense of superabundance. Frederick
Augustus I (Augustus the Strong or Augustus II as king of Poland) made his Kava-
lierstour through Europe (1687-1689) as a young crown prince. The trip left a deep
impression on him he was determined to cut the figure of a great monarch and resolved
;

to make his court at Dresden the equal of the glittering European capitals. He plunged
into a massive building program, threw splendid parties and bought art on a large scale
— a policy which was to prove ruinous for Saxony. His son, Augustus III, followed
suit; his misgovernment ended in the catastrophic Seven Years' War which put Saxony
at the feet of Prussia. History has been severe in its judgment of the two rules but
contemporary thought tends to show more indulgence toward these inept monarchs
who preferred artists to soldiers. Augustus II made a trade with the soldier-king, Fre-
derick William I of Prussia, of six hundred dragoons in exchange for a series of Chinese
vases which so took his fancy that he built in Dresden a veritable "temple of porcelain"
and had no peace until Saxony herself had discovered the secret of hard-paste porcelain.
He founded the royal porcelain manufacture in Albrechtsburg Castle in Meissen in 1710.
As for Frederick William I, he had no hesitation about bartering his works of art for
rare specimens of soldiery; he "sold" to Catherine II of Russia an entire cabinet of
Baltic amber, which he had just had made for himself, in exchange for one hundred
grenadiers six and a half feet tall.
Innumerable agents and canvassers, including Count Francesco Algarotti, combed
Europe on behalf of the Elector of Saxony. Augustus II began his collecting with a
masterly coup, acquiring in 1698 from Le Roy, a Parisian dealer, fifteen paintings,
among them the Sleeping Venus by Giorgione. Count Briihl, who formed a collection
of his own that was later bought by Catherine II, served as prime minister under
Augustus III in a government which accorded first place to "cultural affairs." Under
his ministry, art from all over Europe converged upon the Saxon capital. A few
statistics will give an idea of the lavishness of this prince: Augustus III, being exceed-

121
 .•

-^^

*Jti£*.

brtt*

• >

h
 ingly fond of pastels by Rosalba, owned no fewer than 157 of her works; in 1745 he
purchased the quadreria of Duke Francesco III of Modena (one hundred paintings) and
in 1753 he acquired Raphael's Sistine Madonna. These trophies entered Dresden only a
short time before disaster erupted, the result of the policy of luxury and pleasure; in
1756 the Seven Years' War broke out and with it ended the vigorous life of the
Gt'iiialdegalerie.

In 1722 a general inventory taken of paintings divided among the various royal
churches, chapels and palaces listed 4,700 pictures, of which 3,1 10 were works of value.
(In 1707 only 535 works had been counted.) After a fire in the royal residence in 1705,
the cabinets containing the collection of curiosities, happily spared, were moved; the
paintings were taken down at the same time and re-installed in the ballroom. By 1722
larger quarters were needed so the buildings near the Judenhof were remodeled for that
purpose. Between 1744 and 1746, the galleries were enlarged and given wide, arched
bays that permitted a better lighting for the paintings.
Heinecken, curator of the gallery, undertook publication of a work on the chief
masterpieces in the collection, the first volume of which appeared in 1753. The notes
accompanying each painting, reproduced in engravings, and the preface, which traced
the history of the collection, were in French, the international language of amateurs
and collectors.

Contact with the West introduced Peter the Great, imitator of European monarchs,
to collecting. Until then, the czars had maintained only a garderobe in which accumul-
ated the arms, armor, precious cloths, jewels and the gold and silver plate it behooved
a czar to own the present-day Kremlin museum had its origins in such a repository and
;

still retains the name of "Arms Museum." The amateurism of Peter the Great only

went halfway; the collections he formed were more like those of a sixteenth-century
German prince than those of a monarch in the Age of 'Enlightenment. Do we not see
in him a Rudolf II, interested in the freaks of nature, ordering that fetuses and monsters
preserved in alcohol be sent to him ? His cabinet at Saint Petersburg was, then, primarily
a curiosities cabinet. The most "curious" objects were undoubtedly the pieces of solid
gold jewelry found in tombs in Siberia which were sent to him as a gift on the occasion
of his son's birth by Nikita Demidov, the son of a serf who had become the richest
miner in the Urals. Since gold extracted from prehistoric tombs was included in the
total yield of the mines, these early monuments were subjected to exploitation by spe-
cially trained prospectors. Why, unless he knew of his sovereign's interest in all sorts
of curiosities, did Nikita Demidov make a gift of these bizarre objects instead of having
them melted down, as was the usual practice? In any event, the jewelry had a great
61. Helena Fourment, by
effect; the czar, captivated by the beauty of the objects and by the aura of mystery they
Peter Paul Rubens. Alte
Pinakothek, Munich. This pic- evoked as relics of barbarian civilizations, immediately promulgated a ukase to protect
ture,painted on the occasion of the Siberian monuments; he further decreed that whatever was found in the earth,
Ruben's marriage (December 6, including fossils, be sent to him. To win his master's favor, the governor of Siberia,
1630) was part of the sale of more
one Prince Gagarine, financed special expeditions which yielded about one hundred
than one hundred works (includ-
ing 12 by Rubens) by the merchant
exquisitely formed pieces of this gold jewelry. They were sent in several lots to
Chisbert von Ceulen to the Elector St. Petersburg where today they number among the most precious objects in the
Max Emanuel in 1698. Treasure of the Hermitage. An analogous find has not been made since.

123
 r
Peter the Great also had a few antique sculptures, among them a I enus, said to be
by Tauriscus, and some paintings; it is not surprising that these were from the Dutch
School because it was through Holland that Peter, who wanted to work as a carpenter
in the shipbuilding yards in Amsterdam, came into contact with western civilization.
In fact, the first plan for the new city of Saint Petersburg had been inspired by that of
Amsterdam. Among the paintings was an especially fine Rembrandt, David and
Jonathan, which the czar had bought in Amsterdam in 1716.
Peter's cabinet of curiosities was installed at first in the building of the twelve
colleges, a vast administrative complex that housed the different ministries; the col-
lection was open to the public — indeed, the czar, who desired the enlightenment of his
compatriots, encouraged visitors to come and had snacks and vodka served to them!
In 1734 the cabinet was moved to the Academy of Sciences where it was given a national
museological installation; the collections devoted to natural history and ethnography
remain there yet. The others are now in the Hermitage, incorporated into the museum
collections or presented in a special gallery, over which a wax likeness of Peter the
Great presides, dressed in robes once worn by the czar himself.
Catherine II, informed by Raffenstein, her agent in Rome, of the talent of Signora
Maron, sister of Raphael Mengs, for making miniatures, wrote her correspondent:
"Order me several, several, as though they were little pastries to fill a basket." She
was completely serious in this pronouncement, this czarina who called herself a
"gloutonne" where art was concerned. A princess from one of the smallest German
houses who attained at thirty-three an imperial career through a coup d'etat she per-
petrated on the very person of her husband, Catherine was an adventuress of genius;
she was never sated by yet another military campaign, another lover, another master-
piece. Her unquenchable thirst for culture was a sort of barbarian instinct whose
avidity knew no bounds; her imagination was limitless. She was just the monarch
needed at that crucial moment in the expansion of the Russian empire. She bought
everything en bloc: Diderot's library and that of Voltaire all the portfolios of drawings
;

by Clerisseau; at Dresden, the entire collection of Count Briihl (1769); at Paris, the
entire Crozat collection (1771 ; 400 paintings) as well as that of the Comte de Baudoin
(1784; 119 paintings) and the regent's collection of 1,500 intaglios; at London, the
whole Walpole cabinet (1779; 498 paintings). She was represented at all the sales, with
courtiers bidding or buying for her in Paris, London, Amsterdam and Brussels; her
ambassadors and "philosophers" acted as her agents. The moment a great collector
died, she was notified. Ships crossed the seas with cargoes of masterpieces for her; in
1780 one ship sank in the Baltic with the loss of a group of paintings from the Gerrit
Braamkamp collection in Amsterdam. Dealers from all over the world flocked to
Saint Petersburg to show their paltry goods; they were usually badly received as
Catherine preferred paintings with illustrious pedigrees that could inspire her with
confidence. She commissioned copies of works she could not have. Knowing full well
what a trip outside Russia might cost her, she refrained from going to Rome, lured
though she was by its mirage. Undeterred, she had all the Raphaels in the Vatican
copied for her palace; from this insane project, which Raffenstein supervised, there
remain the copies of the loggie, done between 1778 and 1785; the architect Quarenghi
built a special gallery for them in 1788. Hardly had her armies reached the Black Sea

124
 when she ordered excavations; she enriched her
treasury with a find of marvelous gold jewelry
executed centuries earlier by Greek goldsmiths
working on the coast. She commissioned splendid
pieces of orfevrerie from the Parisian artisans Ger-
main, August and Gouthiere, occasionally giving
them as gifts to her favorites. She inspired
emulation; the Orlov, Demidov, Yussupov,
Stroganov and Chererhetiev families began
to collect. Thev eventually contributed to the
national wealth of Russia, since their collections,
along with hers, were confiscated by the
Soviets.

The first catalog of Catherine's collection

appeared in French in 1774; it detailed 2,080 entries
and of its seventy-six pages, six had been left
blank in the copy in the Hermitage, these blank
;

pages bear handwritten mention of 125 new

paintings. At about the same time, Count
Ernest Munnich was compiling, at the czarina's
order, a more detailed catalog which was
never printed; the third volume, dated 1785, lists

2,658 paintings.

To house these masterpieces, an entire museum

had to be built. Catherine at first contented herself
with disposing therh throughout her private apart-
ments in the Palais d'Hiver and in a pleasure pavi-
lion, an "ermitage" built for her by the Frenchman
Vallin de La Mothe from 1765 to 1768, on the
62. Peter the Great. Wax figure dressed in the char's robes.
banks of the Neva; this hermitage was connected
Gallery of Peter the Great, Hermitage Museum, Leningrad.
to her apartments by a long gallery. She withdrew
In spite of his haste to modernise Russia, Peter the Great did
not neglect the formation of those collections which add to the there to rest, beyond the reach of etiquette, with
glory of a monarch and are indispensable instruments for her intimates, among her paintings, her parrots and
progress in the sciences and the arts in a modern state. He her favorite animals a roll-away table allowed the
;

accumulated books and curiosities and bought the first paintings

czarina and her guests to dine without the presence
for the imperial collections.
of servants. Unfortunately, this retreat was com-
pletely renovated in 1858 to 1859 and was given a
decor in poor In 1775 Catherine ordered
taste.
Felten to build an annex to the pleasure pavilion,
intended from the first as a museum; it was called
the "grand ermitage" to distinguish it from the
"petit ermitage" built ten years earlier by Vallin
de La Mothe and known now as the "old
hermitage."

125
 63. Plan of the Winter Palace and the Hermitage Museum, Leningrad. /;/ 1765, Catherine II started
construction for an "erriiitage" or pleasure pavilion on the banks of the Neva which she connected to the Winter Palace
(built by Czarina Elizabeth) by weans of a gallery. Here she put her collections which, however, became so extensive that
7 '

Old Hermitage."
she was obliged to construct in 1 7 5, next to the pavilion, another building which today is known as the '

Behind it C.-^ar Nicholas I had the "New Hermitage" erected between 1840 and 1849 according to the designs of Leo
von Klen^e.

Catherine's extravagant love for the wholesale collection of paintings and other
art objects was not inherited by her son and successor, Paul I. Although he showed no
interest in making new acquisitions, Paul did, at least, set up a commission formed of
members of the Academy of Fine Arts to verify the inventory of paintings, drawings
and engravings displayed and stored in the Hermitage. The commission's report
showed that a staggering total of 3,996 paintings had been counted.

126
 Chapter

7
The Cabinet and the Gallery
Under the ancien regime a principle of lavishness, bordering on excessiveness,
governed the presentation of works of art. If our ancestors were to wander through
our museums, with their great expanses of empty wall, they would find them poor and
in bad taste. Visiting Roman pala^j from the end of 1739 to the beginning of 1740,
Charles de Brosses noted: "The entire decoration of a room consists in covering its
four walls, from ceiling to floor, with paintings, in such profusion and with so little
space between them that, in truth, the eye is often as fatigued as amused. In addition
there is hardly any expenditure for frames, the majority being old, black and shabby,
with a great number of mediocre things among the beautiful." President de Brosses
ought to have been pleased by the ornately framed pictures in the galleria Palatina in
Florence's Pitti Palace which he visited on the same trip, but he seems to have been
disappointed there as well.
Beginning in the sixteenth century, works of art or curiosities were kept in two
sorts of places whose different purposes were not always clearly defined; the "gallery"
and the "cabinet." Physically, the gallery was a long, grand hall; more restrained, the
cabinet was a square-shaped room. The gallery designated a sumptuous, luxuriously
appointed salon where works of art formed an integral part of the decor; in the cabinet,
the greatest possible number of objects were crowded together, unencumbered by
decorative trappings. It gradually happened, however, that a succession of splendid
reception rooms became known as a gallery, like the galleria Palatina in the Pitti Palace,
64. Madonna della Sedia, by and that galleries per se assumed a purely utilitarian character. By the end of the
Raphael. Palatine Gallery,
sixteenth century, the English word "gallery" connoted exhibition areas for painting
Pitti Palace, Florence. The grand
dukes of Tuscany, after the end
or sculpture, while "cabinet" designated both collections of curiosities, natural and
of the XVIth century, surrounded otherwise, and places where small objets d'art were conserved — medallions, glyphs,
the paintings which were displayed metalwork and bronze statuettes. "Cabinet" came into English usage through the
in the reception halls of the Pitti French language, which had adapted it from the Italian gabinetto meaning at first a
;

palace with sumptuous borders

place or a piece of furniture for the safekeeping of personal papers and valuables, by
which, in keeping with the ba-
roque decor of the XVIIth cen-
the end of the eighteenth century it was used in a museological sense.
tury, at times almost rivaled the Since the word "gallery" also derives from Italian, it is surprising that the gallery
works themselves. itself originated in France. As explained in an as-yet-unpublished thesis by Mile. Litoux

129
of the Ecole du Louvre, the gallery, insofar as it is an elegant salon, derives from the
grande salle of medieval chateaux. Italian palaces and villas in the fifteenth century and
even in the beginning of the sixteenth do not have them, unless one considers as such
the large, two-story salone in the villa built by Lorenzo the Magnificent at Poggio a
Caiano; but, too wide and too high, it has not the format of a gallery. The first two
were those designed by Bramante to connect the Belvedere of Inno-
gallerie in Italy
cent VIII to the Vatican nearly a quarter of a mile long, they are more immense
;

corridors for traffic than galleries in the modern sense. The vogue for the gallery in
Renaissance France was, then, indigenous in origin. The royal chateau at Fontainebleau
had no fewer than five galleries dating from the 1500's; the famous gallery said to have
been built by Francis I or the Reformers and decorated by Rosso was unique in its time.
However, bv the end of the cinquecento the Italians had adapted the gallery to the pre-
sentation of works of art; such is the case in the casino del giardino at Sabbioneta or in
the antiquarium in the Residenz at Munich; the former is today empty, but in the latter,
antiquities complete a decor of delicate pastoral grotesques evoking Bavarian cities and
villages.
An authoritative Italian architect acknowledged the French origins of the gallery.
Vincenzo Scamozzi, in his Idea dell' architettura universale (1615), wrote: "Today in
Rome, Genoa and other Italian cities, the structure known as the gallery enjoys wide
use; possibly first introduced in France to serve as a passageway for the men at court,
the gallery approaches in proportions our loggia but is somewhat less open. This type
of construction was in some degree known to the ancients... In this city [Venice] the
gallery is not used so much for the exterior of public places as in France, Spain and
elsewhere; for some time, following Roman example, it has been introduced into the
houses of many senators, gentlemen and collectors of antique marbles and bronzes,
medallions, bas reliefs and paintings by the most celebrated and prestigious masters
who have ever lived."
After a period of evolution in Italy, the gallery returned to France, having as its
inimitable model the Hercules Gallery, painted by the Carracci for the Farnese Palace,
Rome. In the seventeenth century all the grand and noble hotels of Paris had their
galleries, richly decorated by stuccoers, cabinetmakers and contemporary painters
[hotels Lambert, Bretonvilliers, de Lignieres, La Vrilliere). Louis XIV was only
imitating his subjects in his decorative commissions for the Apollo Gallery in the
Louvre or the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. The Grande Galerie of the Louvre, that is,
the gallery running along the river, was conceived by an Italian, Queen Catherine
de'Medici; at first, it was no more than a monumental passageway, like the Vatican
galleries, connecting a chateau in the city (the Louvre) to a country residence (the
Tuileries); the efforts of Louis XIII to turn it into a banquet hall and ballroom,
with all the attendant decor, failed. Certain galleries were especially designed for
exhibiting works of art, such as the two superposed galleries, preserved in the
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, and designated as the. galerie mazarine, that was erected
by the cardinal in the formerhotel Tubeuf, owned by him and enlarged by Mansard.
The lower held antiquities; the upper, paintings, furniture and the most
level
divers objects, displayed against hangings of red damask and crowded closely
together, as described by the Grande Mademoiselle, Anne-Marie-Louise d'Orleans, in

130
her Memoires: "The gallery was a full as a stall at a fair except that there was no rubbish."
The two-story gallery of Arundel House, London, known to us through the paintings
of Daniel Mytens, dates from the same period; as in the hotel Mazarin, the lower level
was reserved for antiquities; the upper, for paintings, which were disposed between
windows. Laid out during the same period, the galleria Palatina in Florence is a succes-
sion of luxurious apartments, decorated with magnificent ceilings painted by Pietro
da Cortona for Grand Duke Ferdinand II de'Medici between 1637 and 1647; gildings,
marbles, crystals and ceiling paintings added to the lavishness of these princely apart-
ments that Ferdinand II, fulfilling a plan of Cosimo II, fitted as a quadreria, formed by
a qualitative selection of paintings from the Medici collections. Crowded together
frame to frame, these pictures constituted an essential element of the decor not only in
themselves but also by virtue of their rich frames some were made in the mannerist
;

period, when woodworking arts were influenced by goldsmithery, while others were
baroque; they were conceived as triumphant crowns for the most illustrious of paint-
ings. Anna Maria Ciaranfi rightly remarked that the guiding principle behind the
arrangement of the quadreria was "to surround beauty with beauty." Pillaged only once
by the government of Revolutionary France, with restitutions made in 1815 and a
subsequent re-opening in 1833, the galleria Palatina remains one of the rare European
examples of the princely presentation of a museum. In Paris the gallery of the La Vril-
liere mansion is another example, but on a smaller scale and in closer correspondence
with the original format of the gallery. Built by Phelippeaux de la Vrilliere in 1640, it
was refurbished to suit the taste of the day by Robert de Cotte between 1713 and 1719
for the count of Toulouse; it was sumptuously wainscoted by Vasse and from then on
was called the Galerie dore'e. Set into the panelwork were six paintings by great masters:
Poussin, Pietro da Cortona, Carlo Maratta, Guercino, Alessandro Veronese, Guido
Reni. This time one more step was taken to integrate the works with the whole, for the
paintings were incorporated into the paneling and had to conform to its irregular
contours ( 1 ). The practice of treating paintings as decorative elements often led to a
modification of their dimensions, either through reduction or, more often, through
enlargement, without respect for the original intentions of the artist. As late as 1778,
when the museological spirit had insinuated itself everywhere, do we not find in France
the Count d'Angiviller proposing that the court painter cut Poussin's beautiful, but
too large, Martyrdom of Saint Francis Xavier, acquired for the king at the Jesuit sale in
1763? It was not done because the artist said that it would destroy the harmony of the
composition.
In the pala^o Colonna at Rome, a large gallery was constructed toward the end of
the seventeenth century to house the collection brought together by Cardinal Gero-
nimo I Colonna. Opened in 1703, the gallery, some 230 feet long, 39 feet wide and
32 feet high, was modeled after the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles like the latter, it ter-
;

minates in two salons at each end antiquities were presented in the gallery, paintings in
;

the salons. Charles de Brosses found the complex "preferable to the one at Versailles
and filled with exquisite paintings." Very famous, it attracted countless visitors to
Rome in the eighteenth century, becoming the archetypal gallery, the ideal setting for
a real or imaginary museum. In 1749 Giovanni Paolo Pannini disposed in a gallery
inspired by the Galleria Colonna the collection amassed by Cardinal Silvio Valenti

131
132 65
 Gonzaga in his villa near the Porta Pia (today, the Villa Bonaparte) the painting,
;

the sketch of which is in Marseilles, is in the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford,

Connecticut ( 2 ). For the duke of Choiseul, who wanted an imperishable souvenir of the
beauty of Rome where he served as French ambassador from 1753 to 1757, Pannini
executed four paintings. Two depict actual sites, the Square before St. Peter's ( 3 ) and the
Interior oj St. Peter's ( 4 ). For the other two, which were to evoke "antique Rome" and
"modern Rome" ( 5 ), Pannini arranged sculptures and vedute, painted in his own style,
in ideal galleries patterned after the Colonna setting. These two imaginary museums
enjoyed immediate success Pannini made a replica of them soon after, in collaboration
;

with Hubert Robert, into whose collection they passed; these are the canvases now in
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York ( 6 ). The Louvre is indebted to the Princess
de Polignac for another version, of larger dimensions, doubtlessly commissioned by
Claude Frangois de Montboissier, abbot, then cardinal, of Canillac, who lived in Rome
from 1753 until his death in 1763 ( 7 ). Today's amateurs have photographic records of
their collections; in former times, the records themselves were works of art.
The seventeenth century saw the revival of the practice of hanging pictures against
red backgrounds, particularly suited to works of the Renaissance and also to seicento
paintings which, often somber, were even painted on gesso of this color in Italy and
France. The paintings gallery of Cardinal Mazarin was fitted in crimson velours was ;

this simply because the shade was appropriate for a cardinal? It was rather because it
had already been recognized that this color enhanced a picture. In fact, Boschini in
his Carta del Navegar pittoresco, published in Venice in 1660, recommended dressing the
walls of galleries in scarlet and purple velours and using very ornate, gilded frames.
Fallen into disuse in the eighteenth century with its preference for stuccos in clear
colors, red regained its popularity the following century because of the influence of
Pompeiian red backgrounds and was used on the walls of nearly all painting and
sculpture galleries.
Here and there across Europe one still finds intact picture galleries from the baroque
period. One of the best preserved is that housed in the castle of Pommersfelden in
Franconia, begun in 1711 by Johan Dietzenhofer for the archchancellor of the Empire,
Lothar Franz von Schonborn; although a few of its masterpieces were sold in the
nineteenth century, the gallery remains more or less in its original form.
Insofar as it is a room of small dimensions destined to receive works of art, the
cabinet made its appearance in the sixteenth century in the form of a portrait collection.
The wood-paneled cabinet of the chateau of Pibrac, near Toulouse, dates from the
sixteenth century although the paintings in it are seventeenth-century works the ;

65. Picture gallery in Pom- chateaux of Beauregard and Bussy-Rabutin (the former in a gallery format, the latter in
mersfelden Castle. (Ger-
many.) Pommersfelden Castle, in
the more restrained form of the cabinet) are examples of seventeenth-century French
Franconia, was started in 1711 cabinets.
by Johann Diet^enhofer for the In the seventeenth century both the cabinet and the gallery were in vogue; they
Imperial Arch Chancellor, became veritable catchalls as paintings and all kinds of objects accumulated. The
Lothar Fran\ von Schonborn;
tendency to horde is peculiarly characteristic of northern Europeans, who found
ofpictures, distribut-
its collection

ed in several cabinets and a long

monumental galleries ill-suited to their more restrained style of dwelling; this utili-
gallery, has been preserved almost tarian reason is not the only one: a concentration of objets d'art and curiosities in a small
in its entirety. space appealed to the amateurs of the North, trained by the humanist vision of Bruegel

133
134 66
 to see amicrocosm in a grain of sand, to see the Infinite hiding in the specific. Paintings
representing an "amateur's cabinet" were the succes fou of seventeenth-century Flemish
genre painting. Few works document actual collections; the majority are imaginary
cabinets. From time to time, however, paintings inspired by one or another Antwerp
collection particularly pleased buyers. It is through these that we know the arrangement
of Ruben's cabinet, an admixture of paintings and medallions disposed in a large salon
that was a sort of apse, inspired by the Pantheon in Rome and, like it, illumined by a
central oculus; Rubens had had it built to hold the antique busts purchased from
Sir Dudley Carleton cabinet and collection together created an evocation of Rome for
;

him.
In several of these "views of cabinets," painters delighted in dressing figures in
costumes of the preceding century; heedless of anachronisms, one artist showed
Alexander the Great visiting the studio of Apelles, an Apelles who collected Massys
and Rubens! Jan Brueghel turned to the theme of the amateur's cabinet to illustrate
his Five Senses, a series of paintings of galleries and cabinets overflowing with all kinds
of natural and man-made articles; these well-wrought microcosms afforded the public
of the period, particularly the entrenched Flemish bourgeoisie, an escape through time
as well as space. The seventeenth-century collection we know best is that assembled
by Archduke Leopold- Wilhelm, governor of the Netherlands from 1646 to 1656, at
the Chateau of Coudenberg, Brussels. At the magistrate's order, David Teniers the
Younger, his curator and court painter, executed "views" of various rooms of the
collection; these paintings were given as souvenirs to illustrious visitors. For these
reproductions in miniature of the chefs d'auvres in the archducal gallery, Teniers used
the two hundred forty-four "pastiches," or copies in a small format, he had previously
made for engravings in the Theatrum pictorium.
The vogue for depicting the amateur's cabinet had disappeared by the beginning of
the eighteenth century but, if the style was no longer a la mode, the conditions it
represented persisted in galleries and cabinets throughout the Ancien Regime. We know
Jean de Julienne's collection through gouache copies, made in 1756, of each of the
three hundred twenty-four paintings hanging on the walls of his apartment; bound
together in a sort of catalog, they inspired Storffer's guide to the Vienna gallery.
Some Bildersdle of abbeys and castles in central Europe have remained intact, their
paintings almost frame to frame, separated by only a thin strip of molding. During the
eighteenth century collectors were fond of this decoration en tapisserie, which covered
the entire wall; the castles of Peterhof and Tsarskoye Selo near Leningrad were, until
their destruction in World War II, remarkable examples of this practice.
In the seventeenth century the lighting of galleries and cabinets was lateral. The
eighteenth century, in order to find a light more suited to pictures and to free wall space
66. The Gallery of Beauties for hangings by avoiding fenestration, took to overhead lighting; thus was the presen-
in chateau of Pibrac, near
the tation of the regent's collection in the Palais Royal, Paris. This mode of lighting was,
Toulouse. In 1676 this cabinet
however, the exception. In buildings constructed or laid out for use as pinakothekai
des dames contained forty por-
in the 1700's (at Dresden and Munich, for example), one length of wall was usually
traits of contemporary beauties.
Today only ten remain, the others
opened with glassed-in arcades which allowed abundant light for the other three.
having been replaced by portraits The tapestried effect in decor prevailed everywhere, being used also for objets d'art,
of men. porcelains, faiences and metalwork. Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and

135
 King of Poland, decorated an entire room in the royal residence at Dresden with
Chinese porcelains, most of them rare specimens bought at inflated prices to satisfy a
particular passion the last war, which destroyed the different cabinets of Zwinger,
;

happily spared it. Augustus dreamed of outdoing the Dresden project by erecting a
veritable temple of porcelain in his palace in Holland, an undertaking never brought
to completion. Charlottenburg, near Berlin, has kept its Por^ellankabinett, laid out in
1705 and 1706, and doubtlessly the model for the Dresden one. A unique ensemble is
the cabinet devoted to objects in glass in Copenhagen's Rosenborg built by Christian IV
;

in 1606, this castle, where all sorts of marvels were accumulated throughout the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, is a kind of palace of a thousand and one nights,
with extraordinary silver furniture made at Augsburg and Copenhagen in the 1 700's the
;

dynastic piety of the Danish royal family has kept it intact. Among its treasures the
rarest, if not the most valuable, are those in the cabinet of glassware, planned by
Frederick IV in 1714 for the second floor of the palace crystal plates and vases gathered
;

from all over Europe by the king glitter like stalactites in this gilded "cave." Part of
the collection was an important gift of Murano glassware from the Venetian Doge in
1708. Rosenborg also boasts a Por^ellankabinett and a Buffetkabinett, a small salon for
the display of gold and silver services, a custom much in vogue in central Europe in
the eighteenth century.
If superabundance was pleasing to our ancestors and seemed to them the most
effective way to enhance the value of works of art, all the more reason why they were
lured bv cabinets of curiosities, where profusion symbolized the inexhaustible richness
of nature's creations and the ingeniousness of means used by man to penetrate their
mysteries. In the eighteenth century scientific progress turned physical and chemical
experimentation into a subject for the salon; many an hotel had its cabinet de physique,
without which its proprietor could hardly be considered a curieux or a savant.
Curios and instruments were usually displayed in elegant, glass-paned armoires,
a style of furniture which appeared at this time. One can still see in Paris in the former
abbey of Sainte Genevieve (today the Lycee Henri IV), admirable Louis XVth show-
cases for curiosities and archeological artifacts (now emptied of their contents). All has
— —
been left untouched paneling, furniture, showcases, objects in the natural history
cabinet in the monastery at Seitenstetten, Austria, and in that conceived by Clement
Lafaille in 1766 for his hotel at La Rochelle; the latter, a cabinet of conchology, has
passed out of the hands of the Academy, to which it was originally bequeathed, to the
museum where it can be seen today. These science cabinets were sometimes given as
67. Museum of the Abbey sumptuous a decor as the art galleries. The most extraordinary was, without doubt,
of Heiligenkreuz in
that of Jacques Bonnier de la Mosson. Having inherited from his father an enormous
\ustria.
Tin great baroque abbeys 0/ cen-
fortune, he squandered it on debaucheries and on collections. Of a sensual tempera-
tra/ Europe bad a museum or
Bildersaal where both old and ment, this man was passionately interested in the technical applications of science.
nor paintings were grouped to- Seven rooms on the ground floor of his Paris mansion housed his art collection; the
gether. \t Heiligenkreus^ it is in science cabinet was on the first floor, presented in an extravagantly paneled setting that
Kaisersaal or ceremonial
tin
we know through very exact drawings made by Courtonne in 1739 and 1740, probably
apartments, decorated with
A' 11th-century stucco and with
I
with the intention of having them engraved. After the cabinet de tour, a small mechanic's
walls covered with the display workshop, came the cabinet of pharmaceutics, then that of physics and chemistry with
paintings. laboratory, kiln and retorts; this was followed by an array of mechanical objects and

1 36
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 ;

divers instruments and, finally, the natural history collection displaying animals in a
naturalistic decor. This magnificent cabinet lasted but a short while for Bonnier de
la Mosson died at forty-two, a ruined man. His collections, with all the paneling, were
sold at auction.
—
No matter what was to be exhibited paintings, sculptures or curiosities and —
whether or not one sought luxury in decor and presentation, the principle of accumula-
tion was always in operation. The Museo Pio-Clementino in the Vatican offers us an
intact example of those museums of antiquities where, embarking on discovery,
"antiquarians" delighted in losing themselves in a forest of marble and bronze, impa-
tient to recognize rare pieces on their own without any help, for guidebooks were
nonexistent. The gallery of busts was in every way comparable to the portrait gallery
busts were aligned on rows upon rows of shelves, similar to the stratified arrangement
of paintings in the museum jovianum. Today we feel somewhat lost in these immense
rooms, these interminable galleries peopled with sarcophagi, busts, statues of men and
animals but we must keep in mind that this universe was familiar to cultivated men of
;

the time who were not confronted, as we are, by so ramified a field of knowledge, in a
period when a gentleman could presume to embrace within his lifespan all human
learning.

68. Cabinet of Glassware in

Rosenborg Castle, Copenhagen.
The royal chateau of Rosenborg
has preserved intact a cabinet
of porcelain and its unique cabinet
of glassware. The latter was
created in 1714 by King Frederic
IV after a visit to Venice in 1708
and contains extremely rare pieces
from various European manufac-
tures. The glass and crystal are
displayed as if in a sideboard.

139
±
 Chapher

8
The Age of Enlightenment
Simultaneously with the aggrandizement of the royal collections, destined to enter
public museums sooner or later, here and there in Europe corporate bodies began to
accumulate works of art; the municipal organization found itself particularly suited to
this activity. Thus in 1629 the city of Zurich established a library and gallery devoted to
the fine arts in the Wasserkirche. This cultural complex had been created with alloca-
tions of manuscripts and antiquities from ecclesiastical goods confiscated by the Reform.
In Italy, where municipal life had always been very active, certain men early showed
devotion to the public cause; in 1523 Cardinal Domenico Grimani, in a move to
beautify the seat of government and to further scholarship, bequeathed to the Venetian
Republic the collection of antiquities and curiosities he had amassed while in Rome;
his gift formed the nucleus of the present archeological museum. Sixty years later, the
same museum profited from the bequest of his nephew Giovanni, patriarch of Aquileia.
The latter was responsible for the Biblioteca Marciana's acquisition of the famous
Flemish Breviary which bears his name. The Grimanis were a decidedly great family of
benefactors; Marino, dying in the same year as his brother, Cardinal Domenico, also
enriched the republic with a portion of his collection of antiquities. In 1680 Manfredo
Settale bequeathed his museum to Milan's Biblioteca Ambrosiana. Such gifts became
a frequent practice in the eighteenth century; in 1780 Annibale Olivieri gave to the
69. Portrait of Elias Ash- city of Pesaro his cabinet of intaglios and coins.
mole, by John Riley. Ash- From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, the convents in the Provencal city
molean Museum, Oxford. The
of Aries built up collections of Roman antiquities found in local excavations about;

scientificand archeological collec-

tions amassed by John Tradescant
1785 Father Dumont assembled the various collections of antiquities in the Minim
the Elder were willed by his son Convent, where they were consolidated into a public museum; to this end, he had
to Elias Ash mole with the under- entered into an agreement with the city council on December 7, 1784. Moreover, this
standing that they should be left body of municipal magistrates had amassed during the course of the two preceding
by him to Oxford University to
centuries an art collection of its own in the Hotel de Ville. In 1745 Monsignor d'lnguin-
form the nucleus of a museum.
Ashmole donated the collections bert who, having been the librarian of Cardinal Lorenzo Corsini (later Pope Cle-
to the university in 1677. The ment XII), had acquired in Rome a taste for the arts, left "to the public" of the city of
Museum still bears his name. Carpentras, whose bishop he was, his library and his collections. The oldest public

141
 museum in France is doubtlessly that of Besancon; in 1694 J. B. Bloizot, head abbot
of Saint Vincent de Besancon, bequeathed to his abbey his books, antique paintings and
medallions "with the stipulation that the whole form a public collection." The museum
was installed forthwith and opened to the public on Wednesdays and Saturdays of each
week from 8:00 to 10:00 in the morning and from 2:00 to 4:00 in the afternoon.
In the eighteenth century art was taught and lectured about rather than learned
from practice in a master's studio. The prototype for this kind of artistic instruction
can be found in the sixteenth century but it was not to enjoy a widespread acceptance
until the Age of Enlightenment when every city of some importance had its academy
or art school. Such establishments owned collections of art works that served as
models for the students; these often became more or less public museums. A case in
point is the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, a school of art founded in 1780 by Count
Carrara, who at his death in 1796 left it his fifteen hundred paintings. In order to
facilitate their studies, the Duke of Richmond opened to artists in 1760 his rich gallery
of sculpture at Whitehall in London. Between 1748 and 1785 a score of drawing aca-
demies sprang up all over France, out of which many present-day city museums grew.
Dijon's was created by Francois Devosges, who in 1783 persuaded the municipality to
vote a loan for the construction of an eastern wing on the Palais des Etats, with the
view "of establishing therein a museum for the progress of Art and the benefit of
students." In Rheims, Antoine Ferrand de Monthelon (fl742), a mediocre painter but
a man of taste, who had brought back from his trips works of art of all kinds, founded
in his city a drawing academy that he furnished with the best pieces from his collections,
among them, Lucas Cranach's astonishing portraits of Saxon and Pomeranian princes
that his father had come upon in Germany in 1687 he willed them to the Academie de
;

Rheims. Saint Quentin's drawing school was established in 1777 by a native of the city,
the great portraitist Maurice Quentin de la Tour; the school received part of his atelier
as a gift from the artist's brother in 1806. Science cabinets shared the same destiny.
Clement Lafaille bequeathed to the Academie of La Rochelle his natural history
cabinet, today in the city museum its original boiseries are still intact.
;

During the course of the eighteenth century, the progress of archeological studies
encouraged the establishment of learned societies that organized excavations and
founded museums to contain the unearthed objects. The Etruscan Academy at Cortona
was founded along such lines in 1726; most appropriately, its president was given the
title of Lucumo, the name of ancient Etruscan nobles. Comprising one hundred forty

—
members, it organized meetings Notti Coritane and opened a gallery for art lovers,
70. presumed to be
Portrait its Galleria del publico. In 1774 this museum received one of the most "amiable" of false
that of Prince Wolfgang
antique paintings, the famous Muse executed on slate; the picture arrived at the gallery
d'Anhalt, by Lucas Cranach.
after many an adventure; it had been venerated as a Madonna by a peasant who, when
Rheims Museum. This painting is
part of the famous series of por- he realized his error, used it as a shutter for a window near his oven. That it was a
traits of Saxon and Pomeranian neoclassical pastiche was not recognized until the present generation. In Volterra,
primes which were willed by another Etruscan city in Tuscany, Monsignor Mario Guarnacci, after his return from
[ntoine errand de Mont he Ion to
a long stay in Rome, devoted himself to financing excavations and buying Etruscan
I- '

the cityof Rheims where be had

objects he built up an important collection which he bequeathed "al publico volterrano"
;
founded a school of drawing with,
as an annex, a museum formed in 1781. The Accademia Filarmonica in Verona received the cabinet of the famous
from bis collection. scholar Francesco Scipione di Maffei. In the Sicilian province of Catania, the pompous

142
\.

143
Ignacio Paterno Costello, Prince Biscari, erected a magnificent palace, one wing of which
he reserved tor use as a museum and filled with vases, bronzes and antique terra
cottas excavated locally or bought at Naples, Florence or Rome. This museum, open
to amateurs and students, was solemnly inaugurated in 1758. It was to become one of
the most celebrated collections in Sicily; the Biscari family retained it until 1927, when
the tenth prince of the house, willing his portion of the inheritance to the province,
encouraged his co-heirs to do likewise; a few followed suit; the others sold their
shares. After the last World War, the Biscari collection and that of the Benedictines
went to Castello Ursino.
As aninstitution allied with the advancement of human learning, the museum
found aready niche for itself within the university complex. The oldest university
museum is doubtlessly the one at Basel. In 1661 the Amerbach cabinet, which boasted
some magnificent Holbeins, was put up for sale; it had been formed by that well-
known family of publishers who had counted Erasmus among its intimates. The col-
lection was going to be sold in Holland, when the city, objecting to its removal,
acquired it at its own expense. The cabinet was exhibited from 1671 to 1849 in the
university library, housed at the "Sign of the Fly" (t(u Miicke) In the course of the
.

seventeenth century, it was enriched by new gifts. In 1712 Count Marsigli established
an Academy of Sciences and a museum at the University of Bologna; in 1743 it was
joined by the collections previously left to the city by the scholar Ulisse Aldrovandi
and the Marchese Cospi. The benefactor of Verona, the erudite Scipione Maffei,
was handsomely generous to the University of Turin, endowing it with a museum of
epigraphy and archeology. In 1758 the municipality of Ferrara bought the collection
of medallions, coins and statuary assembled by the archeologist Vincenzo Bellini; it
joined the lapidary collection that had been formed at the university in 1735. The
museum of antiquities founded at Parma in 1770 by Don Philip, Duke of Bourbon, to
compensate for the loss of the Museo borbonico removed to Naples by his brother
Don Carlo, owes a major portion of its collection to the excavations zealously conducted
at the site of Volterra.
To Oxford befell the honor of having the first great museum organized as a public
institution with a pedagogical purpose. The Ashmolean Museum at Oxford began
with the collection assembled by two generations of a family of travelers, explorers
and adventurers. John Tradescant the Elder (f 1638) had fought against Algerian
privateers; in 1618 he journeyed to Russia in quest of rare plants; after Russia, America
saw this indefatigable traveler, sent by the Duke of Buckingham to study native
animals, birds, plants and stones. Tradescant exhibited his collection of curiosities,
scientific and archeological instruments and natural phenomena in a house and garden
at South Lambeth, near London; open to the public, this museum and botanical
garden were known as "Tradescant's Ark." The entire collection was the subject of a
sumptuous publication appearing in 1656 Musaeum Tradescantianum. After the death
of his only son, John Tradescant the Younger made a gift of the collection to the
antiquarian Elias Ashmole but, two years later, he retracted, offering the collection to
his wife, stipulating that she will it to either Oxford or Cambridge University. After
Tradescant's death, Ashmole brought suit against Mrs. Tradescant for the return of
the collections and won his case. In 1677, realizing Tradescant's hopes, he bequeathed

144
 them to Oxford, together with his own collection
INSTITUTA ASHMOLEANA. of antiquities, charging the university to construct
MO, MVSEI t-4SHM0LEANI O™- XIII. Siquis feorfim Cimelia perluftrjre relit, (ex llena-
an appropriate building to receive them. Work on
PR
I

Itrti {f*>s tpft Cl AHSSIMU5 A ill MOLDS Vecreit riosad minimum perfolvat, quo tk£b», Cinu-Iiarthj. vel Pro-
stum mdcliuxvi. ftrtpto, Afatavit} funt D Vice-Can- inu In per ho ram infegram ei adeile reneatur, qurcun-
the building was finished in 1683 and the museum
i liar.

cvlUriiu, D Decanus ,-fcdis Chnfti, D Principalis 3uc r ...ln,. cupit (five ca in Serin us, five alibi conferventur)
i

Collegii /Enci Naf. D- ProfelTor Regius in Mcdiciiu, &

,
efignans.
Acadcmur Procurator utcrque, vel corum Dcputati
II Semcl quolibct anno, nempe die Lunar Dominium
XIV. Si Duo limul intrare voluer.nt, unulqu.fque (ex IV
nanosadniininium perlolvat mintllretque eis ( imcliarcha, ;
was formally opened to the public on May 21st of
SS.Trinitatis pruxime lublequcnte,adrioramoc~tavai dictum vcl is, quemdeputjvent, per (clquihotani fi id rugabunt
Museum Curat-res luftrabunt; vel laltcm ibidem i XV Si Trcs codem tempore adennt, quatuor Dcnanos
ad minimum unicuiquc fulvendum ell, perquc untus hone
that year in the presence of the Duke of York, later
Luftraiionem in alutm diem different Hocautem pore

II, and his duchess, the future Queen Anne.

CimeliarchacndLliiatcm&induftrum pcrpendent deamq, Ipatium commoran
quarnam eo annocuiufcunquc generis acccflcrint Cimelia
, I

XVI Si Quatuor aut

pi^tcrunt
plurcs, 'tres Dcnanos ad minimum James
III Omnia qui vel laradicto Muleo data funt, vel olimdo- quiltbet pcrfolvat atque idem tempus (fi ns vidcbitur) per-
The university annexed to the museum a chemistry
,

nabuntur. Cimelia fub vanis Claflibus d.lhibucotur ad|e- ; maneant

cJa fmgulis fuatellera, vrimtmers, qui & lifdcm adjicicndus XVII S u per duas horas m Mufco commoratus
i

'
| i tuent,
cut in Mulet CkCtlogO, quamcmilimefummadtligcntiacon- Prxmium duplex Cimcharcbx mld.it
fcribenrfo XVIII In qualibct inlupcr Mufei Viliutione Omcliarcha laboratory and a library and appointed a conserva-
IV Pre Camtorum numcro. di^um Catalogum in (ex vcram & complctam Curamribus reddct rationcm omnium
parte* dividi rolumus; quo cuius nempc lultrationem ab-
(oUanf. quolibcc CttfttOR fuam partem cum c|ufdem Cata-
pta-miorum tV emolumontorum, qua: praxedente Anno, Ct-
melia monftrandocollcgent Computus autcm hicannuus ad
tor to prepare a catalog for it in Latin. Also drawn
log" lunferentc, iic quid forte veldefidcrctur, vcl pel mmiam
Cimcliarchx<ncuriam, corruptclam MttttUI
Feftum S Alictiaclis proiirae ante VilitaO'tncm clapluin ter-
up in Latin is a memorandum dated December 13,
V. Si plura.n Muleoinvcnu,uure|ufdem fpeuci C.melia.
final Cimcliarchx annucotc Uominu Vicc-Cancclhrio cum
duubusalm quibulcunque Cura tori bus, unumaut
cmplana.
plura fcx-
pro dclidcrato quodaro cotnniutare, veletiam
eft c
Xl\ Acadcmicorum ncmim prxtcrquam Graduans libro-
rum quorumennque

XX T
ad hoc Muleum lpcc>antmni conceHi
.
llinuum jvitim ulum i|vumdiu in AcaoVmu (nanfu-
1713 — still posted to this day in the museum—
vcl
alicui honoris ergo gratis contcrre
I

rus eft fiqui^ Gracluatm cupit. Cimclurchx quinaue Solidus,

unn
which painstakingly detailed the administration of
VI Prr nimia vccuftatetimelio quolibct pcrcunte. liccat & Sublibrar.o (cum nomen luum libcllo in huno n-
Cunelianchx 1 fuo loco in conclave quoddam dicti Mulei,
idem fubducerc-
ncmdcftinato mkiuriii reddat: fin vcro brcvion tempore
eofdem confulere volucnt. vel Tex Dcnanos quajibct Scpti-
the museum, the editing of the catalog and its
VII Muf'eum Aihmoleanum iifdem horis pateat, quibus iv.. vel ddodccim per menfem Cotvat-
inventories, and the duties of the cimeliarchus, more
ii i

Bibliothec* Bodleana ; atque alus nl'uper prout Gmelurchari XXI Siquis t Manurcnpto quopiam aliquid eifcriben-
tiJcm adeftc per privaca fua negotia Iicuent. dum cupiat, idci Sublibranusexlcribat, pro qualibct Schcda
VIII Cirocliumahquod. vcl Bibhothccarum Librum, ex-
tra Scholam Hiftorix Naturalis ncmim fas eft deportare ,
duodccim Dcnarios accipiens
propnum Amanucnlcm
quod li ipfc eifctibcrc, vel
,

elipcrc malit. id libcrc faciat, modo

a guardian than a curator; the curatorial tasks fell
n ut inlriurctur, vcl laltcm delineandi gratia, aut fcal- Sublibfario pro quolibctCodice quo vilusfucnt. trcs Dcna-
to the curatores, chosen from the various Oxford
>

ptnne
1\. Vacante loco Cimeliarth cciTorem dcfignare efto XXII PcnoCimcliarchameft Manulcriptorumufumqui
penes Curarores, (vel laltcm i
rumque Succcfibra pcrpctti
i majorem

m
Partem ) eo-
quibus Procimeliarchar
buicunqnc prohibere. uti & Ctmelium quodi is delineandi
copiam itcncgarc, donee is qui alrctutrum rogaverit, Syn- colleges, who divided up the care of the collection
m magis idoneum judi-
nulla habenda eft ratio, fiquem alium graphum Mandatorium, cm major pars Curatorum manu
caverint.
\. PntimclurthamckSublibrarium quod
propria iubkriplcnnl. pnitulcnt
XXIII Mufc, Bibliothec.s Studio vacarc ncmim
In ipiis
according to their areas of specialization. There
lurch* cjufque SuccclP'rum in pcrpetuum
, & lo.
eft conccirum
torum
Cimeliarrhi Svngraphum adl'erat. Cura
ell,

ommum Cluroj;rapbis
nili
lignatum Studus liquidcm lu- was a charge to enter the museum; the admission
\l C .mcl.archa quolibct menfe Acaderr it, de .a conftituta lunt Sehola H. Horn Naturalis, & Proceftnum
ccm
lia
Nummos antiquos Mufco redd
AntiquiiatisCimclia, aut Minersilium, Planta rum, Anima
vel fakemtoudema Bibliothec* Alhmolcani continuum.
XXIV AblcnteCimcliarcha, Procimeliarchi eadem plane
rate decreased according to the number of visitors
Immve kiemplana ibidem deftdera u, fub peena muli3xde poteftas & auclornav
ccm Solidorum, in ufura Bibliothi :arum hujus Mufei luftra in a group but was in proportion to the length of
J,pOI< pn> ( oli he fe quo anno claplo dele
i

quamdebentur. "a i
uirum hare Cimelia ante
poftc.
lit plena Curalotum Csituen/u lieamo
Bminuaaax* rnlumeU c)*
tmudie [iefemtru
ftalulum. Ml l*K'D*ctrtal\pti
Am*
time spent; the visit consisted of a guided tour
XII Mufeum tut rare nemir conccflum eft, antequ; mmulfnlHt .
< i Exemplmj* m Mu/to st/tmo-
:<«qvt jxitiltx
meliarchx. Prcimeliarcha:,
dicendum
: Subhbrano Prxmiui leatK, .Silvia
/tl'mltana if IV»liana Jemprr
Hiflurt* XalMmlu, eV m utrnttte Bilualfvra
paUm pre/tuuetuur.
given by the cimeliarchus or his assistant, the pro-
perfolvat.

cimeliarchus. The museum was enriched by many

Bcrnardus Gardiner ym-OmttU I[C Tadlow /?eg. MtJ Preftg Dtp
Geo Bairrou Bet. Ad CtriH f|ch» Gardiner Pr«ar«/» jhi
Rob.ShippcnOJ.yfit NaJ Print. J
tSam. Nt-te fVnaraw 7>» generous gifts. Bequests of a scientific or archeo-
logical nature fostered other museological centers
at Oxford; some, like the Sheldonian Theatre
71. Regulations of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. 1714.
Written Latin, the regulations provided for the administration
in (1669), predated the Ashmolean while others, such
of the museum, the editing of the catalog, security measures, the hours as the Old Philosophy School and the Old Logic
of admission and visiting privileges. Entrance fees were charged according School, came later.
to the time spent in the museum but there were special rates which
Less than a century after the opening of the
depended on the number of visitors in a group.
Ashmolean to the public, England established the
firstnational museum whose origins were not
rooted in a royal collection. In 1753 Parliament
voted to acquire the collections and library of
Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753), with the view of
establishing a public museum. Sir Hans, who had
traveled to the West Indies, was physician to the
royal family, president of the Royal College of
Physicians and president of the Royal Society for
Improving Natural Knowledge, the citadel of
rationalism in England. In 1696 he inherited the
collections of another savant, his friend William
Charleton (or Courten), and during the next half

145
146 72
 century, he concentrated his fortune on building
a library and amassing a scientific collection,which
at hisdeath numbered 80,000 pieces. In his will he
offered the lot to the State for the sum of £20,000
which was to be paid to his two daughters and was
far less than its actual value. However, King
George II maintained that there was not enough
money in the Royal Treasury to meet the offer. The
acquisition was realized by Parliament through
funds raised in a public lottery and amounting to
£95,000. At the same time Parliament purchased
for £10,000 the library of Robert Harlev, Earl of
Oxford.
These two collections and the library be-
queathed to the nation by Sir Robert Bruce
Cotton(l 571 -1631) were consolidated to form a
—
public repository the British Museum. The "Sta-
tutes and Rules Relating to the Inspection and Use
of the British Museum" describe it as a "national
establishment founded by Authority of Parliament,
chiefly designed for the use of learned and studious
men, both natives and foreigners in their researches
into the several parts of knowledge." The institu-
tion had an important board of trustees which
included six members from the Cotton, Harley and
Sloane families, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the
Lord Chancellor, the Speaker of the House of
Commons, the President of the College of Physi-
cians, the Lord Chief Justice of England, other
high officials and fifteen elected members. The
administrative council has always played an essen-
73. Polyhymnia the Muse. Etruscan Academy, Pala^o Pre- tial role in Anglo-Saxon museology.
Cortona. This encaustic painting on slate was discovered in
torio,
On Monday,January 15, 1759, the institution,
1732 by a peasant. Marquis Tommasi acquired it in 1735 and be-
queathed it in 1755 to the Etruscan Academy at Cortona. It has been
—
comprising three departments Printed Books,
attributed in turn to a master of the Renaissance and to an imitator Manuscripts and Medals, Natural and Artificial
of the 18th century. However, the Etruscan Academy still exhibits —
Productions opened in Montague House in
it as an antique work. The discovery of antique paintings in towns Bloomsbury, not far from Sir Hans Sloane's
buried by Vesuvius led to forgeries which brought fame to the Neapolitan,
houses on Bloomsbury Place. The library had a
Guerra. Raphael Mengs produced an imitation antique fresco which
deceived Winckelmann himself.
reading room but the museum could be seen only
on written request for a guided tour. With library
i 72. Portrait of Bonifacius Amerbach, 1519, by Hans and collection at the disposal of scholars, the
Holbein the Elder. Detail. Kunstmuseum, Basel.This portrait
British Museum was then, as it is today, an institu-
of the famous Renaissance humanist and printer was in the Amerbach
cabinet which was bought in 1661 by the city of Basel to prevent its
tion for the advancement of knowledge. As
removal to Holland; the collection was placed on exhibition in the prestigious as they are, all its archeological collec-
university library. tions were admitted as "curiosities." The institu-

147
74. Towneley's Library on
Park Street, in 1782, by
Johann Zoffany. Towneley Hall
Art Gallery and Museum, Burn-
In' (England), In the library
oj Sir Charles Towneley, Zoffa-
ny depicts London' s principal anti-
quarians in conversation with the
famous amateur, whose collection
was purchased by the British
Museum after his death in 1805.

148
75. The So-called Bust of
Clytie, First-century Roman art.
British Museum, London. The
best-known piece in the Tonmelej
collectionwas a bust of a young
Roman who is identified by
girl
some as the water nymph, Clytie,
and by others as Isis. It can be
seen next to Sir Charles in the
Zoffany painting.

149

J
tion's approach to artfrom the standpoint of archeology. The first great archeo-
is

logical collection acquired by the Department of Natural and Artificial Productions

was that of antique vases and marbles assembled by William Hamilton during his
ambassadorship to Naples; it entered the museum in 1772. The celebrated collection
of marbles brought together by Charles Towneley, a trustee of the museum, was
bought after his death in 1805. The purchase of the Elgin marbles in 1816 and the
acquisition of the Towneley collection transformed the British Museum into a museum
of art. A curious picture by Johann Zoftany, painted in 1782, preserves for us a record
of the library on Park Street, overcrowded with the marbles of the famous collector,
Towneley, who is shown in conversation with three fellow antiquarians. Undoubtedly
the essentially scientific and educational flavor of the British Museum led Parliament
to reject a proposal in 1778 to annex to it a pinakotheke, which would have been formed
by the purchase of the Walpole collection; this fine cabinet eventually passed into
Russian hands.
Cambridge University had to wait much longer than did Oxford for its museum.
It was the bequest of Richard, Viscount Fitzwilliam, who died in 1816, which
established it, but its creation can be attributed to the same intellectual renaissance
which engendered the British Museum: the Age of Enlightenment. Viscount Fitz-
william was graduated from Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in 1764; a fanatic melomane, he
built up a remarkable music library. The legacy to his alma mater included 10,000
volumes, among them, some admirable illuminated manuscripts, and 144 paintings,
some of which had come from the collection of the Due d'Orleans.
By the time the doors of the British Museum opened, the French public had been
enjoying for some years an assemblage of masterpieces which, although not "national
property," was reasonably accessible to all. One could admire at the Palais du Luxem-
bourg the twenty-two Rubens paintings in the Medici gallery and one hundred ten
paintings and some drawings in the apartments of the Queen of Spain across the court.
The realization of this exhibition attested to a peculiarly eighteenth-century outlook
that encouraged the participation of a larger public in the benefits of culture. In France,
where there was widespread censorship by the state, freedom of speech found its sole
outlet in treatises and pamphlets published abroad and secretly distributed at home;
this was the only form of the press under the Ancien Regime.
In the first half of the eighteenth century, the chefs d'auvre belonging to the Crown
had become virtually inaccessible. At the time of Louis XIV, who lived in the public
eye, visible to all, Versailles, the official residence of the monarchy, belonged to the
whole of France permission to visit it was easily obtained in order to be present when
; ;

the king dined, it sufficed to have a sword and a plumed hat — which could be rented
from the palace concierge. The gardens also were public and Louis XIV himself had
written a notice giving pointers on how best to visit them. Under Louis XV, Versailles
became the home of the king. Tiring of the grandiose apartments, he had other,
smaller ones installed, following the example of the Sun King who by the end of his
reign was seeking refuge from so much pomp in the intimate surroundings of
Le Trianon, Marly or even in the paneled apartments he had had laid out at Versailles
in 1684. There was no place for the large-scale classical or baroque paintings acquired
in the seventeenth century in the mirrored, paneled salons. The older works were put

150
aside in other quarters by the Direction des Bdtiments and the king's indifference to the
matter was so great that he thought nothing of lending them to private individuals to
ornament their houses; thus, the Due d'Autun had in his gallery from 1715 to 1736
Raphael's Baldassare Castiglione, Annibale Carracci's Fishing and Hunting and Titian's
Pardo Venus, Madonna of the Rabbit and Portrait of a Man. Artists could hardly find any
Old Masters to admire and study, with the exception of those in the celebrated galerie
d'Or/e'ans, generously put at their disposal. An old servant of the regent, acting as
custodian for the collection toward the end of the Ancien Regime, contributed to the
gallery's success among visitors with his countless anecdotes. Formerly a jockey for
the prince, he refused tips. "Monseigneur pays his people," he would say with pride,
"and old Laplace has been eating the bread of the house of Orleans since he came into
the world."
The monarchy's insolvency provoked strong criticism and on November 23, 1744,
Orry, the Directeur des Bdtiments, found on his desk an anonymous memorandum
deploring the dispersion and inaccessibility of the royal collections and demanding that
they be exhibited in the Galerie des Ambassadeurs in the Tuileries; Bachaumont is
occasionally suggested as its author. It produced no results and three years later was
followed by a pamphlet edited and printed by Lafont de Saint Yenne and entitled
Reflexions sur quelques causes present de la peinture en France. The author lamented the
decline in painting, attributing it to the fact that artists were deprived of seeing examples
"by the great European masters and although no expense was spared in the forming of
his Majesty's cabinet, today the paintings are hidden away in badly lighted rooms at
Versailles, unknown or unexciting to strangers, owing to the impossibility of seeing
them." One of the reasons he gives for resurrecting them from oblivion is "the inevit-
able decay caused by lack of air and light" and he invokes the precedent of the Biblio-
theque Nationale "installed in new quarters that scholars find accomodating."
The Direction des Bdtiments seemingly paid no attention and two years later, Lafont
de Saint Yenne repeated his plea, publishing L 'Ombre du Grand Colbert, le Louvre et la
Ville de Paris in 1749. This complicated treatise was conceived in the form of a "dia-
logue among the dead," with Colbert, the city of Paris and the Louvre meeting on the
Champs Elysees to manifest their anger over the artistic situation in France. The
Louvre declared to Colbert that the chefs d'auvre he procured for the royal collection
"have not seen the light and have relinquished the places of honor they occupied in
their owner's cabinets for an obscure cell at Versailles where they have been decaying
for the last fifty years."
This time officialdom was provoked to action and in a move to satisfy the public,
the royal administration of the Louvre ordered an exhibition of 110 paintings at the
Palais du Luxembourg to begin the fourteenth of October, 1750; it could be visited
from October through April on Wednesday and Saturday mornings and in the after-
noon of the same days in August and September. The choice of paintings was eclectic
and included works by masters of various schools; it was particularly strong in master-
pieces from the Italian Renaissance, the forte of the royal cabinet. There were also a
few drawings which, as Bailly, keeper of the king's paintings, noted "were left un-
numbered and unlabeled in order to give enlightened amateurs the privilege of deciding
on authorship." A strange way to educate the public! The exhibition was obviously

151
 addressed to the connoisseur. About the same time,
the conservation of art works became an important
concern; the techniques of relining, transfer and
restoration were practiced. A Catalogue raisonne of
the collections of the Crown was published in 1752,
edited by the keeper of paintings, the artist
Lepicie.

The partisans for the exhibition of paintings

belonging to the monarchy soon had the backing
of Diderot. In 1765, in the article Louvre for his
Encyclopedic Volume IX, the writer outlined a pro-
,

ject for turning the Louvre into something which

would approximate the Mouseion of Alexander the
Great. The palace was to house not only the col-
lections but scholarly societies as well, that is to
say, various academies. Already installed in the
Louvre, but only on the chance that unused space
was available, they were to be accomodated accord-
ing to a rational plan and the academicians them-
selves were to be given lodging; the sculpture
collection would be disposed on the ground floor
of the palace, paintings, in the gallery along the
Seine (then containing relief maps of fortified cities
in the kingdom, which were to be removed to a
north hall Diderot proposed constructing). Schol-
arly organizations' in other parts of Paris were to
be regrouped at the Louvre, destined to become
the Temple of Arts and Sciences: the Cabinet of
Medals, the Royal Library and the Natural History
77. Count d'Angiviller at 49, by Joseph Siffrein Duples- Cabinet.
sis. VersaillesMuseum. Direct ear General des Bat in/ enis under
Louis XVI, Count d'Angiviller is shown holding the plan of the Inspired by these ideas, the Marquis of Marigny,
Grande Galerie of the Louvre where the paintings from the collections Directeur des Bailments, submitted to the king as
of the Crown would be exhibited to the public. early as 1768 a plan for carrying them out, but
without success. However, the notion of opening
a "museum" in the Louvre received fresh stimulus
under Louis XVI. One is wrong to attribute to
this king a certain indifference toward affairs of
i 76. Jacob Ruisdael: Le Coup de Soleil. Louvre Museum,
Paris. Though the efforts of Count d'Angiviller, Director of public state; the victim of an inherent lassitude which
Buildings, to bring the Crown collections before the public in the Main kept him from making decisions, he was much
Gallery of the Louvre came to nothing, nevertheless, in preparing for more open to new ideas concerning the national
this event, he can be credited with introducing a methodical policy for
and public well-being than was his predecessor,
acquiring works with a view to completing collections in schools where
Louis XV, who remained ensconced in monarch-
gaps existed. He was the real initiator of the move to acquire the col-
lectionsof Dutch paintings in the Louvre. This masterpiece by Ruisdael ical traditions current since Louis XIV. Louis XVI
was bought in 1785 ut a sale held by Count de Vaudreitil. took care to avail himself of advice, perhaps too

153
much what this unfortunate monarch failed to do was to chart a direction
so; in short,
for the state. Thehistory of the museum can be instructive on this point. In 1774, the
first year of his reign, Louis XVI named as Directeur General des Bdtiments Count
d'Angiviller, who was to prove an intelligent and zealous administrator who instituted
a veritable fine arts policy. Posterity has not condoned his numerous commissions to
contemporary artists, too immersed in an academic, sentimental and moralizing
aesthetic, but he is given credit for the efforts he made with regard to the opening of

the museum. At the outset he took stock of the royal collections, perceiving that while
rich in certain areas, in others they presented considerable lacunae, the result of an
indifference to changes in taste on the part of Louis XVth's government. During the
course of the eighteenth century, amateurs placed the Flemish and Dutch, schools on
an equal footing with the Italian, precisely the areas in which the royal cabinet was
weakest. D'Angiviller decided to change this situation and henceforth the king was
represented at public sales and agents combed Europe for paintings. Masterpieces of
northern art joined those from Italy in the storehouse: Helena Fourment and her Two
Children, The Martyrdom of Saint Lierin, The Four Evangelists by Rubens; Van Dyck's
Charles the First; Ruisdael's Burst of Sunlight; Rembrandt's Hendrickje S toffels, The
Philosopher, Supper at Emmaus and Man with a Gold Chain. Nor were paintings by minor
Dutch and Flemish masters neglected. Conforming to the neoclassic aesthetic of the
period, d'Angiviller showed a marked preference for the history painting of the
preceding century and bought two important series by Eustache Le Sueur (1617-1655).
The king of France was represented at the sale of Jesuit treasures in Belgium, but his
agent found himself competing against a serious contingent from the Austrian govern-
ment which, also in the process of establishing a public museum (in the Belvedere,
Vienna), had schemed to appropriate the most beautiful pieces: thus Austria carried
off Caravaggio's Madonna of the Rosary and Rubens's Miracles of St. Francis Xavier. To
compensate for having been outwitted, d'Angiviller, always eager for paintings by
northern artists, sent agents to French Flanders to seduce with words the Superiors of
its various convents, hoping, but in vain, to wrest from them their painted altarpieces.

As early as 17' '7, d'Angiviller had the relief maps of the fortified cities removed
from the Grande Galerie to the Hotel des Invalides, where they remain to this day.
With a view to their eventual exhibition in the Louvre, he began a methodical restora-
tion of the paintings in the royal collection and had his new acquisitions made ready for
hanging. The frames executed by Buteux were well suited to the museum setting
—sober, uniform and with a cartouche for the artist's name and the title of the painting.
In 1784 the painter, Hubert Robert, who had already collaborated on studies under-
taken to plan the future museum, was named keeper of the royal collection.
When one consults the thick dossiers on the museum project preserved in the
National Archives, one cannot say that preparation was lightly undertaken. The theory
and technique of modern museology began with these works. In 1779 or 1778 d'Angi-
viller appointed a commission of nine to study the divers problems posed by the
transformation of the Grande Galerie into a museum; the question of lighting was the
most difficult to solve. SoufBot proposed a system of lighting from above but the
commission rejected it as too inconvenient and costly; however, the project appealed
to the board of directors who continued to support it even after Soufflot's death in

154
78. Page of the illustrated inventory of the 79. The Hall of the Italians at the Diisseldorf Gallery. This detail from an old
paintings gallery of Emperor Charles VI in engraving shows how the collection of the Elector Charles Theodore was arranged.
Vienna. Ordered by Count Althann, this inventory was Established in 1756, the Diisseldorf Gallery presented a remarkable, early attempt at
made in the form of a three-volume album of miniatures museologic rationalisation. Although the paintings were crowded together, almost frame
painted by Ferdinand Storffer. to frame, on the walls, they were grouped according to the individual artists and schools
of painting.

1780. Seeking to avoid delays, d'Angiviller asked the Academie d'Architecture for an
opinion. The study panel appointed elaborated six basic principles treating the lighting,
the adaptability of the area and measures of fire prevention. The Academy proved very
progressive on these issues, stipulating as early as 1786 that the wooden framework be
resheathed in noncombustible materials and that iron be substituted for wood wherever
possible. As for the lighting, it recommended an overhead method. With the com-
mission still hesitant, having been impressed by the opinion of certain artists that
overhead lighting was unsuited for pictures, d'Angiviller decided to try an experiment.
On November 2, 1788, he submitted to the king a project limited to an expenditure of
80,000 livres, which would attempt to realize the overhead lighting of the Salon Carre
in time for the August 1789 exhibition of the Academy of Painting and Sculpture. Since
the public attending these exhibitions had always protested about the difficulty of

155

J
seeing the paintings in this location, the experiment would be decisive. The king accept-
ed the proposal; at the same time the salon opened with its new lighting, the brick fire-
proofing of the framework of the Grande Galerie was completed.
Despite all the investigations, or perhaps on account of them, the situation grew
worse for the public. In 1779 the gallery in the Palais du Luxembourg, bestowed as an
appanage upon the Count of Provence (later Louis XVIII), was ordered closed. The
warehouses of the Department of Buildings were filled with paintings removed from
the Luxembourg, including the wonderful works by Rubens from the Medici Gallery,
which had been withheld from the gift made to the brother of Louis XVI, indicating
that the individual worth of a painting superseded its decorative function.
D'Angiviller intended to carry out his plans quickly for the remodeling of the
Grande Galerie after 1789 but was prevented bv the Revolution. When one examines
the causes for this failure, one perceives that it was due less to the financial crisis sus-
tained at the end of the Ancien Regime than to the scruples plaguing the Director of the
Department of Buildings. D'Angiviller himself conceded this point in a journal entry
for November 2, 1788: "Plans for creating the museum were abandoned, owing not so
—
much to the difficulties of the time as to the diversity of opinions not on the question
of overhead lighting (the advisability of which was not doubted by informed people)
but on the different methods that ought or could be employed to obtain it." The
problem was certainly thoroughly studied, but a little more empiricism would have been
preferred to this excess of theoretical speculation to which French rationalism too
easily succumbs. D'Angiviller was convinced of the worth of Soufflot's scheme, which
in truth was excellent. Why did he not have it carried out? He would have provided the
gallery with good lighting, thereby avoiding Lefuel's destructions with their mediocre
results less than a century later. He could have resolved the issue had he not been so
respectful of "authorized" opinions and the counsels of the various commissions. The
king, represented by his Directeur des Bdtiments, cannot be reproached for exercising
absolutism in this affair, only for failing to act decisively. On this subject, an historical
comparison of the project for the Grande Galerie with that of the Colonnade of the
Louvre is instructive. Louis XIV and Colbert, like Louis XVI and d'Angiviller, wished
to consult the maximum number of authorities, with Louis XVI going so far as to give
his inquiry international scope. The differences of opinion on the subject of the proposed
colonnade would have resulted in an anarchy similar to the one precipitated by the
projects suggested for the Grande Galerie had not the personal influence of Louis XIV,
firmly backed by Colbert, intervened. D'Angiviller conducted himself like a minister
responsible to a parliament and to opinion.
Although deprived of the collection of the Crown, the Parisian public could visit
a few cabinets. In the Couvent des Grands Augustins, the seat of the Order of the
Holy Ghost, hung portraits of the knights of the order it constituted a sort of historical
;

museum open to the public on weekends. In 1778 the Garde Meuble, located in the pre-
sent-day Hotel de la Marine on the Place de la Concorde, was open on the second
Tuesday of each month from 9:00 to 1:00 between Quasimodo and Saint Martin's Day
(the first Sunday after Lent until November 11); displayed there were the jewels belong-
ing to the Crown, suits of armor worn by the kings of France, a few antique marble
statues and some bronzes.

156
 • .

oJccotiD (Stages.

iv.Reces time crLimandc . £^ sy ^4iv:Keces ccole Cl/lcmandco .

<Lsnemier (Ltaae^.

y la/i du oJdeLvedere ^ruperieurou ae la C/a/cne <J.3ps\. a ( uenne

80. Plan of the Paintings Gallery installed in Schloss Belvedere, Vienna. This plan of the installation realised by
Meckel in 1778, under the ordersof Chancellor Kaunit^, shows that the gallery of paintings belonging to the Crown were given a logical
arrangement ; the works were grouped chronologically and by school.

Private individuals organized museums also. In 1778 Pavin de la Blancherie,

author of Nouvelles de la Republique des Letlres el des Arts, opened to the public his col-
lection of art works, natural curiosities and scientific instruments in his quarters on the
Rue de Tournon; the museum was the rendezvous of amateurs and scholars until its
closing in 1785. Beginning in 1781, one could visit in the Palais Royal the museum of
Pilatre de Rozier, opened with the government's approval and the personal sanction
of the king and queen; in addition to the scientific cabinet, provision had been made to
give courses in mathematics, anatomy, chemistry, modern languages and art; anyone
could attend upon payment of the enrollment fees. Jacques Bonnier de la Mosson

157
(1702-1744) welcomed visitors to his scientific cabinet, the most beautiful in Paris
and among the richest and best catalogued in Europe; it was liberally opened to the
public by the owner who liked to greet his guests himself.
Museums became the vogue. In his Tableau de Paris, published in Amsterdam in
1783, L. S. Mercier gave his definition of the current rage: "New establishments that
various individuals are trying to force on us. They will have difficulty in succeeding
because there is too little liberty in our government to permit the sure development of
private views and, besides, the capital cultivates tastes and fancies rather than a real
and constant love for the arts and sciences."
Vienna's picture gallery furnishes us with a particularly representative example of
the metamorphosis of a royal collection into a public museum during the course of the
eighteenth century.
The artistic policy of Emperor Charles VI (reigned 1711-1740) ushered in the Age
of the Baroque in Austria; he encouraged architecture and collecting on a truly imperial
scale. The emperor found in Count Althann, whom he named his chief architect, great
resources and staunch support. The count's chief task was to realize a new presentation
of the royal collection of paintings, most of which had come from Rudolf II and
Archduke Leopold-Wilhelm; the cabinet was to be housed in the remodeled Stallburg,
a former arsenal. This installation, which involved the execution of a decor of paneling
and the fashioning of new frames, took eight years: 1720-1728. Every facet of the
project is known to us through two iconographical documents, one a unique piece of
museology — the inventory drawn up by Count Althann, illustrated on parchment by
the painter Ferdinand Storffer with miniatures of all the pictures this pictorial inventory
;

comprises three volumes, realized in 1720, 1730 and 1733. As to the disposition of the
collection through the various rooms, it is reproduced in a volume of etchings by Frans
van Stampart and Anton von Prenner published in 1735 under the title Prodomus Thea-
\trum artis pictoriae. Given black frames embellished with gilt rocaille, the paintings were
treated as simple decorative elements; all the schools were mixed; format and subject,
not quality, determined the choice. Some masterpieces were omitted, others hung
beside astonishingly mediocre paintings; baroque compositions predominated; to
achieve an overall symmetry, there was no hesitation in cutting down or, as was more
often the case, in enlarging the pictures. In the principal salon hung a vast painting by
Francesco Solimena, Count Althann presenting Emperor Charles VI with the Inventory of
the Picture Gallery, somewhat of a misconstruction of this museological effort, all the
more surprising since it was not conceived as a suite of salons for entertaining but, from
the first, as a museum.
One is led to believe that this baroque conception of miscellanea with regard to
the exhibition of paintings expressed a particular Zeitgeist that forty years later, when a
more logical installation of the museum was undertaken, provoked lively criticism.
One readily distinguishes in this re-installation project the talent for organization that
was the forte of Joseph II; ruling with his mother, Maria Theresa, since 1765, he had
a hand in the shaping of the State from that time on. A
regrouping of the paintings in
the various royal households was ordered; "modern" paintings as well as those
expressive of a different aesthetic, for instance, works by the early German School,
were affected. Between 1776 and 1778 the painter Rosa worked on re-installing the

158
royal collection in —
more appropriate quarters in Schloss Belvedere, formerly the
summer palace of Prince Eugene of Savoy. Rosa was reproached for his insufficiency
of knowledge and in 1778 Chancellor Kaunitz entrusted the commission to the Basel
expert, Chretien de Mechel; despite some quarrels with his rival, Rosa, Mechel success-
fully acquitted himself of the task and the finished catalog, written in French, appeared
in Basel in 1784. The exact date of the museum's opening is not known; the public was
admitted three times a week. The reform had been radical; paintings which had been
enlarged were reduced to their original dimensions; they were stripped of the
sumptuous frames given them at Stallburg and received new ones in a simpler, uniform,
neoclassical style; for these frames alone the considerable sum of 70,000 florins was
expended. In the preface to the catalog, Mechel extolled the advantages of a methodical
presentation: the paintings were grouped according to schools, within which works by
the same master were kept together; progress from room to room was according to
chronological order "so that one learns at a brief glance infinitely more than one could
if the same paintings were hung without regard to the period which had made them...
It must interest artists and amateurs the world over to know there actually exists a
Repository where the history of art is made visible."
Mechel left no doubt as to the pedagogical character of his new installation: "A great
public collection of this type [is] more for one's instruction than delight." There
existed, however, a whole faction of Viennese who preferred to have their senses
delighted; they insisted that "an exhibition is more impressive when all kinds of
paintings are presented together" and they cherished the "effects of contrast." In 1785
von Rittershausen published an indictment of the situation in his Betrachtungen uber die
Kaiserlich-Konigliche Bildergalerie %u Wien. He went so far as to say, "One who desires
to write an art history can enter [the museum] but the sensitive man is kept away." The
purpose of a gallery is not to divulge historical knowledge but "to develop taste and
awaken the noblest instincts of the heart. This is why 'it must be founded on aesthetic
principles."Von Rittershausen proposed a redivision of the collection into four groups
according to matters of drawing, color, composition and spiritual content and, within
each group, a further redivision by subject. A "Holy of Holies" category would
receive the greatest masterpieces.
Mechel's methodical presentation, corresponding to a taste for logic endemic to
the Age of Reason, was "neoclassical" in spirit; von Rittershausen's plan, reflecting an
attitude that still championed the aging painter Maulbertsch, was governed by a
baroque aesthetic that liked variety and fantasy and was plunged into an imaginary
world beyond the reaches of time. This polemic at the very dawn of modern museology
commands our attention, for it re-occurs each time a major transformation is about to
upend the museological institution. Attuned to changes in taste, the public museum
often finds itself caught between the divergent aesthetics of an old and a new generation.
The choice of which to follow rests with the curator.
Vienna debated the merits of the rational presentation of paintings, but the gallery
at Diisseldorf went ahead, thirty years earlier, in 1756, and realized such an installation.
Elector Charles Theodore (f 1799) had the collection disposed in a building constructed
for that purpose in 1710 by his predecessor, Johann Wilhelm. Extant engravings inform
us of the arrangement eventually decided upon by the Diisseldorf painter Lambert

159
 Krahe; paintings still covered all available wall space but at least they were classed
according to master and school; very simple, "functional" borders enframed them.
A rational presentation and absence of ornament likewise governed the installation of
the Hofgartengalerie, a public museum established by the Bavarian Charles Theodore.
In 1780 and 1781 the collection was installed in a specially designed area under the
existing arcades of a garden court; the space was lighted laterally by lofty windows.
At Kassel the landgrave of Hesse opened his gallery to the public in 1760. That at
Dresden could be visited on request. Its fame spread with the appearance in 1753-1754
of two volumes of reproductions with accompanying text in French by its curator
Heinecken a French guide to the collection was published in 1765 and one in German
;

in 1771. In a celebrated passage in Dichtung und Wahrheit. Goethe described his excite-
ment upon visiting the gallery for the first time in 1768: "The impatiently awaited hour
of opening arrived and mv admiration exceeded all my expectations. That salon turning
in on itself, magnificent and so well-kept, the freshly gilded frames, the well-waxed
parquetry, the profound silence that reigned, created a solemn and unique impression,
akin to the emotion experienced upon entering a House of God, and it deepened as one
looked at the ornaments on exhibition which, as much as the temple that housed them,
were objects of adoration in that place consecrated to the holy ends of art." Looking
at art in terms of a religious experience began a new chapter in museology. No longer
existing solely for the delectation of refined amateurs, the museum, as it evolved into
a public institution, simultaneously metamorphosed into a temple to human genius.
As either artists or aristocrats, the early connoisseurs felt at home with art. On the other
hand, the "general public" experienced a sense of admiration that eluded expression
when it was exposed to the fruits of genius; out of this confrontation arose the notion
of art's transcendant worth. This opinion rapidly gained ground in the nineteenth
century, as did the more or less express view that an incurable sterility had stilled the
wellsprings of modern art, exiling the creative act itself to a sort of golden world.
P. J. Grosley, a Frenchman who had traveled in Italy, recounted in his Observations
81. Galileo's Lens. Museo
Na^ionale diStoria della Scien^a. sur I'ltalie et les Italiens a visit he paid to the Paduan Faccioli, an ecclesiastic and pro-
in the Palasgp Castellani, Flo- fessor at the local university, who had built up "a collection as scholarly as it was
rence. In 1677 this lens (broken), singular. His series of pictures constituted a history of painting since its rebirth in
with iv hid) Galileo observed the
Europe. It began with Greek icons, on the imitation of which the first painters of Italy
satellites of Jupiter, was mounted
like a valuable relic in a
had trained their artistic sensibilities. The earliest Italian works were tasteless, servile
magni-
ficent frame, made by
ivory copies of Madonnas, as dryly and as flatly executed as these crudely colored woodcuts
I '//tor/o (roster; it was one
of that decorate the cottages of our peasants. Art gradually matured in the succeeding
the most beautiful ornaments in the masters. Giotto, Mantegna, the Bellinis prepared the way for Raphael and Titian..."
grand dukes' scientific cabinets
Faccioli's galleria progre ssiva, already formed by 1758, might have its prototype in
(which had been started by Cosi-
mo I). In I 77 ) Grand Duke another, quite similar cabinet assembled during the first half of the settecento by Father
Leopold I ins/a/led the museum Lodoli, a Venetian monk who was one of the theorists of neoclassicism. With scant
near the astronomic observatory. financial resources at his disposal, this curate managed to bring together a collection of
If hen Florence was flooded on paintings by Venetian masters that began with "a few scraps of Greek paintings" and
November 4, 1966, this exhibit
ended with Bellinis and Mantegnas; he also added a few examples from the Florentine,
one of the three hurriedly
removed from the museum by the
Bolognese, German and Flemish schools.
curator. Mme. Honel/i. to save This essentially pedagogical concept of a gallery devoted to tracing the history of
them from the rising waters. painting since its origins was formulated as early as 1550 by Vasari in the first edition

160
161
of his Vite; the principles had been set forth but were not put to use until the eighteenth
century. A Vasarian system was adopted in 1770 by Luigi Lanzi for the Gabinetto di
Antkhi Quadri in the Uffizi. Lanzi gave a theoretical exposition of his methods in his
Storia pittorica dell' Italia del Risorgimento delle belle arti presso al fino del XVIII secolo,

which appeared in 1789. In this treatise he fitted the various schools of painting into
a grid that was to govern the arrangement of European pinakothekai until the present
generation.
The Uffizi, like all the Medici collections, were turned over to the state by the last
princess of the house, Anna Maria Ludovica, daughter of Cosimo III widowed at ;

twenty-six by the death of the Palatinate Elector Johann Wilhelm of Neuburg-Wittels-

bach, she returned to Florence to live out her days under the reign of her brother,
Giovanni Gastone de' Medici, last of the Medici grand dukes. He was succeeded in 1737
by Francis of Lorraine (later Emperor Francis I). Anna Maria Ludovica lived in a wing
of the Pitti Palace until her brother's death in 1737 when, seeking to avoid frequent
contact with the Austrian grand duke, she withdrew to a convent. Her piety and charity
endeared her to the people who venerated her as the last descendant of the family that
had brought grandeur to Florence. She received a good education from her great-uncle
Cardinal Leopoldo de'Medici, himself a collector of artists' self-portraits and drawings
the latter, catalogued by the Florentine scholar Baldinucci, was to form the nucleus of
the Uffizi's drawings cabinet. Anna Maria Ludovica assembled a pinakotheke of her
own that concentrated on the German and Flemish schools she had come to love
during her long residence in the north of Europe. She also spent enormous sums for
dresses and jewels. She died in 1743, having stipulated in a will drawn up in 1737 that
Florence was to receive the Medicean collections. According to the terms of the bequest,
all her family's treasures in Florence, Rome and elsewhere became the property of

Tuscany, in the custody of the grand duke and his successors under the double condi-
tion that the collections forever remain in Florence and that they be made available to
the Tuscan people and the public of all nations. These conditions have been respected
almost without exception, which explains why the Medici collections are the only
princely assemblage Italy has kept intact to the present day.
Grand Duke Leopold I succeeded his father Francis when the latter was elected
emperor in 1745 and was himself forced to relinquish the duchy in 1790 upon the
death of his brother, Joseph II, whom he replaced as emperor. Leopold governed the
modest territory of Tuscany with ability and foresight, proving to be one of the most
enlightened heads of state in eighteenth-century Europe; he completely re-organized
the government along resolutely modern lines and instituted a remarkable museological
policy. He appointed a director for the Uffizi who was responsible to the Minister of
Finance; his task was to overhaul the picture gallery with the help of Luigi Lanzi, who
was given the title assistante antiquario Lanzi re-arranged the paintings by schools and
;

in 1782 published a guide for the visitor's use. As for the antiquities, a comprehensive
inventory listing all pieces in the various palaces, villas and gardens of the Medici was
drawn up in 1781, with the express purpose of consolidating them under one roof the —
Uffizi. In 1775 the celebrated group of Niobids was sent from Rome and a beautiful long
gallery in neoclassical style was laid out to receive them. Grand Duke Ferdinand III,
ascending the throne of Tuscany in 1791, continued his predecessor's museological

162
policies. He had cartouches made for all the paintings and in 1798 he negotiated an
exchange with the gallery in Vienna whereby Diirer's Adoration of the Magi and Titian's
Flora entered the Uffizi. The prelate Lanzi, originally an Etruscologist, condensed his
vast knowledge of the history of painting into his book Storia pittorica dell' Italia, which
appeared in 1795/96 in this work he set up the geographical categories which museums
;

in the nineteenth century were to follow. The finest antique and Renaissance works
—
were installed in the Tribuna by Buontalenti a presentation that was marked with
success. A rather whimsical painting by Zoffany, exhibited at the Royal Academy in
London in 1780, shows a group of amateurs, with the best-knOwn English residents of
Florence among them, meeting in the Tribuna.
In his consolidation and re-organization of the Medici collections, Grand Duke
Leopold I took care not to neglect science. He put the prelate Fontane at the head of a
museum for physics and natural history, installed in 1775 in quarters adjoining the
Specola, an old Florentine observatory. The grand duke evinced great personal interest
in chemistry and the cabinet he devoted to it has been kept intact with its original
cabinets and all his instruments and beakers. Florence's Museo Nazionale di Storia
Delia Scienza, today housed in the Palazzo Castellani, contains all the scientific objects
and instruments amassed since the sixteenth century by the grand dukes the beautifully
;

executed and elaborate mountings given these instruments make it as much an art as a
science museum.
During the course of the eighteenth century Naples emerged as one of Europe's
great museological centers. The first accretion of treasures was realized with the
transfer of the Farnese collections in Parma and Rome to the Neopolitan city. The last
ol the Farneses, wife of Philip V
of Spain, celebrated for her matchmaking triumphs
— she managed to marry each of her children to a kingdom —
bequeathed her collection
to her son, Charles of Bourbon, crowned king of the Two Sicilies in 1735. Started by
Pope Paul III and added to throughout the sixteenth century, it numbered among the
finest collections of the Renaissance. Upon their arrival in Naples, the medallions and
paintings were installed for better or worse in the old Reggia. It was there that Charles
de Brosses could, in 1739/40, admire the medallions, extol the worth of the library
(still unshelved) and contemplate the paintings "accumules sur un escalier borgne ou tout le

monde allait pisser." He thought the paintings had sustained great injuries in their hasty
removal during a time of war. As the marine air was causing further damage to them,
housed as they were in a palace not far from the bay, it was decided to remove the entire
quadreria borbonica to the Palazzo Reale di Capodimonte on a hill overlooking the city;
the large rooms of this new palace (construction had begun only a few years earlier,
in September 1738) were remodeled to receive the cabinet but the alterations took a
painfully long time. The antiquities from the Palazzo Farnese in Rome, many of which
had come from the Baths of Caracalla, were likewise installed in Capodimonte. The
excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii so enriched the store of antiquities at Naples
that the city suddenly found itself the rival of Rome. Emmanuel de Lorraine, Prince of
Elbceuf, had discovered Herculaneum in 1709; excavation of the site was vigorously
renewed by Charles IV of Bourbon as early as 1738, the first year of his reign. Although
it had been discovered in the seventeenth century (by the architect, Fontana), digging

commenced at Pompeii only in 1748 by Charles who was passionately interested in

163
82. Transport of Antiques
from the Portici Museum
to the Naples Museum, by
Jean-Louis Despre^. Water color.
Wildenstein Collection, New York.
In a triumphant procession the
antiquities from Herculaneum —
until then kept in the royal villa
at Portici, near Vesuvius —were
moved to a university building
which n as remodeled as a museum
and u here the treasures would be
protected from the danger of a
volcanic eruption.

these excavations even after he became king of Spain, he kept au courant about the
;

discoveries, growing impatient with his son Ferdinand for his near abandonment of the
projects. To receive the superabundance of antiquities recovered from the two cities,
the king had a museum installed in a wing of his royal villa at Portici, the former port
of Herculaneum. Bronzes, marbles, medallions, intaglios, furniture, papyri and all
manner of utensils filled the ground floor; paintings, the second. Still visible today is
the inscription Herculanense Museum over one of the gateways to Portici. This windfall
of antiquities was cloaked in mystery; aware of the growing curiosity among an inter-
national public, the king commissioned a publication on the excavations from a learned
society which was to spend years on the task. In the interim, the museum was only
halfheartedly open to the public — drawing and note-taking were forbidden. The son
of a shoemaker in Stendal, the autodidact Johann Joachim Winckelmann, who was to
become the greatest antiquary of his time and the first modern art historian, was
graciously received at the palace. He was, however, suspected of being a spy sent to
pilfer the works of the Royal Academy and was made to wait a long time for permission
to visit the museum and, once admitted, was subject to the same interdicts as the other
visitors. In truth an emissary of the Elector of Saxony, whose daughter was the queen
of Naples, Winckelmann had arrived in 1756, with the charge to gather data on the
excavations. Despite the difficulties he encountered, he succeeded in publishing reports
on Herculaneum but the affair ended with a revocation of his rights to visit the kingdom
of the Two Sicilies.

164
 The excitement over discoveries, particularly
over paintings, stimulated the forgery industry the ;

engraver Francesco Giuseppe Casanova and the

painter Giuseppe Guerra made forgeries their
specialty. Even artists of great repute, like Raphael
Mengs, were quick to capitalize on deceit; Mengs
made a pastiche in fresco of Jupiter and Ganymede
which Winckelmann celebrated as "one of the most
beautiful pieces bequeathed us by Antiquity."
The state of affairs in the archeological museum
eventually improved. After an eruption of Vesu-
vius on August 8, 1779 threatened the royal villa
at Portici, the newly founded Academy of Sciences
and Fine Arts asked Ferdinand I to transfer the
cabinet of antiquities from the villa to Naples. He
complied and they chose to install it in a building
originally intended as stables at the time of its
completion in 1586 by Domenico Fontana; then,
in 1615, it was remodeled as a Pala^o degli Studi
(university); today it houses the Museo Nazionale
of Naples. The transport of the statuary, columns
and objects stored at Portici was effected with great
—
pomp the wagons, transformed into triumphal
chariots, passed before an elegant audience that sat
in shaded reviewing stands along the route; a
drawing by the Frenchman Desprez, then in Naples
where he was working on illustrations for Vivant-
r
Denon's I oyage pittoresque de Naples el de la Sicile,
preserves for us a record of the day. The following
century another story was added to the Museo
Nazionale in order to accommodate the pinacoteca
from Capodimonte; when the present renovations
are completed, the museum will once again be
devoted exclusively to antiquities after World ;

War the paintings collection was removed to its

II,
original location in the Palazzo Reale di Capodi-
monte, now the Galleria Nazionale di Capo-
dimonte.
83 and 84. Medallion struck for Clement XII on The more or less fortuitous growth of the
the occasion of the opening of the Capitoline Museum in museum in Naples was a much more ordered
Rome which was founded by the pope in 1734. The medallion process in Rome. At that time Rome was the anti-
is in a building constructed in the XVIIth century facing
quarian's paradise intellectuals, artists and scholars
;

the Pala^o dei Conservatori where Clement XII installed

an important museum of antiques, a large part of which
found ready patrons and protectors in the cardinals.
came through the purchase of the collection of Card/ mil Hordes of foreigners visited the city and the
Alessandro Albani. outlying campagna; excavations progressed under

165
85. Pope Pius VI visiting
the Vatican's Pio-Clemen-
tino Museum with Gusta-
vus III of Sweden, by
Gagneraux, 1784. Prague Cha-
teau. Named for the two popes
Clement AVI '
and Pins T 7. the
Pio-Clementino Museum was in-

stalled nt the I 'atican near the

Belvedere according to plans drain/
up by the architect Simonetti in a
neoclassical style inspired by
ancient Rowan architecture.

the watchful eye of Winckelmann. The English cornered the art market (the un-
scrupulous Thomas Jenkins, the painter Gavin Hamilton, Nollekens). Despite controls
on the exportation of works of art, Rome lost many of her collections; in 1720,
1,300 pieces of sculpture passed from the Giustiniani collection into the hands of the
Earl of Pembroke; the Odescalchi, Chigi, Massimo and Mattei collections were
swallowed up by Frederick II of Prussia, Catherine the Great and the Duke d'Orleans.
The Medici treasures were carted off to Florence and those in the Palazzo Farnese, to
Naples. On the other hand, Cardinals Neri, Corsini, Borgia, Valenti and Albani
amassed collections the popes, after a century of indifference to amateurism, resumed
;

a vigorous patronage of the arts, conscious of their "cultural" commitments as heads

of the pontifical state.
To relieve the overcrowded conditions in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, the popes
conceived the idea of building a palace facing it on the other side of the Piazza di Campi-
doglio, following a suggestion of Michelangelo; begun in 1603 by Girolamo Rainaldi,
the palace was completed in 1655. After some interior renovations, Pope Clement XII
turned it over to the public as a museum in 1734, the now-famous Museo Capitolino.
Benedict XIV had the fragments of an early city plan of Rome (the forma urbis realized
under Emperor Septimius Severus) removed from the Palazzo Farnese, where it had
fallen into decay, to the new museum. Hoping to turn the Capitoline Hill into a museo-

166
logical center for Rome, Benedict XIV installed a pinakotheke in the Palazzo dei Con-
servatori in 1749; his idea was to further the artistic education of the students at the
Accademia del Nudo. The picture gallery was formed with the purchase of the Sachetti
cabinet and with requisitions from the collection of Cardinal Carlo Pio of Savoy before
itsexportation. Clement XIII, succeeding Benedict XIV, appointed Winckelmann, a
convert to Catholicism, his Prefect of Antiquities. Clement XIV undertook a re-
organization of the Vatican's collection of antiquities, withdrawing pieces from the
gardens to relocate them in rooms in the Palazzo Belvedere, which had been constructed
by Jacopo di Pietrasanti for Innocent VIII about 1487. Pius VI erected an entire
complex of buildings to house the collection; this museum bears the name Museo Pio-
Clementino. Michelangelo Simonetti conceived the idea of presenting the statuary in
settings similar to those for which they had been created; the vast halls of baths, the
galleries of imperial palaces and the cubicula of private homes furnished the architect
with basic layouts which he decorated in a sober, neoclassical style; the curator Gio-
vanni Battista Visconti realized the installation of the statues with the assistance of his
son Ennio Quirino, who later immigrated to France at the time of the Revolution.
The neoclassical architecture of the Museo Pio-Clementino, opened in 1772,
furnished the canon for museums of antiquities for more than half a century. The
museum itself has not changed since its founding; the works pillaged by the French
during the Revolution were later returned. With its thousands of unlabeled statues,
busts and fragments on exhibition, this museum constitutes a sort of labyrinth where
specialists delight to wander but where the general public gets lost on its quest for
known masterpieces. This multitude of very often mediocre statues provokes an
incommensurable ennui; if it is the charm of an eighteenth-century humanist's foyer
that one seeks, one must go to the Villa Albani. About 1760 Cardinal Alessandro Albani
commissioned the architect Carlo Marchionni to build a villa on the Via Salaria; here
the cardinal installed his collection of choice antiquities, which boasted a few Greek
pieces— a rarity for Rome. The museum expressed the neoclassical ideals of Winckel-
mann and Raphael Mengs, who painted his famous Parnassus fresco for the villa;
countless of Winckelmann's letters, dated 1757 and 1758, attest to his enthusiasm for
the project. In the peace of its solitude (visit is by request only) the uninhabited Villa
Albani (now the Villa Torlonia) seems consecrated to the memory of the great archeo-
logist who built it; his bust is as much honored there as are those of antique heroes.
Under the beautifully proportioned, semi-circular portico of the Canopo o caffe still
hovers the memory of those humanists for whom, like Winckelmann, life lived to its
fullest meant life lived agli antichi.
Another beautiful expression of the neoclassical taste is found in the extreme
north of Europe. With the view of creating a public museum, Gustavus III of Sweden
amassed a collection of antiquities numbering 182 pieces. Assassinated at a theatre in
1792, the king himself did not live to see his project completed; however, in a decree
dated June 2, 1792, the Regent, Charles, Duke of Sodermanland, ordered that the work
be started again. The museum was installed in a neoclassical gallery built below the
library, which occupied a wing of the royal palace. In 1866 the collection had grown so
large that it had to be installed elsewhere; in 1956 Parliament ordered a reconstitution
of the gallery, the original layout of which had been preserved in a water color.

167
168 86
 Chaptier

9
Revolution
The movement which was to transform the great sovereign collections of Europe
into museums for the public was distinctly outlined by the end of the eighteenth
century. The French Revolution precipitated a tidal wave of activity when, suddenly,
a considerable number of works which, the eve before, had belonged to the king, the
church or private individuals, were handed over to the nation. Beginning in France,
then spreading to the countries under French jurisdiction from 1793 to 1814, the flood
coursed through a Europe which at first resisted but then saw itself constrained to
adopt certain ideas propagated by the Revolution. The museum became one of the
fundamental institutions of the modern State.
It could be said that the Revolution confined itself to reading the museological
projects of the Ancien Regime but, if this is the case, it did so on a vaster scale than had
been intended. The passion for logic that dominated men's minds in this period of great
political speculation transformed into regulated institutions the organisms that hither-
to had had a fortuitous existence. Diderot's Museum central des Arts et des Sciences was
still an ever-present dream but this project of consolidation was not to be realized at

the Louvre. Between 1792 and 1795, several museums received various sections intend-
ed for the proposed central unit: the Museum National (temporarily housing the art
museum destined for the Louvre); the Musee des Monuments Francais (the history
cabinet destined for the Couvent des Petits Augustins); the Museum d'Histoire Natu-
relle (the science museum eventually established in the Jardin des Plantes); the Musee
des Arts et Metiers (the scientific and technical museum later installed in the Couvent
86. Bonaparte showing the
Apollo Belvedere to his de Saint Martin des Champs).
Deputies. From an old engrav- The French Revolution affected the fate of enormous numbers of works of art;
ing. The Apollo Belvedere and earlier, the currents that had set art in motion had been commercial in character; works
the Laocoonwere the two most remained where they had been created and only an evolution in taste occasionally
precious works among the mas-
menaced their fortune. With the advent of the Revolution, works of art by the thousands
terpieces oj antique statuary which
the pope ceded France and
became available, the freed property of physical or moral bodies which had lost their
which remained in
to

Paris from existence— the king, the Church, the emigrating aristocracy. What fate awaited them?
1798 to 1815. Not all were requisitioned for public use; many, like the furnishings of Versailles or the

169
 goods left behind by emigres to satisfy their cred-

INSTRUCTION itors, were auctioned off but not before special

agents could make appropriations for the museums
Sen manibrc ctinventorier ct dc conscivcr,
la then taking shape.
clans toutc ictcnduc do. la Rdpubliquc, Ions In compliance with a decree of the Convention,
les objcts qui peuvcnt scrvir aux arts , mix works confiscated over the whole of France were
sciences, ct a Icnscigncmcnt sent to a few key warehouses; newly secularized
convents, now but vast, empty spaces, were often
rnorosKE major storage
utilized for this purpose. In Paris the
PAR LA COMMISSION TEMPORAIRE DES ARTS ,
areas were the Convents of the Petits Augustins,
ADOPTEB E T
the Capucins, the Grands Jesuites, the Cordeliers
and the Hotel de Nesles. Special deputies worked
PAR LE COMITE DESTRUCTION PUBLIQUE
on cataloguing the art; unfortunately, not all were
i) E l. A C O S V E > T I O X NATIONALE. qualified scholars —
some had been purely political
appointments. In the end, a great many works in
Xja Gmvcntion nationale a presente au peuple liancus une
some way marked with feudal, religious or royal
tulion republicainc, fondee sur les principes eternels de devices forbidden by law, were set aside to be
1'egalite.

Le people l'a acceptor avec. enthousiasmc ; il l.i

fr.incais
destroyed and were broken, melted down or
lira respecter au-denors par la Ibrce de ses armes, mais il burned.
nepeul l.i raaintenir au-dodans que par l'oscendant de Laraison.
Le peuple n'oubliera point que e'est par one instrui tion
1
(Time At no other time in history was the instinct of
inwu< lion e '••

solide et vraie que la raison se fiirtiiie. Ddja, mise a sa portoe, Iwnuil rci. ,njue.
preservation so closely allied with the act of de-
['instruction est devenue pour lui le tnoyeu le plus puissant de
regeneration el de gloirej rile a place dans sr.s mains un levier struction like a defective compass, the Convention
;

d'unc Ion. immense) dont il se sert pour souleverles nations,

pour ebranlcr les rones ct renverser a jamais les monumens
I
continually contradicted itself; at one time it
« 1 I'errcur. Quelques-uns de nos philosophes awient dit <iu*il
> •
upheld laws prescribing the destruction of seditious
seroil daneercux de presenter a-la-lois tonics les ventcs aux
homines, rnis hardi que ses philosophes, le peuple Erancais emblems; at another, alarmed by the wave of
a poursuivi tonus les verites ensemble ; ceUes qu'on lui cachoic
av<c le plus d'.u sunt oelles qn'il a recherences avec le plus
t ,
vandalism it had helped to promote, it voted for
d'empressement : maintenant il les possede toutes enticros ; il severe penalties against all those who defaced
les client; il vend son sanp pourelles, el il vein conserrm
.1

ii. it- onjuiic ijuo scs legislateurs ssranml metlre a profit.

. monuments belonging to the nation. The Legis-
lative Assembly established on October 14, 1791
a "Committee for Public Instruction," entrusted
with the surveillance and upkeep of monuments in ;

87 page of the Instructions prepared on the order

. First
legislation dated September 28, 1793 it was re-
of the National Convention for the preservation of cul-
tural objects. Bibliotbeque Nationale, Paris. These instructions, placed by a "temporary commission on the Arts"
prepared in 1794, were distributed throughout trance. The first page which drew up museological instructions for all
shows a preamble imprinted with the revolutionary ideology. directors of art depots; the text was approved by
the Assembly on November 25, 1794 and the infor-
mation was disseminated in a brochure done on the
presses of the Imprimerie Nationale with the
lengthy title of Instructions on Methods for Conserv-
ing in every Sector of the Republic all Objects of any
and Education, Proposed by
Service to the Arts, Sciences
the Temporary Commission on the Arts and Adopted
by the Committee for Public Instruction of the National
Convention. Finally, in order to combat acts of
depredation done out of passion, the Commission

170
was obliged to denounce them as "counter-revolutionary plots," an accusation which
led to the scaffold.
The bill of May 26, 1791 establishing the king's liste civile appropriated the Palais
du Louvre for and science monuments. The bill of November 19, 1792 ordered
art
that all art objects confiscated in the royal households be sent to the Louvre; this was
an act of official possession for the profit of the nation. However, the public was not
admitted to see the art until after the king's execution. On July 27, 1793 the Convention
ruled that the "museum of the Republic" would open on the tenth of August, the
anniversary of the downfall of the monarchy. The vernissage took place as scheduled on
the very same day as the opening of the exhibition devoted to living artists, held as
usual in the Salon Carre however, urgent repairs necessitated closing the museum from
;

the end of September to November eighth, when it re-opened. Five hundred thirty-
seven paintings lined the wall spaces between windows in the Grande Galerie and one
hundred eighty-four objets d'art, including three astronomical clocks, were arranged
on tables in the center of the hall. Since by that time the Revolutionary calendar with
its decadary system had replaced the seven-day week, the admission schedule was

arranged so that the first five days were reserved for artists, the following two for
cleaning and the last three for the public. It was for the artists, who had the museum to
themselves five days out of ten, that it had been created. One recalls that fifty years
earlier Lafont de Saint Yenne had already appealed for the opening of the royal col-
lections for the benefit of artists. This proclivity for artistic pedagogy is peculiar to
French museology, unlike its more scientific character in England. Beginning then and
continuing until the time of Cezanne and Matisse, the Louvre was the great laboratory
where modern art was developed. From the start, copyists abounded; their number
had to be limited to one hundred and the term of their permits to six months.
The museum enjoyed such success that the crowds at its doors attracted a wave of
prostitutes in search of clients, which caused great consternation in the local police
precinct and in the Ministry of the Interior; the latter ordered "the severe punishment
of any crime against morality, without the maintenance of which there can be no
Republic." Plied with intensity during the hours of admission, this "infamous trade"
continued into the night, to such a degree that it became necessary to install street lights
to illumine the approaches.
The paintings were hung in the gallery according to schools, but within these
general categories the old baroque principle of miscellanea governed the arrangement.
When one remembers the violent criticism aroused by the rational installation of the
pinakotheke in Vienna's Belvedere, one is not surprised to find a return to a method
which pretended to bring out by contrast rather than by analogy the particular value
of each work of art. The Board of the Museum explained its intentions in this way:
"The arrangement we have adopted is one of a flower bed composed of an infinite
variety of blooms. If by a different disposition we had shown art in its infancy, in its
developing stages and in its present state... we might have pleased a few erudites but
we would have feared the well-founded reproach... of having impeded the studies of
the young." Thus it was always the artist and not the connoisseur who was kept in
mind. However, this installation displeased the Parisian public, all the more so because
there were no labels to come to their aid in this labyrinth where all periods and all genres

171
were mixed, where one came upon, for example, "very imperfect works by Raphael
long after one had admired his great ones." The Louvre was far from the galleria pro-
gressiva proposed in an article appearing in the Decade philosophique for the tenth
Pluviose, Year III. The Grande Galerie seemed too narrow and poorly illuminated by
reason of the incorrect lighting coming from two rows of windows opposite each
other; sunlight streaming in "somethimes falls on the paintings themselves, which will
not take long to bleach and spoil them if the situation is not quickly remedied."
The museum was managed according to the principle of collectivity dear to the
Revolution; the commissions and the conservatories changed as often as the govern-
ment. Hubert Robert, released after a brief imprisonment in the Tuileries, was a
member of most of these commissions; he followed the progress of the museum until
its closing bv decree of the Consulate in 1802 and illustrated the life of the gallery in

several paintings, many of which today hang in the Louvre.

Because the museum had been opened in a delapidated building, it became necessary
to close it for repairs in May 1796. For the next three years, only a portion of the paint-
ings was exhibited in the Salon Carre. In the Salon of 1796 Hubert Robert entered a
painting entitled Project for Lighting the Gallery of the Museum by means of a Vault andfor
Dividing it without Obstructing the long View. Here was a visualization of the proposals
made by the Academy of Architecture in 1786. The artist created a strange companion
piece for this work: his Louvre in Ruins; not content to show the gallery as it ought to
look in the near future, the painter-poet spanned the coming centuries to picture it as
it might look after some disaster in history. In Hubert Robert's aesthetics, the condi-

tion of ruin was the noble state par excellence, the state of the monuments of antiquity.
These two paintings had a curious fate; formerly in the imperial palace of Tsarskoye
Selo near Leningrad, they were sold by the Soviets and today are in a private collection
in Buenos Aires. The preliminary sketches are now in the Louvre; that of the first
work was given bv a certain Fenaille; as for the second, I had the good fortune to
discover it one day in an obscure sale, where the subject had not been recognized, which
enabled me buy it at a good price for the Louvre.
to
The shortcomings of the 1793 installation had been rectified by the time the gallery
re-opened in 1799. Paintings were arranged by schools and an attempt was made to
relieve the monotony of the long gallery by putting here and there high marble columns
to support cippi and busts. Six hundred forty-three paintings were on exhibition.
Emptied of its masterpieces, Versailles was filling up with an anomalous stock of
confiscated goods as it was the storehouse for the Department of Seine et Oise. Over
the protests of the city, which suddenly saw itself reduced from a royal capital to a
simple municipality, it was decided in legislation dated March 16, 1797, to create at
the palace "a special museum for the French School," thus avoiding clashes of interest
with the museum in the Louvre, consecrated to the chefs d'ceuvre of foreign schools.
It became, so to speak, a purgatory to which were consigned the condemned works of

artists whose fetes gala// fes and pastorales had delighted the old aristocracy. The paintings
were arranged in the royal apartments, the Hall of Mirrors and on the first floor of the
north wing, on the garden side.
In Paris itself, meanwhile, one of the depositories for art works slowly evolved,
thanks to the tenacity of its director, into a museum that was to have considerable

172
influence on the Romantic generation in France. In the Convent of the Petits Augustins,
located across the Seine from the Louvre, a depot was set up on October 15, 1790, to
receive works confiscated from churches in Paris. The painter Alexandre Lenoir was
given the directorship; discovering in himself a talent for archeology, he set about
acquiring all the medieval and Renaissance artifacts he could find in an effort to prevent
"the disfigurement and complete destruction of masterpieces that formerly decorated
the temples of fanatics, the palaces of tyrants and the houses of their accomplices." The
Abbey of Saint Denis, where he witnessed the profanation of the roval tombs, yielded
him a veritable mine of treasures. This enterprising man was so successful in his intrigues
that he managed to obtain from the Convention, five days before its dissolution (that
is, on October Museum des monuments frani^ais with the
21, 1795), the decision to create a
artifacts stored in theConvent of the Petits Augustins this move on the part of the
;

Convention is surprising when one remembers that this was a matter of honoring the
monuments of the old monarchical, feudal and religious France. Moreover, during the
brief restoration of monarchy under Louis XVIII, the institution bore the name musee
de la monarchie fran^aise. In his installation Lenoir followed the principle of the galleria
progressiva, worked out some fifty years earlier in Italy for pinakothekai; Lenoir went
even further — not content to show the evolution of he endeavored to define the
styles,
qualities peculiar to each historical epoch. "The Musee monuments francais," he
des
explained, "is the only place where one can study the birth, evolution and eventual
florescence of the arts within a context... The advances in art follow those of civiliza-
tion; they sometimes provoke glorious associations and often bring to mind personal-
ities who hastened art's development either through their genius or through their
patronage."
The layout of a convent, with its succession of vast rooms, was particularly suited
to this idea. The Chapel, where the principal monuments were grouped, served as a
point of confluence where the "observer" was transported "from the infancy of art
among the Gauls to its decay toward the end of the seventeenth century." Each of the
succeeding rooms was devoted to a century that had witnessed progress in the "arts of
drawing": the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth and finally the seventeenth
century "when one thought art could dispense with study and that inspiration
sufficed." A true precursor, Lenoir was already imbued with the prejudice still current
in France of the superiority of anything that emanated from the Middle Ages. In order
to create atmosphere, the curator of the Musee des Monuments Francais fashioned
artificial monuments from all manner of debris and provided each room with a suitable
period decor. To complete this historical evocation, Lenoir conceived the idea of
creating an "Elysian Field" peopled with monuments —
both empty cenotaphs and real
—
tombs to the memory of great men: Dagobert, Descartes, Turenne, Louis II de
Bourbon (the Great Conde), Moliere, La Fontaine, Boileau, Mabillon, Montfaucon and
Du Guesclin were honored there. Hordes of idlers visited this pantheon where the
most touching monument was the one Lenoir had consecrated to Heloise and Abelard,
made with pieces from their original tombs supplemented with debris from other
edifices, chiefly those ornamental arcades torn from the lower walls of the Eglise de
Saint Denis, of which he availed himself at every opportunity. This is the sole monu-
ment still intact from the Elysium; when the museum was dismantled, the statuary was

173
 transported to the cemetery of Pere La Chaise. In my youth it was the custom for
students in love to go there in the springtime to throw bouquets of violets it seems to
;

me that in today's era of the twist, the monkey and the jerk students no longer bother
with such sentimental preliminaries. This is, no doubt, the reason why some serious
advocates of pure archeology have proposed destroying the monument to Heloise and
Abelard; this would be a new act of vandalism comparable to the one out of which it
was created in the first place since this vestige of Lenoir's museum is revered for the
touching admiration it evoked for several generations. "An Elysium," remarked
Lenoir, "seemed to me to fit the character I had given my establishment." Cypresses,
—
tombs, funerary reliefs, statues, votive columns all conspired "to imbue this place of
happiness with the sweet melancholy that speaks to the sensitive soul." During its ten
years of existence, thousands of visitors frequented Lenoir's museum; among the
many sensitive souls were some, like Delacroix and Michelet, who experienced there
a sense of history. "It was there and no other place I felt a keen intuition of history,"
wrote Michelet in his old age he was among those who regretted the destruction of
;

the museum in 1815. Returning from a visit to the Convent of the Petits Augustins,
children would dream, not without some fright, about the plantoms they had gone in
search of, "ardent, curious, fearful, from one room to the next, from one age to the
next."
Bythe time the Grande Galerie of the Louvre re-opened (in part in 1799, in its
entirety on July 14, 1800), it had been enriched by a number of masterpieces taken from
various countries in Europe by special commissions that had followed the victorious
French armies. In 1794 and 1795 the first convoys returned with Flemish pictures
pillaged in Belgium which, for a time, became French territory. In the wake of the
Italian army, commanded by General Bonaparte, a commission comprising the
mathematician Gaspard Monge, the chemist Claude Louis Berthollet, the botanist
Thouin, the painters Barthelemy and Antoine Gros, the sculptor Moitte and the
archeologist Wicar, appropriated "goods of artistic and scientific nature" which, as
stipulated by the treaty, were to be remitted to France by the conquered states, includ-
ing the Vatican. In a heteroclite assemblage of books, celebrated paintings, exotic
animals, scientific instruments, typefaces and all manner of natural curiosities, the most
appreciated trophy was a collection of antique statues taken from the Capitoline and
Vatican museums; the interest was more than purely aesthetic as the revival of antique
influence, sparked by neoclassicism, had assumed a moral aspect during the Revolution.
The commissions did not want the "precious ruins" of Rome and Italy to arrive in
88. Madonna with a Candle, Paris like "shipments of coal or cases of soap." Their entry turned into a triumphal
by Carlo Crivelli. Pinacoteca procession a la romaine, with military detachments, members of the Institut de France,
di Brera, Milan. This painting administrators of the Museum Central des Arts, professors at the Academy of Painting
was taken in 1811 (row the
and Sculpture and typesetters among those marching; the latter were present to receive
Dominican convent of Camerino
to be sent to Milan, at that time
the typefaces from the pontifical presses, dispatched in the hope of "putting into the
the capital of the kingdom oj hands of the government powerful means for furthering the principles of philosophy,
Italy, where the museologicalpolicy the creations of science, the discoveries of genius and for accelerating the development
oj the French Empin created a of reason and happiness among men." Arriving in the Champ de Mars, the wagons
at museum with works plun-
hauling all these trophies formed a circle three lines deep around a monument to
dered /row till of Northern Italy,
/row the Emilia and /row the Liberty. The solemn presentation to the Directors took place on the following day,
I eneto. )uly 27, 1798, the fourth anniversary of the fall of Robespierre.

74

L
88 175
 The removal to France of paintings and antiquities seized in Italy was both condoned
and vehemently opposed. A petition signed by great lovers of Rome (the aesthetician
Quatremere de Quincy, the architects Pierre Fontaine and Charles Percier, the painters
Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes and Jacques-Louis David) was sent to the Directory to
protest the seizure of antiquities. A counterpetition answered it. The notion of deflect-
ing the "principal monuments of art and science" to Paris originated in the messianism
of the French Revolution, expressed in countless official or journalistic texts. Paris was
to be the art capital of Europe and masterpieces would find in France their true home,
for whatever creations of genius might be found in the "countries where the victorious
armies of the French Republic had routed hordes of slaves who were the mercenaries
of tyrants their true resting place for the honor and progress of the arts is in the home
. . .

of and under the hand of free men" (decree of the Convention dated Messidor, Year II).
Napoleon as Emperor adapted this policy of the Revolution to the design of empire
that motivated him. Wherever his triumphal armies passed —through Germany,
—
through Austria, through Poland works of art were requisitioned for France.
The Administration of the Musee Central des Arts (*) was burdened withprocessing
all the paintings, antiquities and objets d'art sent to it and with seeing to their repair.

A workshop at the Louvre effected restorations of paintings which were often' in a

state of decay, never having been attended to since their creation; the repair work on
these pictures, since returned to their original museums, is still admired. An example is
the transfer of Raphael's Foligno Madonna in the Vatican on to a new canvas, the restora-
tion being in good condition after many years.
still

During the last years of the Revolution, lack of funds severely limited the life of the
museum. The situation was ameliorated under the Consulate and the administration of
the museum was overhauled. The Ecole des Beaux Arts underwent re-organization.
A bill passed on November 19, 1802 regrouped several museums and artistic services
under a single director, naming to the post the Chevalier de Non, later Baron Domi-
nique Vivant Denon under the Empire. A former gentleman of the Privy Chamber
under Louis XV, an ambassador's secretary under Louis XVI, he had been one of the
most active members of the Egyptian campaign, where Bonaparte had remarked his
knowledge and bravery. Here was a fine and cultivated mind, a draftsman of talent, an
author of contes galants who adapted himself with ease to the successive regimes he lived
through; at fifty-eight Denon brought to his new position broad experience, "having
obtained," as Anatole France put it, "the favors of Madame de Pompadour and
Louis XV... having visited Frederick the Great at Potsdam and formed a liaison with
Voltaire at Ferney having sparkled in the drawing rooms at Versailles and at the court
;

of Catherine II having visited by turn Germany, Italy, Switzerland and Spain, manifest-
;

ing everywhere an artist's curiosity; having lived without inconvenience under the
government of the Terror and accepted Robespierre; more than fifty years old, having
welcomed like a young man the adventurous Egyptian campaign... having obtained
the confidence of Napoleon, sometimes even on matters other than the arts having ;

accompanied the great commander on his campaigns to Germany and Spain; having
fought in fierce skirmishes and great battles... happy from the day he was born to the
day he died: voild, en resume, la destinee de Denon." He who had been a brilliant wit at court,
who, according tp Anatole France, looked as though "he had just stepped out of a fete

176
 .

by Watteau," became a great administrator and a

paragon of the "museum man," as we say today.
He explored on a grand scale the multifarious prob-
lems of conservation and all the technical questions
relevant to museum architecture. On this last point,
Denon met with his greatest difficulties: tension
built up between the conservators and the main-
tenance personnel, a problem which still plagues
museums today.
The curator of paintings at the Louvre was the
former administrator, Dufourny; that of antiqui-
ties, Ennio Quirino Visconti, who changed his
given names to the more French Ennius Quirinus.
Visconti had already realized the installation of the
antiquarium in the former summer apartments of
Anne of Austria, opened the 18th Brumaire, 1800.
He knew these antiquities better than anyone else
since he had catalogued them before in the Capi-
toline and Vatican museums. A champion of the
ideals of the Revolution, he had been chosen one of
the five consuls of the ephemeral Roman republic
of 1798; he defected to the French army when its
89. Portrait of Baron Vivant-Denon, by Pierre Paul Prud'hon.
Louvre Museum, Paris. He became the Louvre's director in 1802.
occupation of Italy ended.
Upon the recommendation of the consul Jean
Jacques Regis de Cambaceres, the Musee Central
des Arts became the Musee Napoleon in 1803, a
name it kept until 1814. It enjoyed enormous
success in France and was acclaimed throughout
Europe, with foreign visitors, especially the
English, flocking to see it during periods of peace.
This era witnessed a veritable efflorescence of
studies and works ; it was a great age for museology
Denon, who aspired to have an architect under his
was in reality subordinate to the govern-
authority,
ment's architect Fontaine, with whom he conflicted
violently at times. The Archives Nationales pre-
serve for us the story of the latrines razed by the
architect without notifying the director. Denon
was constrained to summon Fontaine to re-install
-,..-...,.
! y ..< -

- [•»
T
them "as promptly as possible, in order to avoid
• - - • N l

evacuation in the courtyards, on the stairways and

90. Drawing showing the arrival of the first visitors to
perhaps even in the gallery of the museum, which
the Koninklijk Museum on September 15, 1808. Drawings
Cabinet, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. This very naive drawing shows the
would surely happen if the guards appointed to
eagerness of the visitors at the opening of the museum founded by Louis safeguard and maintain the propriety of this
Bonaparte which later became the Rijksmuseum. monument had no place to which to direct those

177
 in need." These controversies caused, as they do today, many delays and compromised
the realization of projects.Denon was unable to carry out for the Grande Galerie the
plan of Raymond, which was inspired by the one studied with such care by the Ancien
Regime and which is known to us through the painting by Hubert Robert for the Salon
of 1796; modified against the will of Denon, the project was finished, after many delays,
in 1810 and the gallery opened for the marriage of Napoleon to Marie Louise of
Austria, which took place in the Salon Carre; the elegant cortege passed from the
Tuileries to the Salon, borrowing for its triumphal way the gallery along the Seine,
laden with the masterpieces of Europe. The director was happier with the enlargement
of the antiquities museum, another of Raymond's designs effected at the expense of the
91. Hubert Robert. Plan for apartment once reserved for queen mothers; this antiquarium, with its red-and-white
arranging the Main Gallery
museum.
of the Louvre as a
marble revetment after the fashion of the Roman baths, strongly resembled the Museo
Louvre Museum, Paris. —
Pio-Clementino in the Vatican a creation of Visconti, backed by Denon.
The painter Hubert Robert was
Paris in its interest in the museological uproar. Storehouses were set
was not alone
associated with the life of the
Louvre Museum in several up all over France, primarily in convents, to receive confiscated art. Local initiative
different capacities under the old often turned these repositories into museums. A case in point is the Couvent des Grands
regime and during the Revolution. Augustins in Toulouse, established by order of the council of the Department of Haute
In 1778 he was appointed by the
Garonne on December 12, 1793 as a Museum du Midi de la Republique. The museum was
Director of Public Buildings to
a commission charged with pre-
opened in the vast church, paintings graced the walls, objets d'art were disposed on
paring the future museum ; in tables but stone artifacts from destroyed monuments (later esteemed the museum's
1 784 he was named Keeper of the most prized holdings) were left in storage. At the other end of France, Lille, which had
King's Pictures. He painted a founded a commission on the Arts in 1792, requested the painter Louis Watteau to
number of pictures illustrating
inventory its confiscated goods and open a museum in 1795. Caen's commission on the
his plans for the Main Gallery
and views of its opening in 1 793. Arts, formed in 1793, operated along the same lines but its museum did not open until
This plan seems to have preceded 1809. At Angers, the Ecole Centrale, installed in 1796, was the prelude to the establish-
the one he showed at the 1796 ment of a museum. At Le Mans, two rooms in the former Couvent de la Couture were
Exhibition which was partly car- museum in 1799.
laid out as a
ried out under the Empire but
was not finally completed until In five university towns in France the Directory worked out a project for founding
1949.
adjunct museums for the schools of art to safeguard these collections and to explain the
;

works thev contained, a curator and a lecturer were appointed; the latter is the origin
of what is known today in museum parlance as "educational services." The Consulate
92.Hubert Robert. The gave this project an even greater scope. Finding the Louvre somewhat congested with
Main Gallery of the Louvre works of art, Jean Antoine Chaptal, minister of the interior, decided the provinces
during restoration before its should benefit from this abundance and to this end he submitted a report to the consuls
reopening in 1799. Hubert , ; —
on September 1 1 800 he envisioned the distribution of not just a sampling from the —
Robert was actively associated collections "to places where education has prepared the public to appreciate them and
with the Louvre Museum for
wore than 25 years and his
where a large population and native dispositions will presage success in the formation
paintings represent a veritable of students." Each museum was to have a complete range of works by masters of the
chronicle of the life of the museum. different schools —
a small "central museum" at the provincial level. One recognizes in
The was opened in 1793
»i use urn Chaptal's proposal the encyclopedic approach indigenous to the Revolution, heir of the
by the Convention, was then closed
Age of Enlightenment. The bill signed by Bonaparte on the 14th of Fructidor, Year IX,
for repairs in 1796, and was
listed fifteen cities in the territory of the Republic slated to receive art: Bordeaux, Caen,
reopened in 1 799. In this picture
Robert shows painting in progress Dijon, Lille, Lyons, Marseilles, Nancy, Nantes, Rennes, Rouen, Strasbourg, Toulouse,
ready for this reopening. Brussels, Mainz and Geneva. Six hundred fifty-six paintings were distributed among

180
 ;

them, to which others were added during the course of the following years other cities,
;

such as Montpellier, Tours, Grenoble, brought to twenty-two the number of munici-

palities benefited by the distribution; eventually 1,508 paintings were in circulation.
The galleries were slow in opening as construction and installation were the responsi-
bility of the individual cities. The museums in Marseilles and Bordeaux opened in 1804,
that of Lyons in 1806 and those of Rouen and Caen in 1809.

In the conquered territories under her rule France provoked the opening of
museums, either by direct action or by the shock of restitution; Italy became the
theatre of particularly intense museological activity.
The confiscation of ecclesiastical goods following the suppression of the convents
necessitated the formation of depots for works of art, installed as in France in secular-
ized convents —
at Milan in Santa Maria di Brera, at Genoa in the Oratorio di San
Filippo, at Venice in Santa Maria della Carita.

By the Treaty of Pressburg (December 26, 1805), Venice, which had been ceded to
Austria in 1797, was restored to the kingdom of Italy, the capital of which was then
Milan. A decree dated February 12, 1807, established a Venetian Accademia delle Belle
Arti which adopted the by-laws drafted in September 1803 by the Academies of
Bologna and Milan. To the Academy was annexed a hall for sculpture and a pinako-
theke, under the curatorship of Pietro Edwards, the head of the restoration works in
San Zanipolo; since 1797 Edwards had been obliged to put himself at the disposal of
the French government to effect requisitions on behalf of Paris. Legislation passed
on April 26, 1806 ordered the collection of all art works in the kingdom of Italy,
designating special officials for the task; the decree of August 4, 1807, restricted the
conservation of monuments to official art. In the pinacoteca in Venice, around the
paintings from the old Accademia, which had been founded in 1756 and of which
Tiepolo had been president, were regrouped pictures confiscated from the city's
convents, abundantly rich in art. This wealth attracted the covetousness of the kingdom
—
and in April 1808 the exodus of masterpieces to Milan commenced continuing, to the
great despair of Venetians, for the duration of the Empire.
The formation of the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan illustrates Napoleon's museo-
logical policy on the transcontinental level. Just as Paris, the capital of Napoleonic
Europe, used art to accent its position, so in the same manner
Milan sought to confirm
its role as capital of the kingdom of Italy. The
glorious "galleria di Brera" has retained
the name of the old Gothic church that served as its depot, even though the cabinet has
been transferred to the beautiful seventeenth-century palace built by the Jesuits which
Empress Maria Theresa turned into a cultural center in 1772. The empress installed a
public library, an observatory, a Lombard Institute of Sciences and Letters and an
Academy of Fine Arts. The gallery opened on August 15, 1809. Throughout the
— —
kingdom in Lombardy, the Veneto and the Emilia the Brera effected requisitions
it amassed the richest collection in all Italy of Venetian quattrocento works, to which the

officials seemed particularly drawn. Napoleon's stepson, Viceroy Eugene de Beau-

harnais, was very attached to this museum and lavished it with personal gifts, such as
Piero della Francesca's Madonna da Montefeltro and Giovanni Bellini's Pietd. In 1806 the
government of the viceroy acquired a prestigious work for the museum, Raphael's

181
 Sposa/i^io or Marriage of the irgin (1504); in 1798 the painting had been given
I by the
city of Milan to General Lechi, who sold it to a convent three years later.
The Palazzo e Pinacoteca di Brera remains an intact example of the musee revolu-
—
formed from requisitions and confiscations "pillages," if you will made
t/oiina/re, —
throughout all of northern Italy.
The political ideology of revolutionary and Napoleonic France was encyclopedic
and European in its aims; if Paris, capital of the one hundred thirty departments of the
Empire, was to be a faithful reflection of European art, so also, on a lesser scale, should
be each city that had been chosen to support a regional museum. Thus the museum at
Brussels received 31 paintings, including three Tintorettos, one Bonifazio de'Pitati,
one Barocci, one Guercino, one Veronese and even a Rubens, his Martyrdom of Saint
Lievin, bought by the Crown under Louis XVI. After expropriating the Rubens paint-
ings in Antwerp, the French government sent one to Brussels which had had none.
Once the institutions were established, exchanges between museums were proposed on
an international basis. In 1812/1813, Denon effected an exchange with the Brera; the
latter was lent paintings by the Northern School (Rubens, van Dyck, Jordaens,
Rembrandt) to offset a weakness in its permanent collection, while the Louvre received
Italian works by Carpaccio, Boltraffio, Moretto da Brescia and Marco d'Oggiono. If
the imperial government had lasted, had it been able to profit from a peacetime exploita-
tion of its conquests, Denon's genius for organization would certainly have accom-
plished, by exchange or apportionment and in a spirit of internationalism, a regrouping
of national collections.
Not all the museums proposed by the imperial government in Italy were realized;
such was the case with Genoa and Treviso on the other hand, some institutions seemed
;

to spring up spontaneously, sparked by efforts to avoid French requisitions. Thus in

1796 the Senate of Bologna created an Accademia delle Belle Arti ostensibly to receive
works of art expropriated from convents, in truth to' foil the designs of the Brera's
officials. At the other end of Europe the city of Antwerp was dismayed by the loss of
some of its masterpieces; its executive council decreed the founding of a special school
for painting, sculpture and architecture with an adjoining museum which would
benefit, in its turn, from the generosities of Paris. Heading the executive branch of the
municipal government was a Frenchman established in Antwerp, Simon Pierre
Dragonne despite his devotion to the French cause, he instituted proceedings to obtain
;

the return of artistic treasures but was successful in restoring only two Rubens paintings
to the city on the Scheldt. When the Directory was succeeded by the Consulate, d'Her-
bouville, French prefect for the Deux-Nethes, supported the interests of his district
and tried continually, but with little success, to interest the imperial administration in
93.The Night Watch, by the artistic plight of Antwerp. This failure, in contrast to the favors bestowed upon the
Rembrandt. Rijksmuseum ,
recently founded Brussels museum, shed light on the museological policy of the
, Xmsterdam. Since 1808 this work Revolution and of the Empire. The French governments quite often removed works of
has been in the museum which was art from their places of creation to other, more preferred, locations. Brussels was
opened in .Amsterdam's town hall
designated the great center of culture in Belgium; Antwerp, a marginal city which was
by Louis Bonaparte, King of
Holland. It was turned over to
considered nothing more than a military outpost of Napoleon's empire, mattered little.
the museum by the city of Amster- Later, when Antwerp's art treasures were restored in 1815, Brussels thought she had
dam. been wronged and sought to plunder the city in her own behalf.

183
 Napoleon's relatives, given kingdoms by the emperor, immediately occupied
themselves with founding museums in their respective capitals. Louis, king of
Holland from 1806 to 1810, so concerned himself with the problems of his new
country that he risked violent conflict with his brother, a stand which won him the
devotion of his subjects but cost him his crown. A day after his arrival in Amsterdam,
on April 21, 1808, he signed a bill to found the Koninklijk Museum (the basis for
today's Rijksmuseum), the establishment of which he had promised two years earlier
when he organized by decree a general commission on the arts and sciences (Novem-
ber 20, 1806). At that time the progressive Dutch already had a museum. When the
French armies conquered Holland in 1795, the collections of the stadholder William V
were confiscated for Paris, an action which aroused no protest since the Batavian
Republic itself sold whatever remained. However, the Minister of Finance, Gogel, who
was something of a Francophile, took the initiative to organize at Huis ten Bosch
(formerly a summer residence of the House of Orange), a rather heteroclite museum of
an historical nature. Opened on May 30, 1800, the establishment was closed when
Louis, who dreamed on a grander scale, ascended the throne of Holland. When
he resolved to move the seat of government to Amsterdam, Louis installed himself
in its town hall, which was transformed into a royal palace with rooms reserved
for a gallery. The museum was opened with paintings belonging to the municipality,
from a collection which had always been in the town hall, and with others already
purchased for the royal cabinet. On August 15, 1808, the city turned over to the gallery
seven large paintings, among them Rembrandt's Night Watch and Syndics of the Drapers'
Guild. The museum was enormously successful. A former diplomat, Cornells Apostol,
was appointed its director on August 25, 1808; he nobly acquitted himself of his task,
acquiring important paintings and publishing in 1809 the first catalog of the collection,
which contained 459 pieces. Louis Bonaparte's forced abdication in 1810 put an end
to this vigorous activity annexed to France, Holland lost all the advantages of personal
;

rule and no longer had the same financial resources at her command. The museum fell
into a lethargy in which it remained until the second half of the nineteenth century.
At Kassel, despite its having been stripped of its chefs-d'oeuvre by French agents,
Jerome Bonaparte, king of Westphalia, commissioned Grandjean de Montigny to
complete the museum begun by Simon Louis du Ry. In Madrid Joseph Bonaparte
schemed to hide from his brother's covetousness the paintings destined for Spain's
national museum which had been formed with works expropriated from the royal
collections and from convents. The particulars of the writ of foundation (December 20,
1809) are worth noting: they proclaimed "the intention of resurrecting for the sake of
art a considerable number of paintings buried in cloisters, of restoring to honor the
Spanish school which is little known in neighboring countries, of assuring a just
tribute of glory to the immortal names of Velazquez, Rubens, Murillo, Ribalta, Nava-
rete, Juan San Vincente and others." One article decreed the establishment of a museum
at Madrid (to be installed in the Buena Vista Palace and to be called the "Josefina"
gallery) and another, the formation of a "general" collection of works by the great
Spanish painters "to be offered to our august brother, the Emperor of the French, and
thereby make known to him our desire to see it placed in the rooms of the Musee
Napoleon." One of the members of the selections committee set up for this purpose

184
 ;;

was Goya. Despite all the beautiful words, more than three years elapsed before
shipment was made, and then it was a collection of mediocre paintings which dis-
appointed Denon. Paralyzed by the civil war, King Joseph, who despite his real talents
for governing was unable to rule effectively, did not succeed in opening the museum.
Work was resumed by King Ferdinand VII who inaugurated the picture gallery on
November 19, 1819; its 311 paintings were installed in the Prado, a building constructed
by the architect Juan de Villanueva at the end of the eighteenth century to house the
Academy and Museum of Science.
Of all the museological projects of the Napole'onides, the only one fully realized,
then, was the Pinacoteca di Brera at Milan.

Before his brief tenure as king of Spain, Joseph had been king of Naples for an
even shorter period (two years) but had managed to infuse new life into the Pompeiian
excavations, which had already attracted the French general Jean Etienne Championnet,
founder of the short-lived Parthenopean Republic in January 1799. Joseph immediately
asked Michele Arditi, director of the royal museum, to draft plans for a methodical
excavation. Pompeii was the site of feverish activity under King Joachim Murat,
Joseph's successor; nearly 400 workers were employed; planning additional excava-
tions, Murat bought up acres of fields which were resold by Ferdinand II, who became
king of the Two Sicilies in 1830. Murat's wife, Napoleon's sister Caroline, was intensely
interested in the diggings and moved to Portici so she could oversee them, occasionally
spending several days at the site itself. In the spring of 1815, in the days preceding the
downfall of the kingdom and the execution of her husband, Murat, Caroline with-
drew to Pompeii to forget her anguish. The Museo Nazionale of Naples owes much to
Joseph, Murat and Caroline whose efforts greatly enriched the archeological collections.
After the wholesale movement of art during the twenty-five years of Revolution
and Empire, there followed another bouleversement in 1815. The 1814 Treaty of Paris
more or less respected the Musee Napoleon and its loans to various museums; only
Prussia and the German principalities obtained restitution of a number of their works
it is true that Napoleon had inherited the Revolution's hatred for these states which had

given asylum to French emigres and, therefore, he had strongly mistreated them. With
Italy the problem was nonexistent since the consignment of art works had been largely
arranged in agreements not affected by the Treaty of Paris. In the few reparations made,
care was taken to conduct the business in a part of the Louvre unexposed to the public
the foreign sovereigns who re-instated a Bourbon on the throne of France were eager
to see that Louis XVIII did not present a figure of defeat; for this reason, they found
it important that he be allowed to keep the Louvre collections. The monarch announced

to the House of Deputies on June 4, 1814: "The chefs d'oeuvre of the arts are ours
a priori by laws more lasting than those of victory." The allied sovereigns who visited
the Louvre congratulated Denon on the good appearance of his museum; the director
was, after all, well known and esteemed in Europe; had he not served as adviser to
Czar Alexander I, acquiring for him some beautiful paintings for the Hermitage, among
them Caravaggio's Lute Player?
The situationwas reversed in 1815. At the time of the first Treaty of Paris, foreign
rulers persuaded themselves that they had restored to France the beloved monarchy

185
overthrown by the Revolution; they were, however, undeceived when the French
people rallied behind Napoleon upon his return from Elba in 1815. After the Hundred
Days, the despoiled countries sent agents to Paris to retrieve their art works restitution
;

was effected somewhat "illegally" (in the case of Italy, in particular) because it was done
in secret; this action had not been agreed upon at the Congress of Vienna and, in
addition, a tax had been levied in 1814 to cover war losses. These reparations were
made in haste during the period of occupation; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the
Ministry of the Interior willfully left Denon without instructions, even disavowing the
need for them. An appreciable number of works remained in the Louvre by consent of
the agents, thanks to the energy, influence and diplomatic savoir-faire of Denon. The
greediest claimant was the sculptor Antonio Canova, on whom Napoleon had once
lavished favors he worked as an agent for Austria to whom Venice had been given by
;

Napoleon in 1797. Canova called himself '''Monsieur I'ambassadeur" but the caustic
Talleyrand preferred "Monsieur I'emballeur." The restitutions did not affect works on
permanent loan from the Louvre to the provinces; certain foreign cities (Geneva,
Mainz and especially Brussels) retained what had been sent them. Other works changed
owners. For example, a group of paintings once in the collection of the Landgrave of
Hesse was given to Empress Josephine by Napoleon at the time of their divorce; they
were in her possession (after the capture of Kassel and Jena in 1806) until her heirs
sold them, with the Malmaison gallery, to Czar Alexander I in 1815. Despite his
entreaties to the Czar, the Landgrave of Hesse was not able to regain his property,
which had included four paintings by Claude Lorrain, among the most beautiful
works now in the Hermitage.
Once returned to their rightful cities, many of the art works were not replaced in
the churches or private cabinets from which they had come. Instead, they were used
to form public museums, thus realizing, in their transition from private to public
domain, a basic principle of the Revolution that had uprooted them. Such was the case
in Parma where a pinakotheke was built up around the former ducal quadreria created
by Don Philip of Bourbon in 1752; several Correggios, a few Carraccis and a Cima
da Conegliano, were placed in the museum instead of being restored to the churches
from which they had come. The Accademia in Venice, impoverished by requisitions
for Milan's Brera, found compensation in the return of masterpieces from France;
Count Leopoldo Cicognara, who became president of the Accademia in 1818, obtained
permission from the Austrian government to accept these paintings, rather than
restoring them to their original churches. Cicognara even succeeded in removing from
convents some beautiful altarpieces they had been able to keep until then; one of the
most important was Titian's Assumption oj the Virgin, the glory of the Church of the
Frari. A chief attraction in the Accademia until 1917, this painting was evacuated during
the war and later was returned to the church for which it had been painted. On
—
August 10, 1817 the gallery of the refurbished Accademia opened in its original
quarters, the old convent of Santa Maria della Carita, whose beautiful Gothic church
had unfortunately been ruined in 1811 by the addition of flooring to divide it into two
nearby Albergo hung Titian's Presentation in the Temple; in an
stories; in the hall of the
adjoining room was Veronese's Feast in the House of Levi, which had not been re-
installed in San Zanipolo after being returned by France.

186
 Everywhere in Europe where revolutionary
principles had been imposed, old and new museums
alike benefited from confiscations made at the
expense of never
ecclesiastical institutions, often
re-established. Munich's Pinakothek enriched itself
with art yielded in the secularization of Bavaria's
convents in 1803. The phenomenon seemed par-
ticularly widespread in Italy where it affected the
cities of Bologna, Pisa, Arezzo and Verona. After
the suppression of religious confraternities in Flo-
rence, works of art were concentrated in the
Convento di San Marco during a three-year period
from 1806 to 1809; under consideration was a plan
to construct a new building for the famous Accade-
mia del Disegno and to provide it with a large
Antwerp of paintings returned by France,
94. Arrival in
pinacoteca formed from the San Marco holdings,
drawing by Louis Titz from the original work by Ferdinand de with medieval art its forte the idea was not realized
;

B racketeer in the Roy ale de Belgique, Cabinet des

Bibliotheqae until 1841.
Estampes, Brussels. The arrival in Antwerp of a convoy of works The return of art works to their original places
of art restored to the city by France prompted a display of pageantry was sometimes solemnly celebrated. In 1815, to
in the style of the "triumphal entries" of princes and rulers in the
.VI 1th and XVIIth centuries.
receive her beloved paintings, the city of Antwerp
revived the tradition of "triumphal entries" which
had been reserved in former times for princes and
governors, with allegorical pageants, bell ringings,
gun salutes, banqueting and drinking that con-
tinued far into the night. The people of Antwerp
had, in truth, feared a second loss of their master-
pieces. The convoy hauling art to be returned to
Belgium and the Netherlands arrived in Brussels
on the twentieth of November; city officials there
prevented the departure of the four wagons en
route to Antwerp, alleging it was their duty to
requisition paintings from suppressed convents for
the capital's museum. A deputation from Antwerp
was obliged to journey to The Hague to obtain
permission from the king of Holland for the release
of the convoy. Imagine the commission's anger
when they returned with the royal consent only to
find that the municipality had already had the cases
unloaded at the museum under the pretext of safe-
guarding the works from Prussian troops who
were expected to pass through Brussels This !

episode of petty quarrels typical of Belgian cities

at the time also illustrates the impatience of
French-speaking Brussels to shake the Nether-

187
 landish yoke, an ambition realized some fifteen years later when Belgian independence
was declared.
In an effort to avoid art raids by French agents, the occupied states of central
Europe either hid or evacuated their treasures. For example, the paintings collection
of the Elector of Bavaria was cached in the castle at Ansbach; after the battle at Jena
in 1806 when Napoleon defeated the Prussians, forty-eight paintings belonging to
the landgrave of Hesse were discovered in a gamekeeper's cottage in the middle of a
forest. As for the objels d'arl of the Duke of Brunswick, Denon and Pierre Antoine
Daru had no difficulties in shipping them to France because they were found already
crated, ready to be sent to England. The largest "operation evacuation" realized
during the wars of the Revolution and Empire was the one methodically carried out by
the House of Austria; it had far-reaching museological consequences because it
effected a complete regrouping of art treasures in Vienna.
To protect them from the victorious troops of Marshal Jourdan, Emperor
Leopold II ordered the evacuation of the coronation regalia of the German-Roman
emperors of the Holy Roman Empire from Austrian territories and possessions; the
imperial relics in Nuremburg were sent to Vienna in 1794 and those in Aix-la-Chapelle
in 1796; also in 1794 the precious emblems of the Order of the Golden Fleece, until
then kept in Brussels, were sent to Vienna for safekeeping. In 1806 these treasures were
hidden from Napoleon during his occupation of Vienna. The collections at Schloss
Ambras had already gone to Vienna in 1805, before the French emperor's victory at
Austerlitz.
None of these treasures was restored to its rightful city; the imperial treasures
remained in Vienna despite the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806. As
for the treasure of the Order of the Golden Fleece, Belgium tried, during the drafting
of the Treaty of Saint-Germain (signed September 10, 1919) to have it returned, but
it remained in the possession of Austria on hereditary grounds —
it had passed into the

hands of the Hapsburgs after the marriage of Maximilian I to Mary of Burgundy in

1477. The diplomatic agents who negotiated the treaty decided that dynastic history
should be given preference over artistic history and so the emblems of the Order are
still in Vienna. The Schat^kammer in Vienna's Hofburg has a prodigious ensemble of

precious objects: the crown of Charlemagne and that of the kings of Hungary the crown
;

and scepter of Rudolf II which had been used by the Austrian emperors the coronation
;

robe of Roger II of Sicily; the astonishing, embroidered liturgical vestments of the

95. The Water Carrier of Order of the Golden Fleece. In a dismantled Europe possibly on the verge of putting
Seville, by Diego Velaz- itself together again, this wealth of marvels attested to the mystical significance of the
quez. Wellington Museum, Holy Roman Empire which had united so many divers peoples.
Apsley House, London. This
painting was part of the booty
The artistic collections of Austria were much admired by the plenipotentiaries at the
captured from the Irene/) army Congress of Vienna, just as those of France, amassed at the Louvre, had been by the
by the Duke of Wellington in allies in 1814 and 1815. These two great museological centers, then the most important
the battle at I 'itoria on finn in Europe, had a profound influence, provoking the emulation of all nations.
21, The duke offered to
1813.
Another dispersal of works of art was caused by the Peninsular War (1808-1814)
restore the paintings to the
in Spain. Although the delays and subterfuges of King Joseph Bonaparte (who was
Spanish govern went but instead
the government made a gift of thinking about his proposed museum for Madrid) kept the Louvre from acquiring
them to him. masterpieces of the Spanish School, the French generals of the Army of Spain looted

188
95 189
in their own one of the most rapacious was Marshal Nicolas Soult. When
interests;
King Joseph was forced to leave Spain, he took with him a whole convoy of paintings ;

it was seized, along with all the baggage of the French army, by Wellington in the

decisive battle at Vitoria on June 21, 1813. The English general hastened to propose
their restitution to the Spanish government. The capture of works of art as war booty
was such a common practice that this was an astounding proposition to which Spain
answered, "His Majesty, moved bv your consideration, does not wish to deprive you
of what has come into your possession by such just and honorable means." Thus, one
hundred sixtv-five Spanish paintings went to England where they still remain. Recently,
London's Apsley House, once the Duke of Wellington's residence where the paintings
were installed, was given to the State and transformed into a public museum, the
National Wellington Museum. This scattering of Spanish paintings across Europe
helped to bring to the public's attention painters who were little known and appreciated
the exception was Murillo whose success began in the eighteenth century with the first
exodus of his masterpieces from Spain.
In this general disorder, some curious occurred. After the death of
chasses-croises
Anna Maria Ludovica de' Medici and despite the terms of her will, many pieces of
oreficeria from the Medicean treasury were removed to Vienna by the Lorraine more ;

than a thousand gold medals, jewels and art objects were sold, given away or stolen.
The 1919 Treaty of Saint-Germain stipulated their restitution to Florence but only
eightv-three pieces were returned, the jewels of Anna Maria Ludovica having been
carried off bv the last emperor of Austria, Charles I. In revenge, the Museo degli
Argenti in the Pitti Palace in Florence exhibited a remarkable collection of eighty-five
pieces of German metalwork, among them some masterpieces from the Nuremburg
and Augsburg ateliers. Grand Duke Ferdinand II of Tuscany, deposed in 1 803, received
as compensation the principality of Salzburg. In 1805 when the principality was
re-awarded to Austria, he carred off in his baggage the entire SUberkammer of the
bishops of Salzburg, first to W'urtzburg, then to Florence, to which he returned in
1814. This "pillage" at Salzburg's expense was in addition to the one effected in 1806
bv the imperial administration, which removed the city's art works to Vienna.
Napoleon's name remains associated with the requisitioning of art works over the
whole of Europe and one continues to impute to him a personal responsibility. In
reality, if his victories permitted it, the initiative came from the Directory. It is, without
a doubt, only proper to judge this policy according to the standards of that time and
not those of today. Perhaps some future age will find immoral that which we think
entirely natural. Is not the power of money as much an instrument of domination as
military strength? Which is more moral — to conquer works of art with dollars or by
men fallen "on the field of honor"? All depends on motives and circumstances. For a
revolutionary France attacked by Europe and turned conqueror under the menace of
invasion, the capture of works of art was the prerogative of the victor, a noble means of
seeking indemnity for losses sustained in men and arms at the hands of the enemy.
"How beautiful it is to capture the productions of genius. It is the only conquest
worthy of a people friendly to the arts," wrote an editor of the Decade in 1794. Soon,
following the victories of Bonaparte, with the revolutionary ideology less on the
defense and becoming more expansive, it seemed normal that Paris be the "capital of

190
the arts" of this new Europe, delivered by France from the rule of tyrants, and tribute
paid in art seemed somehow the price of liberty. In this domain as in many others,
Napoleon was the heir of the Revolution. If he lavished such attention on the enrich-
ment of his museums, it was because of the impassioned interest this statesman and
militarist, son of the Age of Enlightenment, evinced for science and the arts, for what
we would call today "culture." Illuminating in this respect is his conduct during the
Egyptian campaign.
The intellectual aims of the expedition were almost as important as its political aims,
which rested, moreover, on chimeras. It was a question of opening the mind to the
mystery of the East, which hid the secret of an antiquity more profound than that of
the Greeks and Romans. The ships conveying Bonaparte and his staff officers also
quartered members of the "commission on the sciences and the arts." There were more
than one hundred sixty-five persons: astronomers, botanists, surgeons and physicians,
pharmacists, composers, writers, economists, printers, orientalists. After his entry into
Cairo, Bonaparte established, in imitation of the one at Paris, an Institut d'Egvpte;
installed in a complex of palaces abandoned by the Mamelukes after the battle of the
Pyramids (July 1798), the institute housed chemistry and physics laboratories, an
—
Arabic press, conference halls, a library and a museum the first Egyptological
—
museum with a collection that included the famous Rosetta stone discovered by
French troops, which later would reveal to Champollion the secret of hieroglyphics.
With the surrender of General Menou on January 4, 1800, this embryonic museum was
confiscated by the English and removed to the British Museum. Thus the flood tide of
museology precipitated by the French Revolution reached as far as Cairo.
Museums were scattered over the whole of Europe and beyond. Art treasures were
made available to the masses which hitherto had been accessible only to an elite group
of connoisseurs and artists; these assemblages of objects were to foster the study of
past artistic civili2ations. Some aestheticians deplored the situation. The same Quatre-
mere de Quincy who had protested against the transfer of Roman statuary to Paris
stigmatized in his Considerations morales sur la destination des outrages d'art (1815) "the
strange system which has prevailed for some time in Europe. The public has become
persuaded that the secret to making the Arts flourish lies in the virtue of these assem-
blages of works known as collections, cabinets, museums. All the nations, in emulation of
one another, have made such a singular thing of them that one has not yet thought of
noticing that masterpieces or models, brought together at great expense, all existed
before there were collections and that since one has made Museums to create Master-
pieces, there are no longer any Masterpieces to fill the Museums."

191
192 96
 Chapter

10
The Museum Age
The early part of the nineteenth century was the golden age of collectors, of true
amateurs whose instincts led them to make good purchases for little money. Such a
practice was possible then and prevailed, with regard to certain categories of objects,
until the beginning of the war in 1914. Before 1860, when an older attitude was revived,
the work of art ceased to be an object of speculation as it had been at the end of the
seventeenth century and all through the eighteenth. In creating rapid accumulations
of fortune and, therefore, readily available assets, an economic vigor based on the
upsurge of industry gave new impetus to the art market, while in the first part of the
century the constant revenues from wealth dependent on the exploitation of land little
favored this kind of speculation. In 1801 Baron Vivant-Denon, not yet director of the
Musee Napoleon, bought for 150 to 300 gold francs an "unstylish" painting no one
wanted, Watteau's Gilles (today in the Louvre). It had been displayed for a long time,
it seems, in the shop window of a dealer on the Place du Carrousel with a large placard

bearing this bit of doggerel:

Que Pierrot serait content

S'il avait I' art de vous plaire.

As late as 1839 the Louvre was able to buy two Chardin pastels
(a self-portrait and a
96. French Art. Mar-
1739. portrait of his wife) for 196 gold francs; in 1834 the same museum acquired Simone
quetry Commode, by An- Martini's Christ Carrying the Cross for 200 gold francs and Baron Taylor, sent by
toine Gaudreau, with gilded
Louis Philippe to Spain to profit from the opportunities offered by the Carlist War,
bronzes signed by Caffieri. From
the royal apartments at Versailles.
brought back a fabulous collection of 553 pictures at the cost of 1,327,000 gold
Wallace Collection, Hertford francs, an average of 2,489 gold francs each. Prices were even lower for Medieval
House, London. One of the most and Renaissance objets d'art and furniture which were considered practically worthless,
beautiful pieces of furniture in
the Wallace Collection, this piece
—
secondhand goods a curious attitude in view of the passion the romantic period felt
for these eras but which doubtlessly can be explained by the fact that the industrial
belonged to Lord Hertford as early
as 1865 when he lent
arts had not yet lost all faculty of invention. Despite a certain taste for the Gothic,
it for
exhibition at the Musee Retro- furniture and the decorative arts perpetuated a degenerate neoclassicism ("JLouis-
spectif held that year at Paris. philippard" in France, the Biedermeier style in Germany and Austria). Thus Charles

193
Sauvageot, with the modest salaries of a customs official and first violinist at the Paris
Opera, accumulated medieval and Renaissance treasures which were to enrich the
Louvre at his death. He was one of the characters who inspired Balzac's Le Cousin Pons
(1847): "Pons... subscribed to the axiom of Chenavard, the learned collector of precious
pictures, who pretended one could not enjoy looking at a Ruisdael, a Hobbema, a
Sebastiano del Piombo, a Giorgione or a Diirer unless the painting had cost only fifty
francs. Pons permitted himself no acquisition over a hundred francs and for him to pay
fifty francs, an object had to be worth three thousand. If the most beautiful thing in the
world cost three hundred francs, it did not exist for him. Opportunities were rare but
he possessed the three ingredients for success: the legs of a deer, the time of an idler and
the patience of an Israelite." Later, Chocquet, an official in the Ministry of Finance,
succeeded in bringing together an astonishing collection of pictures by Delacroix and
Cezanne. Having inherited a fortune, he bought himself an hotel and stopped buying
paintings; to a surprised friend, he remarked, "It no longer interests me; I can afford
them." The mentality of nineteenth-century collectors was in some measure the inverse
of that of today's amateurs, for whom the priceless has its place.
It is not to our purpose here to trace the history of the great nineteenth-century
amateurs, as we have done in preceding chapters where private collections are shown
to have constituted veritable museums, liberally open and, to a certain extent, "public."
Let us cite, however, a last example of this type, the gallery of the Regent, Philippe,
Due d'Orleans.The motive behind authorization to print a Description of the Paintings
in the Palais Royal in 1727 was given thus: "The public in general is well acquainted
with the range and interest of this prodigious collection which contains some of the
rarest and most beautiful of paintings, but it was useful to present it with a detailed
account." In the nineteenth century an ever-growing number of museums was organ-
ized in the public interest; private collections were closed, accessible only to friends or
the "initiated," that is, provided the owners were not so jealous as to hide them from
—
everyone sometimes, especially from scholars, like misers concealing their treasures.
The contemporary art world does not have to a comparable degree annuals like those so
frequent under the Ancien Regime which provided tourists with a list by city of note-
worthy private collections or catalogues like the Description of the Paintings in the Palais
Royal, offered to the public at pocketbook size and price.
The term museum must henceforth be reserved for official institutions in the public
interest. Since the beginning of the century, museums had become so much a part of
everyday life that they were closely linked with politics and answerable to a new factor
in public life in the age of democracy: opinion. The creation of the Musee Napoleon
and the overall museological program of revolutionary and imperial France were an
integral part of the international political designs of these regimes. Throughout the
nineteenth century, monarchs and governments in power took care not to neglect so
efficacious a means to influence public opinion, almost to the point of brainwashing.
Opposition to this attitude also served to engender museums. Thus, in 1818, respond-
ing to the Germanic nationalism developing in Austria under Metternich in opposition
to the European inclination towards an empire, the Czechs also became conscious of
their own identity and founded at Prague a museum to serve as a center of study for
Czech and Slavic civilizations. Later, the creation of a museum at Oslo, the Norsk

194
 ;

Folkemuseum, was sparked by struggles against Sweden which led to Norwegian

independence in 1905. The museum was established in 1895, its founder proclaiming it
was to be "a monument erected to the evolution of our race, to the development of
national thought and culture..." So strong was the nationalistic tradition of this Norsk
Folkemuseum that as late as 1932 its director could write, "Museums help to dam up
foreign influences, subdue them and transform them into forces to profit national life."
Throughout the nineteenth century officialdom tended to view the museum as a foyer
for this nationalism then the dominating political form in Europe.
The nineteenth century saw the extension of the museum to encompass all the
creations of human life, even the most humble; professed to be a compendium of all
it

knowledge like the Speculum Majus, the thirteenth-century encyclopedic treatise by

Vincent de Beauvais. The resultant enlargement was violently attacked by certain
thinkers who sought to limit the museum to its original purpose. In the nineteenth
century, Germany more than France emerged as the theatre for this kind of academic
discussion of the museum; toward 1830 controversy erupted between partisans of the
intensive museum, limited to art, and champions of the extensible form, broadly
scientific in scope. Adherents of the first group rallied around Wilhelm von Humboldt
they believed the museum should contain the masterpieces of antiquity and of the great
European schools the others found a leader in Leopold von Ledebur, curator at the
;

museum of ethnography, who defended the universality of the museum, which should
present the culture and history of all peoples of all time, particularly the German people.
The best way to understand this principle of extension is to study the formation and
development of one of the great museological complexes. The dispersion of museums
in London poorly illustrates the phenomenon; at Paris, the housing of several collec-
tions in one incommodious historical building produced a certain confusion. On the
other hand, in Berlin each species of museological collection had its own building and
the tendency to group these edifices in one place gives a clear insight into this principle
of growth.
It was doubtlessly the sight of the wonderful Louvre of Napoleon that gave King
Frederick William III the desire to create for Berlin a museum comparable to the one
in Paris; in 1814 and 1815, in fact, he had greatly admired Denon's well-ordered
galleries. The Prussian king's advisers began by enriching his collections with various
acquisitions. A special building was constructed (1824-1828) by the neoclassical Berlin
architect, Karl Friedrich Schinkel. In keeping with the tastes of the time, the Schinkel-
bau (known today as the Altes Museum) had a peristyle (Ionic order) around its
exterior while on the interior, rooms radiated off a rotunda inspired by the Pantheon.
The first floor of the museum was devoted to an antiquarium the second, to medieval
,

and Renaissance treasures with 378 paintings, a print cabinet and ethnographic elements
from the former treasury or curiosities cabinet of the Hohenzollern. The building stood
on a peninsula (Museuminsel) formed by the juncture of a stream, the Kiipfergraben,
with the Spree. The very day of its opening, in August 1830, the museum appeared
too small and from 1843 to 1855 Stuler was charged with constructing another (known
as the Neues Museum). Built to the side of the earlier one, it was connected to it by a
corridor; thus began the excellent system of separate buildings linked by passageways.
Opened in 1859, the Neues Museum housed the Egyptian collection, antique ceramics,

195
97. Diagrammatic plan of the print cabinet and an important ethnographic collection, nucleus of the future
the "Island of Museums" in Museum fur Volkerkunde, as well as an ensemble of national antiquities, embryo of
Berlin. Berlin's principal mu-
the future Museum fur Vor- und Friihgeschichte (museum of pre- and protohistory)
seums are situated on a penin-
the latter had formerly been installed in Monbijou where it constituted the Museum
sula formed by the Spree and
its tributary, the Kupfergraben. Vaterlandischer Altertiimer, a museum of national antiquities. In 1876, in another of
This peninsula known as theis Stuler 's buildings, a veritable pastiche of a Corinthian temple designed for other
Museumsinsel. On the far right purposes, a museum of contemporary art was established, the Nationalgalerie. It was for
is part of the Altcs Museum or
for modern German art, that the famous Hugo von Tschudi
ar-
this museum, intended
Schinkelbau, built by the

chitect Schinkel and inaugurated

bought French impressionnists, a policy that resulted in his banishment by Kaiser
in 1
'830. Next to it is the Neues William II von Tschudi, however, continued his activities in Munich.
;

Museum built by Stuler in 1855, The accumulation of all manner of works by different sections of the museum
then the National Gallery eventually required limiting the Museumsinsel to the conservation of artistic and
(Museum of Modern Art, 1875, archeological collections. The ethnography cabinet was therefore re-installed in a
architect, S track). At the tip
Kaiser- special building constructed (1880-1886) by Ende on Saarlandstrasse. Shortly before,
of the peninsula is the
Friedrich-Museum (Museum a museum devoted to the decorative arts, the Kunstgewerbemuseum, was set up in a
of Western Art, built by limes new (1877-1881) building on Prinz-Albert-Strasse.
in 1904). Between this museum Toward the end of the century construction on the Museumsinsel resumed with the
and the National Gallery, a
marked encouragement of an expanded buying policy and archeological excavations,
group of monumental buildings
started in 1907 around a court-
by Dr. Wilhelm von Bode in particular. Several associations, the Kaiser-Friedrich
yard (Museumsforum) includes Museum Verein, the Deutsches Orient Comite and the Deutsche Orient Gesellschaft,
the Pergamon-Museum (Altar furnished the means for carrying out this policy on a vast scale in Europe, along the
of Pergamum), the Deutsches Mediterranean and in the Near East; entire structures, like the Altar of Pergamum, the
Museum or Museum of German
Gate of Ishtar from Babylon, the market place of Miletus, the frieze from the facade of
Art, and theVorderasiatisches
Museum (Museum of the Middle Arabian palace at Mshatta (given by Sultan Abdu-1-hamid II to William II), made
East). All these museums arc Berlin, in competition with Paris and London, one of the great centers for archeo-
connected by footbridges. Further logical study. A specialist in the Renaissance, Dr. von Bode, after heading the Christian
back from the Altcs Museum antiquities and paintings departments, was director general of the royal museums from
once stood the royal cast It
1906 to 1920; he completely re-organized the collections and proposed new buildings
(Schloss-Museum), the museum
arts, which was
to receive them. At the end of the island, Ihnes built (construction lasted from 1897 to
of decorative
destroyed during the nor. 1903) in German baroque style, the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum to house the medieval,
Renaissance and contemporary collections it is now called the Bode-Museum. Installa-
;

tion was according to the principle of historical totality, which mixed the different
objects created by one period in order to evoke its unique style; this was an innovation
of Bode as collections had been exhibited according to technique since the beginning
— —
of the nineteenth century painting, sculpture, objets d'art a division kept by most of
the great museums until the present time. In 1907 Dr. von Bode conceived the design
for a great museological compound to fill the space between the Kaiser-Friedrich-
Museum and the Neues Museum. It comprised three U-shaped wings around a central
plaza (Museumsforum). The central part contained the Altar of Pergamum; the right
wing, the Near Eastern collections (Vorderasiastisches Museum) and the left, German
art from the barbarian invasions to the rococo style (Deutsches Museum). The building,
constructed by Alfred Messel, was not completed until 1930; doubtlessly its purpose
determined Messel's choice of the neoclassical style for the exterior.
The old residence of the Hohenzollern, laid out in 1698-1706 by Andreas Schliiter
at the neck of the peninsula, was turned into a museum for the decorative arts (Schloss-

96
NEUBAUTEN AUF DER MUSEUMSINSEL

Museum) in 1921. The industrial art collections completed the artistic group on the
Museuminsel. The last museological center created in Berlin before World War II was
a museum devoted to German folklore (Kunstgewerbe- und Volkerkunde-Museum)
installed in 1937 in Schloss Bellevue in the Tiergarten.
Berlin's collections were dispersed following the war. Almost of the pinakotheke
all

is preserved in West Berlin, installed in the Museum Dahlem the former quarters of the

ethnology museum. Seized, then restored by the Soviets to the government of East
Germany, the archeological collections are being slowly regrouped in the various
museums, either restored or undergoing restoration, on the Museuminsel; only the
Schloss-Museum has disappeared, the East German government having demolished,
for symbolic reasons, what remained of the Hohenzollern residence after it was burned
during the war.
Over the whole of Europe museums sprang up. More or less until mid-century,
and even later in the Anglo-Saxon countries, their architecture reflected the neo-antique
style of the first museological installations. In the Vatican, parallel to the great hall of
the library, the Braccio Nuovo (the new wing constructed from 1817 to 1822 by
Raffaele Stern to display the most beautiful statues from the Museo Chiaramonti)

197
reproduced the neo-Roman style created by Michelangelo Simonetti for the Museo
Pio-Clementino (built in 1775-1882) and adopted by Percier and Fontaine for the
antiquarium in the Louvre, based on a design of Raymond and laid out from 1802 to
1806. The section of the Louvre known as the M usee Charles X, realized (1827-1833) by
Fontaine in the south wing of the cour carree, received the new collections of antique
ceramics and Egyptology; influenced by the taste current at the time of Louis Philippe
for over-all decor (gilt stucco, bronzes, imitation cameos, historical and allegorical
paintings), the style is not pure classical revival.
Exterior architecture adopted the austere facades of the Greek revival style. In the
first half of the century, the museum took the form of a temple. Begun in 1823 by
Sir Robert Smirke on the site of the former Montague House, the British Museum took
shape as a majestic Ionic temple with two wings, the over-all design of which was
inspired by the Parthenon of Athens. Similar in style was the new building erected in
1839 to house Oxford's Ashmolean Museum.
The construction of museums was integrated into general building programs. The
European city in which the museum played the greatest role in the municipal fabric is
unquestionably Munich. The city itself is a museum, inspired by the nostalgia for Italy
and Greece that troubled the spirit of King Louis I of Bavaria, already enamored of
antiquities and archeology when still a crown prince. The largest city in the south of
Germany, Munich had always looked toward Italy; by the end of the sixteenth century,
her princes, who had started a school for bronze workers there, were desirous of
making Munich a "new Rome." Louis I looked even further to the south: "I will have
no rest until Munich resembles Athens." He dreamed of the unity of Germany, in the
interest of Bavaria but against Gothic barbarism. Louis contributed to the independence
of Greece and managed to install one of his sons, Otto I, as the first king of the new
nation. Munich was, then, rebuilt in a spirit of reaction against the baroque, the rococo
and the Gothic; her new buildings reproduced both Greek and Italian edifices. Louis
brought to the remaking of his city the mentality of a collector and his endeavors recall
Emperor Hadrian's plans for a microcosm of the antique world at Tivoli. The new
Residenz or Konigsbau of Leo von Klenze was inspired by the Palazzo Pitti in Florence
with the addition of the three-order program of the Palazzo Rucellai. Florence's Loggia
dei Lanzi provided the model for the Feldherrnhalle (Hall of Marshals) a succession of
;

Florentine pala-^j lined the Ludwigstrasse, the main boulevard of the new city; the
Staatsbibliothek was a pastiche of quattrocento buildings; the Siegestor reproduced
Trajan's triumphal arch in Rome, another copy of which had been commissioned by
Napoleon for the Cour du Carrousel of the Louvre. Munich's churches presented a
compendium of old Christian architectural styles: the primitive basilica of All Saints,
the Byzantine basilica of St. Boniface and the Romanesque church of St. Louis.
Museums also had a part in this symphony of classicism; of these the oldest is the
Glyptothek. Unsatisfied with the entries in an architectural competition, in 1816 Louis
commissioned Leo von Klenze to design a building to house his antiquities, in par-
ticular the pediments from the Temple of Aphaia in Aegina. Completed in 1830, the
quadrilateral building was lighted from above; the windowless exterior walls were
rhythmically punctuated with niches provided with statues and the entrance was a
pronaos surrounded by an Ionic peristyle. During his reign, Louis I had Ziebland build

198
 !

(1846) an exhibition palace opposite the Glyptothek; this later became known as the
Secession Palace, from the name of the avant-garde society (founded in 1892 by Stuck,
Triibner and Uhde) which convened there. After his abdication, Louis completed the
ensemble by commissioning from Leo von Klenze a pastiche of the Propylaea to fill
the space between the two buildings, thereby creating a square (the Konigsplatz) where
the three Greek orders were commemorated: the Ionic, the Corinthian and the Doric.
Leo von Klenze was well suited to serve the neo-Greek tastes of the prince; they
had met in Paris where von Klenze was studying with Napoleon's architect, Charles
Percier. As early as 1815 the prince, already obsessed with Athens, entrusted von
—
Klenze with building a copy of the Parthenon near Regensburg the consecration of
this temple to the gods of Valhalla must have made Pallas Athena tremble on Olympus
This act is expressive of the strange "antiquitizing" and Germanizing syncreticism that
troubled the mind of the prince, who was profoundly inspired by Goethe. In Munich
Louis I had von Klenze build still another Greek temple, the Doric-style Ruhmeshalle
or Hall of Glory.
Munich needed a museum for exhibiting, in a rational fashion, the admirable
collections of paintings which dynastic movements had precipitated upon the city and
which the nineteenth century had swelled with works by Italian, Flemish and German
primitives. Leo von Klenze was the innovating architect; he provided a building that
combined the two systems developed for pinakothekai under the Ancien Regime: the
gallery and the cabinet. In construction from 1826 to 1836, the Alte Pinakothek
presents a succession of large rooms lighted from above which constitute a gallery; it
is framed on one side by a series of laterally illuminated cabinets designed to receive

small paintings and, on the other, by an open-air portico or loggia (which was ill suited
to Munich's climate). Rejecting the neo-Greek style, this time Klenze adopted a
Renaissance format that seemed to him more in keeping with the building's purpose.
Munich's museum for modern art is older than that in Berlin. One wonders why
the architect Voits adopted the style of a pre-Romanesque Lombard church for this
Neue Pinakothek (constructed 1846-1853). Formerly the exterior was decorated with
large frescoes by Wilhelm von Kaulbach, depicting the history of modern painting and
Louis I's patronage of the arts. Such "illustrations" were at that time requisite decora-
tion for museums for the Alte Pinakothek Peter von Cornelius traced the history of
;

painting in twenty-four allegories. In Berlin's Neues Museum, the ground-floor rooms

devoted to Nordic antiquities were decorated with paintings tracing the cycle of
Teutonic myths. France had furnished the prototype in the Musee Charles X of the
Louvre where a team of artists was mobilized by Count de Forbin, director of museums,
to commemorate in ceiling decorations the history of the antique civilizations then
known —
quite mediocre paintings, except for Ingres' Apotheosis oj Homer which was
removed for the 1855 international exposition, later installed in the Palais du Luxem-
bourg and, finally, given to the Louvre; a copy now replaces it on the ceiling of the
Salle Clarac.
The first half of the nineteenth century was a great period for archeological museums.
Museums were looked upon as temples which preserved the vestiges of human history,
the origin of which was being pushed back further and farther into past millennia. For
centuries Rome had eclipsed Greece in the Occidental world. Toward the end of the

199
 J

^c
 eighteenth century scholars, diplomats and collectors discovered with wonder the pure
creations of the country of light, viewed until then only through the bias of Rome.
Museums vied with each other for masterpieces wrested from monuments or from the
soil of Greece and the Orient. France, who at the moment possessed the most celebrated
antiquities of Rome, let herself be outdistanced by England and Germany in the quest
for things Greek. In 1811 Fauvel, French vice consul at Athens, informed the Louvre
of the discovery of seventeen statues in Parian marble, found by two Germans and two
Englishmen in a temple to Aphaia on Aegina. The marbles were to be auctioned off
on Zante. The question of dating aroused lively controversy; the tendency was to place
them later than the Parthenon sculptures. After studying crude sketches sent by the
archeologist Chauvel, Ennius-Quirinus Visconti, curator of antiquities at the Louvre,
recognized them as important fifth-century works, but Vivant-Denon was worried
about the price; negotiations dragged; the statues were eventually sent to Malta on
orders from the agent working for Louis, the Bavarian crown prince. After being
restored (1815-1817) in Rome by the Swedish neoclassical sculptor Thorvaldsen (who
"completed" them after the seventeenth-century custom), the Aeginetan marbles
finally went to Munich in 1828 where they formed the nucleus of the Glyptothek.
The Louvre also failed to lay hands on the Parthenon marbles, with the exception
of that which had already come into its possession following the revolutionary con-
fiscations: a fragment of the Panathenaic frieze which vice consul Fauvel had appro-
priated in 1787 for the French ambassador to Constantinople, Count de Choiseul-
Gouffier, who had taken it from Athens to Marseilles where it was seized by the revo-
lutionary commission. The history of the Parthenon marbles is a veritable suspense
story. Thomas Bruce, seventh Earl of Elgin and British ambassador to Constantinople,
obtained from the Turkish government permission to sketch and to make casts of the
sculptures on the Acropolis and, later, to remove a few examples taking advantage of
;

this privilege, he seized fifteen metopes and fifty-six additional pieces of the Parthenon,

98.Horse drawing the Char- four sections of the frieze from the Temple of Athena Nike, a caryatid from the
iot of Selene, by Phidias. Erectheum and a hundred or so inscriptions. Recalled to London in 1803, the ambas-
From the Parthenon. British sador ordered his booty crated for shipment to England there were two hundred cases.
;

Museum, London.
During the voyage home, Lord Elgin was captured by the French in 1805 and impris-
oned for two years. As for the cases, after Turkey entered into war with England,
99. Drawing of the Horse the French seized them and were about to send them to Piraeus and thence to Paris
of Selene, by Benjamin when an opportune peace with Turkey reversed the situation and the crates left for
Robert Haydon in 1809. Bri- England by ship; one of the ships sank with its precious cargo, which was later
tish Museum, London.
recovered. However, in 1807, the two hundred cases arrived in various ports all over
England. Brought together, the marbles were exhibited from June 1807 to the summer
The comparison of the drawing
with the original shows a neo-
of 1811 in an annex to the earl's house on Park Lane, where they formed Elgin's
of the work
classic interpretation Museum. Scarcely had they been put on display when the marbles became the subject
which explains how the Parthenon of a stormy dispute. Influenced by the academic conceptions of the Dilettanti, Payne
marbles were, perhaps, considered Knight, a great collector of antiquities and an arbiter of taste in London, pronounced
by the Dilettanti as works from them workshop copies after Phidias and possibly even Hadrianic productions. Led by
a later era. This suppleness of
Greek art astonished the amateurs
the American Benjamin West, the Anglo-Swiss Heinrich Fiissli (Henry Fuseli) and the
accustomed to the harshness of young enthusiast Benjamin Robert Haydon (who had made many drawings of the
Roman copies. marbles), the artists of the Royal Academy considered them masterpieces by Phidias.

201
 The dispute lasted until 1814 when it ended vio-
lently with Lord Elgin being accused of vandalism
and scorned as a "marble pedlar." About the same
time Lord Byron lamented the loss sustained by
Greece in his Childe Harold (Cantos I and II
appeared in 1812). Elgin suffered a financial setback
and found himself constrained to put the marbles
up for sale. The opinion of the Dilettanti contribut-
ed to the British Museum's reluctance to buy them
moreover, the institution had just procured for
itself the sculptures from the Temple of Apollo
Epicurius at Phigalia. In 1814 the crown prince of
Bavaria, who had already acquired the Aeginetan
pediments, and the Louvre, represented by Vis-
conti, figured among the interested buyers. The
arrival of Canova in London and the opinion of the
sculptor John Flaxman turned the tide against the
Dilettanti. Lord Elgin's secretary, at that time
Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs, doubt-
lessly favored the transaction, thus smoothing the
way for their acquisition. Convening on Feb-
ruary 29, 1816, the House of Commons voted to
purchase the lot for the insignificant sum of
£35,000, which did not even cover the expenses
incurred by Lord Elgin. Haydon, the impassioned
defender of the marbles, could then write that the
100. Attic mixing bowl from the last quarter of the. 5th
century. Meeting of the gods. Louvre Museum, Paris. This
British Museum was "the finest museum in
vase came into the possession of the Louvre Museum with the ac- Europe." In any case it became Europe's finest
quisition of the Durand collection
in 1824. Following the purchase of the museum of Greek art as it continued to expand in
Tochon collection in1818, this acquisition formed the nucleus of the this area throughout the century as a result of
famous collection of antique ceramics which constitutes one of the
successful excavations by English archeologists in
Louvre's richest sections.
the Middle East statues from the monument of the
;

Nereids at Xanthus arrived in Bloomsbury in 1845.

In addition to the Parthenon, London soon
boasted the remains of two other marvels of the
world: statues from the Mausoleum of Halicar-
nassus, acquired in 1855-1860, and a few artifacts
from the temple of Artemis at Ephesus.
To receive the Parthenon marbles a Greek
temple was needed; Robert Smirke, who had
studied in Greece, undertook its construction in
the Ionic style in 1823. At the advice of Canova, the
101. Egyptian Art. I\ 'th Dynasty. Louvre Museum, Paris. This
work, one of the most beautiful of the Ancient Empire, was acquired in
statues from the Acropolis were allowed to remain
1828 by the Santoni brothers of Leghorn in a group of'4,000 pieces from in the condition in which they were found, unlike
the collection formed in Egypt by the English consul, Henry Suit. the Aeginetan marbles which Thorvaldsen had

202 101
"completed" earlier. An evolution in taste had engendered respect for the original
artifact, whereas the earlier amateurs did not appreciate mutilated works and believed
that the "idea" of their creators would be betrayed if they were not completed.
—
With regard to the major arts of Greece, France lamenting the loss of the Vatican
antiquities —found herself in an inferior position. However, she soon ranked first in
another area, that of antique ceramics, owing to the purchase of the Tochon (1818) and
Durand (1824) collections, followed by other acquisitions over the century. With the
Durand collection, more than two thousand bronzes entered the Louvre. In 1820 an
admirable statue of Venus was discovered in a wall by a peasant on the island of Melos
(Latinized to Milo). The celebrated navigator Dumont d'Urville, then an ensign on the
Chevrette, informed the Marquis de Riviere, French ambassador to Constantinople, of
the discovery and the latter resolved to present it to Louis XVIII. He sent one of his
secretaries, a certain de Marcellus, to procure it; the task was accomplished only after
several dramatic episodes. The news of the discovery having quickly spread, the
English and the Dutch arrived at Malta in the hope of carrying off the statue. First on
the Estafette, then on the Lionne, the goddess toured the Mediterranean, arousing the
admiration of numerous visitors at every port of call: Rhodes, Cyprus, Acre, Alexandria.
At Piraeus she was paid homage by the aging Chauvel, one of the pioneers among
French archeologists. The Venus de Milo entered the Louvre in 1821, becoming the
most celebrated work in the antiquarium She was soon joined by other Greek works.
.

In 1829 the Greek senate, in recognition of aid offered by France in the War of Inde-
pendence, presented the Louvre with two metopes from the Temple of Zeus at Olympia
which had been discovered by the French expedition to the Peloponnesus. In 1863
another French diplomat, M. de Champoiseau, discovered on the island of Samothrace
the celebrated Nike from the sanctuary of the Cabiri and removed it to the Louvre the
same year.
The French expedition to Egypt first opened universal history to perspectives
beyond the contemporary Greek revival trend. France did not profit immediately from
the interest generated by Bonaparte's scientific mission which, however, did provoke
wide-scale emulation in Europe. Nevertheless, the first museum of Egyptian anti-
quities was founded by France and was given its own curator in 1823 it was created by
;

removing from the department of antiquities the few Egyptian objects it had contained.
Thanks to Jean Francois Champollion this museum did not long remain purely
theoretical. Since Napoleon, Egypt had been a theatre of intense activity, with excava-
tions most often having a commercial end. Henry Salt, British consul general in
Alexandria from 1815 to 1827, operated a veritable antiquities trade; maintaining
agents, the most active of whom was Giovanni Battista Belzoni, Salt entered into com-
petition with the Italian Bernardino Drovetti, who had been appointed by Napoleon
as French consul general in Egypt. Their struggles occasionally assumed the dramatic
character of a picaresque novel. France lost the Drovetti collection because Louis XVIII
found the price too high; it went instead to Italy. Bought by Carlo Felice di Savoia in
1824 for 300,000 lire, the collection went to the small Egyptian cabinet in Turin which
had been formed with pieces brought back from a scientific expedition to the Orient
in 1763 by a professor at the local university, Vitaliano Donati. The adventures of one
of the most precious pieces in this collection merit re-telling; they concern a papyrus

204
 listing all the sovereigns of Egypt, giving their
divinitiesand the duration of their reigns. This
unique artifact, the first of its kind to be unearthed
in Egypt, was found by Drovetti during the course
of excavations of Theban tomb sites; the exca-
vators were looking for treasures, not documents
and Drovetti, attaching little importance to the
discovery, inserted the papyrus into a phial he
found in his saddlebag arid returned to camp at a
gallop; when he arrived, the document was in
pieces. Champollion came upon the fragments in a
box in the Turin museum and was the first to
recognize their importance; unfortunately the
famous royal list has many lacunae and Egypto-
logists ever since have deplored Drovetti's negli-
gence. Champollion, who had proposed in vain
that Louis XVIII purchase the Drovetti collection,
was happier with the administration of Charles X
and in 1826 succeeded in acquiring for the Louvre
more than four thousand pieces from the collection
of the British consul Salt that had been sold to the
Santoni brothers in Leghorn. Thus, what had been
intended for France enriched Italy while that which
England coveted fell into the hands of France. The
struggles between Drovetti and Salt had been in
vain. In truth, Salt, whose collections seemed
inexhaustible, also sold to the British Museum; he
was, then, an early benefactor of two great
Egyptian museums.
Champollion, on his research expedition to
Egypt in 1828-1829, took with him an Italian team,
headed by Ippolito Rossellini, which was working
on behalf of Grand Duke Leopold II of Tuscany.
The fruits of this mission were added to the
Nizzoli collection (purchased in 1824) to form the
Egyptian museum in Florence. In 1839 a second
—
Egyptian museum opened in Italy in the Lateran
Palace in the Vatican, where Gregory XVI had it
102. The Michaux Stone or Sumerian Kudurru.
installed among other collections of antiquities.
Cabinet of Medallions, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. Brought
from the Orient in 1786 by the French botanist Andre The rooms were decorated with Egyptian-style
Michaux, this stone marker is the oldest Mesopotamian object columns and paintings representing landscapes
known in Europe. along the Nile; the collections were installed by
Luigi Maria Ungarelli, a pupil of Champollion.
France's cultural position in Egypt enabled her
throughout the nineteenth century and well into

205
103. Mexican Mask in Tur-
quoise Mosaic. British Mu- , ^-
seum, London. This piece
tered the British Museum
en-
in
Henry
fee £©w^ • -
1
1865 with the collection of
Christy. was about this time
It
when interest was aroused in
PISH
pre-Columbian civilisations.

104. Arrival of a Winged

Bull from Khorsabad at the
Louvre. .Anonymous engraving
from the Antiquities of Nine-
veh. Bibliotheque Nationale, Pa-
ris. The transport of colossal
pieces from the excavations at
Khorsabad was an adventure filled
with) mishaps. The Assyrian Mu-

seum opened in Paris in May

1847.

the twentieth, thanks to the talents of her archeologists and her buying campaigns, to
amass at the Louvre the most important collection of Egyptian art outside Cairo and
even there the museum was organized by French scholars to whomthe khedives had
entrusted the care of the antiquities of Egypt. Since agreements made with the Egyptian
government had long granted excavators the right to half of the objects found, the
culture of the land of the Pharaohs was thus carried to all parts of the world.
For a long time the only Mesopotamian object conserved in Europe was the Michaux
stone, a kudurru or stone marker brought back in 1786 by the French botanist whose
name it was given and sold by him to the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris for the
inflated sum of 4,200 francs. After that, British diplomats and officers retraced the steps
of Herodotus to the site of Babylon, which, however, they only perfunctorily explored.
As early as 1826 the British government, acting on behalf of the British Museum,
bought for a thousand livres a small Mesopotamian collection brought back from the
Orient by the Consul Claudius James Rich. A Frenchman, Paul Emile Botta, took the
initiative in excavating for traces of the ancient Assyrian civilization. Sent as the French
consular agent to Mosul, he began digging at his own expense on the site of Nineveh
and discovered Sargon's palace at Khorsabad; he soon received a very modest subsidy
from the French government and, after shutting down the works in 1844, proceeded
to prepare for export a selection of the principal sculptures unearthed. They were sent

207
 ;

by sea to Paris where they arrived in February 1847 the following May first a two-room
;

Assyrian Museum opened in the Louvre. Botta's success awakened the interest of the
English; in 1845 a British traveler, Austen Henry Layard, who had met Botta at
Mosul, resolved to undertake excavation at the site of Calah (Nimrud); at first he
was befriended by the British charge d'affaires in Constantinople, Sir Stratford
Canning and was later financed by the British Museum. The fruits of his excavations
arrived in London during the summer of 1847 where they provoked as much wonder
as had Botta's in Paris. In the end the two museums found themselves rivals they vied
;

for the tells, or ancient mounds, of Mesopotamia — a competition not always civil; a
Turkish archeologist and English agent who bore the name of a Mazdean god, Hormuzd
Rassam, went so far as to dig clandestinely, at night, at the site of Kuyunjik, occupied
by the Frenchman Victor Place, in order to remove some of the most beautiful pieces
thus the famous wounded lioness and the thousands of bricks from the library of
King Ashurbanipal's palace went to London, not Paris. The magnificent yields of the
second and third French missions, those of Victor Place and Fresnel, were unfortun-
ately lost for the most part in transport on the Tigris, from Mosul to Basra, in 1856;
the cases were loaded onto keleks (rafts made of reeds supported by inflated goatskins),
a mode of navigation in use since the time of the ancient Mesopotamiams. Two keleks
were attacked by Arabs and were sunk a third ran aground at Basra. The few reliefs
;

that were saved arrived in Paris in July 1856 there still remained something to astonish
;

the Parisians for, although Botta had had to cut two of the colossal winged bulls that
flanked the gates of Khorsabad, Place managed to transport two others intact; they
weighed more than thirty-three tons each. One remained where it sank in the Tigris
and the other, grounded at Basra was recovered with great difficulty and sent to Paris.
A new room was laid out in the Louvre, under the Colonnade; the bulls flanked each
side of the doors according to their position in situ; since one was missing, it was
replaced by a cast of one of the other three. The talented French archeologists received
from their country only those tokens of ingratitude that France, dominated by political
intrigues and upsets, so often reserves for her most efficacious servants, pioneers and
scholars Botta died in disgrace, Fresnel in poverty, Place in exile. Their contemporaries,
;

the English archeologists Austen Layard and Henry Rawlinson, were knighted.
Another European museum sought to acquire Mesopotamian antiquities. The king
of Prussia subscribed, for 50,000 francs, to the Assyrian Excavation Fund, a society
founded to 1 853 to subsidize research in Babylonia the excavations were disappointing
;

and the association was dissolved; however, the Berlin museum did acquire several
cases of antiquities.
With Ernest de Sarzec, the excavator of Tello, ends the great tradition of diplomat-
archeologists that began in the seventeenth century. French consular agent to Basra
105. The Reconciliation of in 1875, Sarzec chose for his field of action a deserted tell whose depths hid the secret
Cephalus and Procris, by of the origins of the Mesopotamian civilization. After eleven excavation campaigns,
Claude Gelee, Le Lorrain. undertaken from 1877 to 1900, the third millenium B.C. revealed its story in the
National Gallery, London. In-
Sumerian city of Lagash, where the patesi, or priest-king, Gudea had reigned. The first
cluded in the purchase of the
Angerstein lot of artifacts, arriving in Paris in 1881, was bought by the Louvre for 130,000 francs
collection in 1824, this
is one of the first paintings ac- from Sarzec. In the end the diplomat received official subsidies. From this time on,
quired by the National Gallery. Germans, Englishmen and Americans competed with each other in Mesopotamia, in

209
,

Elam and in Iran. Now, however, the discoveries

were of scientific missions, generously
the fruits
financed, organized by institutes and directed by
specialists divided into various schools. One
cannot help longing with some regret for the not-
too-distant past when the search for buried his-
tory was a consul's pastime, when the author
Mme Jeanne Dieulafoy astonished the world by
dressing in men's clothes, like George Sand, to
explore Susa with her husband, the engineer
Marcel Auguste Dieulafoy, when a grocery boy
from Mecklenburg with a gift for languages
succeeded in making a fortune and, to satisfy a
childhood dream, discovered Troy and Mycenae,
defying the scholars who refused to believe in his
windfalls. The treasures Heinrich Schliemann
found at Troy and Mycenae enriched Berlin's
Museum fur Vor- und Fruhgeschichte, newly
by Ende on Prinz
installed in the building erected
Albertstrasse.
The Americas kept their secrets locked in the
earth for a longer time. There was, however, a
room called the Musee Mexicain which was opened
in the Louvre in 1850; it contained pieces acquired
from the Latour-Allard collection. The crowds of
visitors were so large that "they fought to get in."
The following year Peruvian artifacts were added
and the name was changed to the Musee Americain.
The British Museum had already bought Aztec
sculptures in 1823 and in 1865 it acquired the great
collection assembled by Henry Christy, a pioneer
in the study of aboriginal cultures. Henceforth
ethnography ranked as one of the numerous
scientific interests of the British Museum and
became an important theatre of activity. This
world of archeology which makes up the British
—
Museum attracted large crowds in 1 843 a census
showed that half a million people had visited the
beautiful new building designed by Robert Smirke.
106. Interior View of the National Gallery, London. Private
collection. Tin National Gallery was
building designed to bouse the
A large share of the activity of European
begun in 1833 at Trafalgar Square according to the plans of Wilkins
museums in the first half of the nineteenth century
and was opened to the public in 1838. was of an archeological or historical nature;
museum directors were less preoccupied with
painting, which had been the object of passionate
interest during the preceding period. It is true that

210
 allthe capitals and great cities of Europe had their
rich pinakothekai, either former princely collec-
tions turned over to the public or the creations of
the great museological era during the years of
Revolution and Empire. Only London remained
without a picture gallery. In contrast to all other
great European museums, the National Gallery
does not owe its origins to a former sovereign
collection transformed into a public museum; it
was created under the aegis of the Royal Academy,
planned over several decades of discussions and

n
e3E3j
realized in 1824 by the British Institution, a society
founded in 1805 to encourage the fine arts in the
United Kingdom. The near loss of the collection of
John Julius Angerstein, Russian-born philan-
^^^l^_^^i Li ±±^__^ m ; ,

thropist and so-called "father of the modern Lloyds

;

of London" (fl823), provoked the decision. The

107. The Rembrandt Room in the Hermitage Museum. celebrated cabinet of this friend of Lawrence, noted
Leningrad, middle of the 19 th This engraving clearly
century. in particular for its admirable Claude Lorrains, was
shows how the rooms of the Hermitage which were annexes to acquired in 1824 and installed in Number 52 Pall
the Imperial Palace were set out as living quarters. On the left
Mall, where the new museum opened. Two years
is the Return of Tobias by Rembrandt. Opposite, a large desk
later Sir George Beaumont bequeathed it his per-
in walrus bone from the beginning of the 19 th century, now in Pavlovsk
Castle. sonal collection. The building designed by William
Wilkins on Trafalgar Square expressly to house the
National Gallery was opened to the public on
April 9, 1838; it shared quarters with the Royal
Academy until 1369 when this institution moved
into the new Burlington House. For his picture
gallery Wilkins abandoned the sober Greek revival
style Smirke had used for the British Museum,
preferring for the interior colored marble and the
Corinthian style he found more suited to the
polychrome pictures.
curious that strong prejudices were mani-
It is
fested on the part of certain artists against the
foundation of a gallery devoted to the paintings
of the past. As in the eighteenth century, they feared
the unfair "competition" of their predecessors.
Two years before the realization of the National
Gallery John Constable went so far as to say in
a letter of December 6, 1822, "Should there be a
National Gallery (which is talked of), there will be
an end of the art in poor old England, and she will
become, in all that relates to painting, as much a
nonenity as every other country that has one."

211
108. Water Color by Leo
von Klenze for the large
Hall of XVIth- and XVIIth-
Century Italian works.
Drawings Cabinet, Hermitage,
Leningrad. In the construction
of the New Hermitage, which
lasted from 1840 to 1849, Leo
von Klenze decorated the museum
as if it were a palace. Paintings
were hung frame to frame, the
ceilingwas decorated with stucco,
furniture was gilded, the lamps
were bronze, there were malachite
ornaments and the flooring was
in marquetry.

Decidedly, the English museum was for a long time confined to a purely scientific role,
in which archeology figured, whereas in France artistic reasons motivated painters and
critics, as early as 1 750, to seek public display of the royal collections. London applauded
each new enrichment of the British Museum but lamented the idea of opening a nation-
al picture gallery. Even Smirke, the architect of the British Museum, opposed the

creation of a pinakotheke.
Contemporary English artistic taste greatly influenced the new museum. The
National Gallery emerged from a Pre-Raphaelite ambience and the tastes of that time
have persisted down to the present, which explains the predilection this museum's
administration has always shown for the "Renaissance primitives." The first impetus
came in the main from the painter Charles Locke Eastlake. Author of a famous treatise
on pictorial technique which is still profitable reading today, Eastlake was first appoint-
ed keeper, then a trustee and, in 1855, became the director of the National Gallery; he
remained in that post until his death in 1865. As early as 1836 a committee was formed
to advise on the purchase of works anterior to Raphael; the 1854 report to the Treasury
on the administration of museums sanctioned, supporting their position with solid
arguments, the same policy of buying. The painter William Dyce, who had moved in
Rome in the circle of the Nazarenes, German precursors of the Pre-Raphaelites, sent
in the beginning of 1853 a letter to the prince consort in which he vehemently criticized

212
109. Water Color by Leo
von Klenze for the Dutch
Gallery at the Hermitage.
Drawings Cabinet, Hermitage,
Leningrad. Notice the coffered
ceiling, the marquetry floor and
the rich furnishings in gilded
wood, marble and semiprecious
r
stones. T on Klenze himself de-
signed even the smallest details.

the National Gallery's policy of buying and recommended forming a national collec-
tion that would embrace the whole field of painting. After this the purchase of pri-
mitives was intensified; in 1857 the museum bought thirty paintings from the
Lombardi-Baldi collection in Florence for the sum of £7,035 the piece de resistance was
;

Paolo Uccello's panel of Niccolb da Tolentino at the Battle of San Romano. Probably on the
advice of William Dyce the Kriiger collection of German primitives was purchased en
bloc in 1854. It was only towards the end of the century that the museum's administra-
tion corrected the excesses of this tendency by acquiring more recent chefs d'ceuvre,
principally Flemish and Dutch works.
In a Germany under the influence of Romanticism, the northern primitives came
into vogue. The poet Goethe, the architect and painter Karl Friedrich Schinkel, the
museum director Waagen, collectors like the Boisseree brothers in Heidelberg and
Barthold Suermondt in Aachen, and scholars like Ruhmor encouraged this new taste.
The passion for the Middle Ages took for its rallying cry the completion of the Cologne
Cathedral. The Prussian King Frederick William III, who had bought seventy-three
Italian paintings from the Giustiniani collection in 1815, found some beautiful Flemish
primitives in the important lot of works he acquired from the dealer Solly in 1821. The
crown prince, the future Frederick William IV, brought to this policy all his romantic
enthusiasm. At the other end of Germany, nostalgia for antiquity did not prevent

213
Louis I from passionately interesting himself in the primitives. From 1814 to 1816,
King Maximilian I of Bavaria and his son Louis, the crown prince, combed Italv for
Florentine primitives; nor did they neglect Flemish and German works. In 1827
Louis I put his hands on Germany's most important private collection of early northern

masters, that of the Boisseree brothers.

Opened in 1823 in temporary quarters, moved in 1828 to the Schinkelbau, Berlin's
pinakotheke was a triumph of the rational approach in museology; it benefited greatly
from the long directorship of Gustav Waagen (1794-1868), a great scholar who intro-
duced a new principle into art criticism, backing the connoisseur's instinct bv the
scholar's erudition. His work was continued by Dr. Bode.
So respected were Waagen's abilities that he was called to St. Petersburg in 1861 to
reorganize the picture gallery and oversee the composition of a catalog, which appeared
in 1863. The Hermitage was the last royal collection to open to the public. Nicholas I,
czar from 1825 until 1855, was intensely interested in his museum, which he augmented
with prestigious paintings. To give it a worthy home, he had erected a large main
building behind the Old Hermitage, known today as the New Hermitage construction ;

lasted nine years, from 1840 to 1849. The czar called in the German Leo von Klenze, a
specialist in museum who created for St. Petersburg his chef d'oeuvre in
architecture,
this genre. Since the museum was to be a continuation of the neighboring imperial
palace, nothing was spared to give it a regal appearance. One entered by walking up a
x
huge, impressive staircase ( ) revetted with yellow marble, the first instance of these
sweeping escaliers de musee that later became so commonplace. On the ground floor was
the antiquarium with its polychromed marble revetment, the last example of the type
of museum created by Simonetti in the eighteenth century for the Museo Pio-Clemen-
tino in the Vatican. On the second floor paintings covered the walls en tapisserie, form-
ing part of the over-all decor; galleries and cabinets were embellished with gilt wood-
work, coffered ceilings, vaults covered with arabesques, marquetry shelves, parqueted
floors, ostentatious furniture, vases and fountain basins in malachite and precious
stone from the Urals, and, above all, with a prodigious quantity of gilded bronze
lighting fixtures: chandeliers, girandoles, sconces and "Victories" of all sizes, even some
as large as life. Leo von Klenze designed everything himself; his delicate water colors,
now in the drawings cabinet of the Hermitage, show that nothing has been changed in
these rooms he laid out more than a century ago. By a curious paradox, the most
socialist country in the world offers us today the best preserved example of a palais-
musee, conceived for a sovereign's diversion. This ensemble creates a noble impression
the personnel of the Hermitage has had the foresight not to change; to lighten the
presentation, suiting it to the tastes of the last half century, would disrupt the harmony
of the decor of the last beautiful palace interior to escape the decadence of Second
Lmpire and Victorian tastes, already manifest in the degeneracy of the Louis-Philippe
and Biedermeier styles. Doubtlessly, the light archaism of von Klenze's interior, which
prolongs with a little flourish the beautiful cadences of neoclassicism, explains the
persistence of a sense of proportion and harmony at a time when these qualities tended
to disappear.
The museum built, the czar proceeded to a large-scale regrouping of the collections
dispersed in the various royal palaces; there were even "surplus" sales conducted in

214
 ;

1853. The vernissage took place on February 5, 1852. The museum was completely
integrated with the palace, being used for evening receptions and after-theatre suppers
furniture was disposed throughout the rooms; certain precious paintings, chosen to
embellish the imperial apartments in the Winter Palace, were hung in the museum
during the absence of the sovereigns. The czar permitted the public but on conditions
recalling those of the Ancien Regime. One visited the emperor, not the museum; full
dress was de rigueur and visitors were announced. These requirements lasted until 1866,
after which it sufficed to present a decent appearance, a condition required in a bylaw
of the British Museum as early as 1810. Until the October Revolution each painting
bore French and Russian. The Hermitage continued to grow through gifts
a label in
and acquisitions under the reigns of Alexander II, Alexander III and Nicholas II.
Museums long looked like temples; the Old Hermitage was an early evocation of
the palace format —
a Roman palace on the ground floor, a neoclassical palace on the
upper. For the picture gallery at Dresden, begun in 1848, the architect Gottfried
Semper resolutely adopted the Renaissance palasgp style; moreover, he was obliged to
adapt the new building to the baroque Zwinger structure, which he accomplished
through rich exterior ornamentation. Semper's plan was an elaboration of Munich's
Alte Pinakothek; a long gallery, this time accompanied by two rows of cabinets, was
repeated on either side of a monumental staircase, an architectural tour de force that
gave the visitor a taste of the riches awaiting him. Paintings were hung en tapisserie in
the high-ceilinged rooms, conforming to the tastes of the time.
Semper had repeated the gallery on either side of a stairway. Carl Hasenauer
followed a similar course for the new building of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in
Vienna (1872-1891), repeating the gallery four times rather than twice to create a
quadrilateral. His plan was shortly afterwards adopted for the Rijksmuseum in
Amsterdam; it inspired Boston's first museum and, later, the new (1893) building for
the Art Institute of Chicago.
From 1849 to around 1875 the Louvre underwent considerable changes. As early
as 1850 the architect Jacques Felix Duban, in response to the new taste for luxury,
embellished the Salon Carre with a large, gilt stucco dome; in imitation of the Tribuna
in the Uffizi, there was an effort to turn the Salon Carre into a "Pantheon for master-
pieces," where busts of great artists, with cartouches giving their names, underlined
this intention. An affectation of richness characterized the exterior as well as the interior
architecture of the Louvre under Napoleon III. Miraculously managing to complete
"the bold design of the kings," a project abandoned by Louis XIV and resumed by
Napoleon I, the emperor did not hesitate to complicate his task by razing a section he
found insufficiently sumptuous. There was a political raison d'etre for the showiness of
the Louvre's exterior: to affirm to citizen and foreigner alike France's prosperity under
the imperial regime.

The architects Louis-Tullius Visconti (son of the curator of antiquities during the
First Empire) and Hector-Martin Lefuel built within a few years this palace that had
been left unfinished for centuries. The result was a colossal structure joining the
sovereign's palace, administrative and ministerial offices and a museum. With the
antiquarium and the archeological collections in place, it was the Paintings Department

215
 which especially profited from this enlargement. It put at its disposition enormous
rooms with overhead lighting and high walls that received large paintings, of which
the Louvre has many, and several rows of superposed pictures. The monumental
stairways were, of course, one of the embellishments of the museum, following a
fashion that continued until the twentieth century. The most sumptuous of these
staircases, on which polychromed marble was lavished, is the one in Vienna's
Kunsthistorisches Museum.
During the reign of Louis-Philippe, the Louvre profited from acquisitions made
by him, like the collection given by the Scotsman Standish, an admirer of the prince,
and that astonishing Spanish cabinet which the king ordered bought on his behalf
during the Carlist War on the Iberian peninsula. France was destined to lose both
collections respecting an offer that was made to the deposed king, the Second Repub-
;

lic gave them to him rather than repurchasing them. A buying policy was resumed

under Napoleon III. The emperor procured for France most of the enormous collection
of the self-styled Marchese Campana di Cavelli (Gian Pietro Campana) which was put
up for sale in Rome by Pope Pius IX to cover the loans made by this gentleman, director
of the Mont-de-Piete, who constantly acquired paintings and objects put up for security
at the public pawnshop under his management. Russia, England and France were
among the bidders and, although some of the best paintings were bought by the
Hermitage and the British Museum, France succeeded in carrying off most of the lot
in 1864. The Louvre was primarily enriched with Italian primitives and antique vases;
entrusting the collection to the administration of the imperial museum met with diffi-
culties. One segment of the population opposed having the Campana collection put
into the Louvre on the grounds that it had been bought with funds voted by Parliament
while, in theory at least, the museum's collections still belonged to the Crown; the
public was, then, still aware that the museum adjoining the palace reverted to the
sovereign, whose person supposedly represented the nation.
The creation of museums devoted to modern art is one of the most significant
developments in museology. To show examples selected from contemporary produc-
tion and no longer only works of the past became an essential goal of the administration
of the Beaux Arts; harvesting for the future, the museum concentrated on the present.
It is no surprise that France took the initiative in this field; thanks to the institution of

the Salon, continued from the seventeenth century to the present, living art has always
played an important role in French society. In 1818 King Louis XVIII had established
bv ordinance a museum in the old Palais du Luxembourg, scene of the first exhibition,
in 1750, of paintings belonging to the Crown. The new museum opened on April
fourteenth of the same year, with its principal attraction five large compositions by
David, whom Louis XVIII had generously pardoned from regicide in view of his
110. Portrait of a Young genius. During the Empire a rather embryonic museum of French painting — chiefly
Woman, by Petrus Chris- "civic" pictures, including The Oath of the Horatii and The Lictors bringing to Brutus the
tus. This
beautiful works
is one
among
of the most
677
—
Bodies of his Sons had been maintained in the Luxembourg. Throughout the century
the
and until the transfer of the Impressionists, the Palais du Luxembourg functioned as
es purchased in 1X21 by Fre-
a sort of novitiate for the Louvre, a situation that finally came to an end because the
derick William III of Prussia
trow the English dealer, Solly,
building was both structurally and environmentally wrong for exhibiting twentieth-
and installed in Berlin. century works. The turbulent artistic life of nineteenth-century Romantic Germany

216
217
 spurred the creation of museums of modern art. Thanks to the foresight of Louis I of
Bavaria, truly one of the great "princes" of museology, Munich's museum of modern
art opened its doors in 1853; Berlin had to wait until 1876; London, longer still; the
National Gallery of British Art, now the Tate Gallery, was opened in 1897 in Millbank,
London, in a building erected by Sir Henry Tate to house his gift of contemporary
paintings.
In use in English since the beginning of the seventeenth century, the word archeology
referred, at first, to both early and ancient history; its meaning was expanded later to

include the study of antique monuments and, still later, to designate the scientific study
of past human life and human activities. In the nineteenth century this broader concept
of archeology was applied to the very origins of occidental civilization, suddenly
plunged into the depths of time by the breakdown caused by the French Revolution
which, in destroying the monarchical system, simultaneously broke the dynastic chain
that had interlocked the different periods in history. This chain was never to be re-
established, even outside France, despite the efforts of the Holy Alliance to strengthen
the tottering edifice and re-knot the broken thread of history. It was normal for this
rupture to be felt in France more keenly than elsewhere for here it had set offan epidemic
of destruction which, in its turn, engendered a counterattack. While in the other
countries of Europe the metamorphosis from the Old to the New World came about
through a slow and progressive replacement of the structures of the past, according to
a rhythm that did not exceed that of previous historical mutations, France approached
the nineteenth century in an immense field of ruins. Chateaubriand could write of his
Genie du Christianisme: "The book appeared [in 1802] amidst the debris of our temples.
Everywhere one saw the remains of recently demolished churches and monasteries."
—
Nowhere more than in France was the impulse to save out of which the museum
—
grew so closely connected with the act of destruction. All over France depots swelled
with debris from destroyed monuments throughout the century. Some of these store-
houses had been begun during the Revolution (e.g. the Couvent des Augustins in
Toulouse); although picture galleries were soon opened to the public under the
Revolution, it was only in 1817 and 1827 that it was decided to put on exhibition the
admirable Romanesque and Gothic sculptures salvaged from the city's demolished
monasteries. France's so-called "lapidary museums" date, in general, from the 1830's,
that is, from the decade which saw the founding in 1834 of the Societe francaise cCarcheo-
logie bv a Norman, Arcisse de Caumont, and, the same year, the establishment of a
Commission des Monuments historiques to safeguard and restore monuments. The repo-
111. The Salon Carre inl865, sitories formed in secularized convents, often at the initiative of those local archeo-
by Joseph Castiglione. Lou- logical societies then springing up all over France. As examples let us cite the Musee
vre Museum, Paris. To trans-
des Antiquites de la Seine Inferieure, opened in Rouen in 1831 by the society of the
form It into a "Pantheon for
Masterpieces" in imitation oj tin
same name the lapidary museum of Bourges, installed in 1 834 in the Hotel Cujas by the
;

Societe des Antiquaires du Centre; the beautiful museum set up in 1844 in the Unterlinden
'

Tribuna oj tin I ll/~/ in Florem <

the Salon Carre was given a convent at Colmar by the Societe Schongauer which boasts the famous Isenheim Altar by
sumptuously decorated with
ceiling
Grunewald; the archeological museum of Angers, founded in 1841 but not installed
gilded stucco. The walls were
in the former Hopital Saint Jean until 1874. In these museums works accumulated
completely covered with paintings
disposed without any concern for —
haphazardly, with no care given to presentation reminiscent of the ossuaries of
thro no logy or style. medieval cemeteries.

218
 In Europe's large cities, afflicted by rapid
growth during the second half of the century,
special museums were set up to safeguard the
remains of a municipal history being destroyed by
progress. In Paris the founding of the Musee Car-
navalet was the direct consequence of a city-wide
remodeling project which razed old convents and
townhouses by the hundreds. In fact, it was Baron
Haussmann himself, author of the plan for urban
re-design, who presented to Napoleon III in 1865
a report proposing for the city a "department of
historical works" whose first task would be to
found a municipal museum to receive the "flotsam
from the wreck of old Paris." In November 1866
the Hotel Carnavalet, once the residence of Madame
de Sevigne, was acquired for this purpose.
These museums contained, in particular, re-
112. Gothic Room the chapel of the Germanisches
in
mains of monuments. However, from the begin-
Museum, Nuremberg. When objets d'art/row the Middle Ages
ning of the century certain amateurs had been
and the Renaissance began to be assembled in the 19th century, the main
concern was to find a suitable setting for their exhibition, and it was collecting medieval and Renaissance objets —
all the

often the case that former monasteries were used for this purpose. more easily because they were considered worth-
For example, in Nuremberg a former Carthusian monastery was less. As early as 1800 the city of Lyons had a school
bought to house the collections of the Germanisches Museum. of history painting which concentrated on medieval
themes but in Paris the interest was in antiquity.
The most celebrated of these artists, Pierre Revoil,
had brought together a collection of precious
medieval objects: armature, chests, vases, tapes-
tries, paintings, enamels, manuscripts acquired by
;

the Louvre in 1828-1830, it formed the basis of the

future Departement des Objets d'art. Thirty years
later this department was enriched by a consider-
able gift from Charles Sauvageot (1781-1860).
Formerly a customs official who retired in 1847,
Sauvageot had been first violinist with the Paris
Opera. There, in the company of his colleagues
Norblin, a numismatist, and Lamy, a Sinologue, his
taste for antiquailles developed. His motto was " Dis-
persacoegi." By the time he gave his collection to the
French State in April 1856, these objects that had
been bought for nothing already had a market
113. Gothic Room in the Bayerisches Museum, Munich, —
value an Englishman had offered 500,000 francs
founded in 1852. A far happy solution was to erect a building in
less for them. The only conditions attached to his gift
the eclectic style evoking the spirit of the Middle Ages and the Renais- were that he be lodged near his collection in the
sance. This is what Gabriel von Seidl did for the Bavarian Museum,
Louvre and that he have exclusive rights to it
ninth was rebuilt between 1894 and 1900. Some of the rooms are very
successful imitations.
during his lifetime. The public did not have

220
 to wait long; Sauvageot died four years later.
At this time Paris already boasted a remarkable
museum devoted to the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance, installed in the former residence of
the abbots of Cluny, a fifteenth-century hotel. The
city had keenly felt the loss of Lenoir's museum of
French monuments, dissolved by ordinance on
April 24, 1816, as much to restore the royal tombs
to Saint Denis as to rase this homage to the
"barbarous centuries" that the neoclassical aesthe-
ticians and artists, led by Quatremere de Quincy,
deplored. In the old tradition of parliamentary
"antiquarians," Alexandre du Sommerard, a coun-
sellor at the Cour des Comptes, installed himself and
all his collections in the Hotel de Cluny in 1832. It

was, he said, his idea to "store in a series of more

or less obscure garret rooms and to exhibit for the
veneration of the initiated the fruits of [my]
harvest of objets d 'art in the hope that these old
things would evoke appreciation for all that our
arts comport of science and poetry." The hotel and
its collections were bought by the city with the

stipulation that the nephew of the seller serve as

curator during his lifetime. The museum opened
on March 16, 1844. Swelled by numerous pur-
chases, the Musee de Cluny remained, until its
recent renovation in the purist spirit of modern
museology, a wonderful hodgepodge, transporting
the imagination to the medieval and Renaissance
worlds of the novels of Alexandre Dumas and Jules
Michelet's Histoire de France.
Here and there in Europe museums of this
genre began to appear; their creation was stimulat-
ed around 1850 by the new sense of nationalism
manifest everywhere. One of the finest ensembles
of this type that can still be seen today is Copen-
hagen's Rosenborg Museum. In this small chateau
114. Portrait of John Julius Angerstein and his Wife, by Frederick VII collected the most beautiful pieces
Sir Thomas Lawrence, 1792. Louvre Museum, Paris. The from the royal Kunstkammeret, hitherto dispersed
purchase of the collection of John Julius Angerstein was the first in the various residences, and in 1859 turned it into
important acquisition of London's National Gallery which opened at
a museum consecrated to the keepsakes of the
Number 52 Pall Mall on May 10, 1824.
royal family. In 1854 King Maximilian II of
Bavaria founded the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum
which opened the following year. Devoted to
Bavarian art, this "national" museum contained

221
 only medieval and Renaissance creations; baroque works, then scorned and judged
decadent, did not enter the collection until the present generation. The Bavarian
national museum still reflected the political disunion of Germany. A loftier ideal
inspired the Germanisches National-Museum in Nuremberg. This museum was the
result of a proposition made in August 1852 by the knight von und zu Aufsess during
a meeting of a scholarly society convened at Dresden by Prince John of Saxony.
Aufsess was named director of the museum, which was to treat all the sources of
German art and literature in the most universal sense. Nuremberg, Durer's birthplace,
was chosen as the place which best embodied the spirit of Germanism; Hitler was to
follow the same course when he made this city the center of Nazism.
The ideal place in which to install this type of museum was an old building suited
to the character of the collection. In Paris the Hotel de Cluny, although rather limited
in space in spite of the nearby Roman baths which had been annexed to house the
lapidary collection, was a perfect answer. Nuremberg chose a former convent, a type
of structure ideal for the installation of a museum of this kind by virtue of the wide
variety of rooms it offered; in 1857 the city bought for this purpose the old Carthusian
convent dating from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which was enlarged at
different times and eventually annexed to the neighboring Augustinian monastery.
In Munich, where there was a mania for building, a special structure was erected but
the Baverisches National-Museum had to wait half a century to move into its new
quarters. In 1892 the architect Gabriel von Seidl began construction on the Prinzregen-
tenstrasse. In the Munich tradition of museum architecture, this building presents a
heteroclite synthesis of Gothic and Renaissance styles some rooms were rather success-
;

ful pastiches; in others, the desired effect was achieved by incorporating architectural
or decorative motifs from the same period as the objects, statues and furniture on
exhibition.
All these museums were of an historical rather than an artistic
institutions
character; their purpose was to show the formation and development of the life of a
people, of its different social classes, industries and handicrafts, through specimens of
decorative art. We
can hardly imagine what they were originally like since in our
generation they have been purged to make them more like "art museums."
Archeological museums appeared all over northern Europe wherever there was a
Middle Ages. New buildings were constructed in
revival of interest in the arts of the
the Romanesque or Gothic was toward a more distant past that the archeo-
style. It
logical investigations of Russia were directed, the impulse having been given as early
as the beginning of the eighteenth century by Peter the Great in his ukase ordering the
collection of all unearthed 1739 the historian V. Tatichtchev published a
artifacts; in
handbook on excavations. In the second half of the eighteenth century Russia's
115. View of the "Salle des annexation of the coastal land north of the Black Sea provided archeologists with new
Croisades" at Versailles. This territory to explore in the area of 1763 General Melgounov un-
Greek influence; in
ball, one of several set aside for earthed the first Scythian tumulus. The beginning of the nineteenth century saw the
a history museum, was (railed at
ersailles by the French King
establishment of archeological museums to house the recovered antiquities at —
Nikolayev (1806), Feodosiya (1811), Odessa (1825) and Kerch (1826).
1

Louis Philippe and was realised

in a Gothic, troubadour style For those who waged it as for those who rebelled against it, the French Revolution
with paintings about the ( rusades. broke the continuity of time. Led by Napoleon from victory to victory across Europe,

222

B^_
I

the Grande Armee, harbinger of a new era, tumbled

a whole world into the abyss of the past and,
despite efforts to bring it to life again, the irresistible

course of the new history accelerated the flow of

the old. Once the epic events had ceased to rage,
romantic man became uneasily aware of the singu-
larity of times past which brusquely appeared to
him as unlike the time in which he lived he became
;

an historian in the hope of re-knotting the broken

—
thread of continuity, of finding somewhere be-
—
yond the zero point of the new era the man he had
once been but who now appeared as a stranger.
As institutions created by the new age to give
man a fuller awareness of himself, museums opened
wide their doors to an overwhelming history.
Heads of state and governments availed themselves
of this means to shape the public conscience; the
116. View of the Waterloo Chamber at Windsor Castle. museum of history came to be closely linked to
To commemorate the victories over Napoleon, the English kins, decided politics throughout the nineteenth century.
in 1830 to install at Windsor Castle a history cabinet which was Once peace was achieved after twenty-five years
called the Waterloo Chamber. The ceiling in the form of the top of a
of war, Europe immediately sought to preserve
ship evokes the victory at Trafalgar. Here we see the table laid for the
Battle of Waterloo anniversary banquet which
the memory of this turbulent period when nations
is given heve every year.
clashed. Napoleon's conquerors desired to comme-
morate a victory so dearly bought at the price of
many defeats in order to assert their good right to
the respect of the future. Vanquished France
wanted a complete picture of her history in order
to rediscover her grandeur. Paris already had a
magnificent Musee Napoleon whose trophies were
masterpieces of genius. Windsor, St. Petersburg
and Vienna founded their Napoleonic museums to
celebrate his defeat. The first was installed in the
Winter Palace by Czar Alexander I. A long gallery,
built in 1826 by the architect Rossi, was hung with
three hundred thirty-two portraits of Russian
generals who had fought against the French
emperor; since the English were considered spe-
cialists in portraiture, Dawe was summoned who,
for ten years, assisted by the Russians Poliakov and
Goliki, painted these effigies with the help of
whatever documents could be assembled; a few
spaces were left blank for want of iconographical
information on certain heroes these lacunae were
;

later filled by the Soviets with portraits of simple

soldiers fallen during the October Revolution thus ;

224
was the continuity of Russian history affirmed in the Winter Palace. Among all these
waist-length likeness of generals caracoles Czar Alexander the Victorious.
The English more than the Russians have a sense of the universal; the Waterloo
Chamber at Windsor Castle, proposed by the king in 1830 and achieved by covering a
— —
court with a ceiling like that of a ship an allusion to Trafalgar did not celebrate
Napoleon's defeat as a national victory but as the fruit of a European coalition against
the "Ogre of Corsica." In fact, Sir Thomas Lawrence, John Hoppner, Sir David
Wilkie, Sir William Beechey and other artists painted the portraits of sovereigns, chiefs
of state and generals who had taken part in the struggle; even Pope Pius VII was
included and some Frenchmen as well (Charles X and his son the Duke d'Angouleme).
The fleur-de-lis appeared side by side with various heraldic emblems of Great Britain.
Modern England begins with Waterloo; the memory of it is celebrated with fervor and
every year on the eighteenth of June, the anniversary of the battle, a banquet is held in
this museum at an immense table that can seat one hundred fifty guests.
Vienna was not to have her "anti-Napoleon" museum until later and then as a
result of events that will be detailed later in this book.
The idea of installing an historical museum at Versailles originated with Napoleon.
In his Memorial de Sainte He'lene he revealed that he wanted to banish from the gardens
"all these ornaments a la Turcaref and "I would replace them with mosaic panoramas
of all the capitals we had entered victorious, of all the celebrated battles where we had
shown our strength. They would have been eternal monuments to our triumphs and
our national glory." Versailles was to have a panorama to commemorate a battle of
Napoleon but it was of Waterloo. The vogue for panoramas, "endless paintings" in
a circular format whose forms were mathematically calculated to give an illusion of
reality in dim light, began then and continued until the end of the century. The process
had been invented by an Englishman in 1787 and from the time of Napoleon, war
panoramas were the most popular. London boasted the Naval Battle at Aboukir and
the Battle of Trafalgar; Paris, the Army at Boulogne and the Encounter at Tilsit. Pierre
Prevost (1764-1823) and Thayer, creators of the Tilsit panorama, wanted to build eight
rotundas along the Champs Elysees to commemorate great battles fought in the prin-
cipal cities of the Empire from 1789 to 1815.
One wonders if Louis Philippe had been thinking of these panoramas (forerunners
of the dioramas invented by Daguerre and C. M. Bouton) when he commissioned
Horace Vernet to paint for Versailles the sixty-three-foot-wide canvases, like the
Capture of Abdu-l-Kadir. In 1830, the year of the July Revolution, one could see a
panorama of the Battle of Navarino by Jean-Charles Langlois (1789-1870); throughout
the whole century the great battles of contemporary history were presented in dioramas
to which the crowds flocked.
The idea of reconsecrating Versailles and transforming what had become the symbol
of a dishonored despotic regime into a temple to "all the glories of France" was a
personal vision of Louis Philippe. He wanted it to express the reconciliation of all
Frenchmen whom he claimed as his subjects by creating a liberal and parliamentary
monarchy. He was the ruler France was awaiting, the ruler whose "patriotism was both
lively enough and profound enough to endear to him all the great things she [France]
had created" (Alexandre Louis Joseph, Comte de Laborde). He offered his people a

225
double claim to legitimacy, that of having been descended from Saint Louis and that
of having been hoisted by the citoyens over the walls of the barricades. The historical
museum at Versailles was a mammoth undertaking, realized with the felicitous rapidity
that distinguished the museological creations of that period. The architectural altera-
tions of the palace— —
which were considerable and the completion of the first icono-
graphical series took three years and cost twenty-four million francs, most of which the
king paid out of his own pocket as he regarded the project a personal creation. He took
with him to exile the immense graphic documentations which, in forty volumes bound
in red Morocco leather, had been compiled by a team of historians; it included the like-
nesses of great personages and the iconologv of important French historical events; it
was in short, Roger de Gaignieres' dream realized on a royal scale where one felt the
influence of Paolo Giovio, certain of whose illustrious men figured in portrait galleries
up until the present day. The backbone of the museum was the Galerie des Batailles, a
hall almost four hundred feet long where thirty-three colossal paintings, executed by
the most esteemed contemporary artists, celebrated the great victories of France — from
Tolbiac to Austerlitz, Jena, Friedland and Wagram. Napoleon figured prominently
here; what an answer to the Waterloo Chamber and to the Gallery of War Heroes in
the Winter Palace! Other rooms, in particular the Coronation Hall, celebrated the
Napoleonic era; the Galerie des Batailles led into the Salle de 1830 with its pictures
exalting the peasants who had constructed the barricades which had served as a pedestal
for the throne of the "citizen king."
Each class of French society had its place in the museum. The old aristocracy was
honored in the Salle des Croisades where, in a decor of battles in troubadour style (among
them Delacroix's Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople), were painted the coats of
arms of the families that had taken part in the crusades. All the nobility wanted to be
represented there and, since proof was necessary, a brisk trade, known as he s faux des
croisades, sprang up. A former sheriffs clerk, a certain Courtois, turned out these
forgeries for a five hundred franc gold piece. It was a matter of fabricating loan contracts
made between crusaders and Italian merchants, of deeds lost in the Holy Land or pay
receipts from knights or squires. Lacabax, director of the Ecole des Chartes in Paris,
was summoned to the Salle des Croisades to authenticate the candidates' documents
and even he was fooled This museum to the glories of France, once opened, was
!

continuously enriched with subjects drawn from contemporary history. From 1838 to
1845 the conquest of Algeria was retold in a series of immense canvases; the Second
Fmpire commemorated the wars in the Crimea and in Italy; the most heroic deeds of
the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) were illustrated and a large painting by Alfred
Philippe Roll perpetuated the memory of the Centennial in his States General Celebrated
by President Carnot at I Versailles. One cannot underestimate the importance which this
colossal tribute to the glories of France had for several generations at a time when
military exploits constituted the substance of history. For some seventy-five years
Versailles served as a lesson in patriotism for French children and young people, a
lesson which bore fruit in 1914 when, in a single move, the entire nation rallied against
the invader despite differences of political opinion, even despite strong pacifist ten-
dencies. Was not the military academy of Saint-Cyr within easy reach of this museum
to the glories of France? Since that time, films have mocked the virtue of this patriotic

226
iconography and the notion of heroism now rests on other than military actions. Those
who were once hailed with respect as "dead on the field of honor" are now regarded
with contempt by many.
It was the revolutionary shock of 1848 which, in forcing Austria to retrench,

sparked the creation at Vienna of a museum to commemorate national glories. After

the first instance of revolt flared up in the working-class districts, rioting spread through
the whole of Vienna and the government had to recover the city from the insurgents.
This prelude to the Commune of Paris made a profound impression on the Hapsburg
monarchy and Viennese society. To avoid a recurrence, the government conceived the
idea of building on a high plateau to the southeast of the city a sort of citadel safe, if not
from war, at least from an insurrection. The complex included barracks, ammunition
depots, an arsenal with a gun factory, an officers' school and a museum containing
armor, old weapons, historical paintings, flags and uniforms, some of which had come
from an embryonic museum which had already existed in the old arsenal founded by
Maria Theresa. Quarters for this arms museum (Heeresmuseum) were constructed
from 1850 to 1856 from plans by Ludwig Forster, chief architect for the arsenal, and
Theophil Hansen. Money was not spared; in the main hall, columns (each of which
cost 100,000 florins) were interspersed with fifty-six statues of great Austrian men from
various eras. The Salon of Honor was Moresque in style, as was the exterior architecture
—
of the entrance an allusion to the role played by Austria in defending the Occident
against the Turks. When war-torn Austria was liberated from foreign occupation after
World War II, this monument to past glory was the first museum rebuilt by the
Austrians, even before the great museum of art; at that time it was renamed the
Heeresgeschichtliches Museum. In its new installation it offers, besides the special
galleries devoted to artillery, four sections pertaining to the Thirty Years' War, to the
struggles with the Turks, to the conflicts of the eighteenth century and to the wars
against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France. At the time of the re-opening of this
museum, I was in Vienna with the Congress of the International Council of Museums;
a reception was given in the museum restaurant for the delegates. I arrived late because
it was the Fourteenth of July, the French holiday commemorating the storming of the

Bastille, and I had been to pay my respects to the French ambassador. The congress
gave me an ovation when I entered; all the delegates, including the Japanese, sang in
unison every verse of the Marseillaise. And this transpired in galleries where historical
paintings marked the imperialistic tyranny of Revolutionary and Napoleonic France,
the terror of peaceful Austrian families who until then had enjoyed an idyllic life under
the wise rule of the Dual Monarchy. What a message of liberty this anthem conveyed
and what a profound solidarity it bespoke in a Europe made one even by the memory
of struggles and conflicts.
Doubtlessly no monarch more than Napoleon III exploited museums for their
propaganda value. He was one of the great benefactors of the Louvre, rebuilding it
partially and providing it with funds that permitted important acquisitions, particularly
in the field of painting. He also conceived new institutions of a personal character. Like
Louis Philippe, Napoleon III, a monarch brought to the throne by a revolutionary
movement, affirmed through visible works his intention to resume traditions, to follow
in the mainstream of French history. The completion of the Louvre had no other

227
 objective. With the creation of the Musee des Souverains, established December 15,
1852, the intention became even clearer. It offered an apology for the monarchical
regime, showing at once how the monarchical institution was able to, and sometimes
had to, renew itself through a providential man who, lacking a hereditary claim, owed
his right to rule to that which another dictator (who also came into power through a
plebiscite) was to call the "profound legitimacy." In a series of rooms along the
Louvre's Colonnade the public was invited to admire the relics of the different dynasties
that had reigned in France from the Carolingians to the Napoleonides.
This form of the legitimacy of power conferred by genius was demonstrated in
another museum which set forth the value of Caesarism as a justification of the Napo-
leonic dynasty. Napoleon III, who manifested a great taste for history, was an enthu-
siastic admirer of Julius Caesar, whom his uncle had wished to rival. He undertook
excavations at the identifiable sites mentioned in Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic
Wars (Alesia, Gergovia), intending to write a monumental book. To receive the
findings from these excavations the Musee des Antiquites Nationales was established by
decree on March 8, 1862, in the chateau of Saint-Germain en Laye. Napoleon III did
not have long to wait to see a success even greater than his expectations; this became
the richest museum of prehistory and protohistory and, in the end, celebrated the
conquered rather than Caesar.
The institution long known as the Musee de Sculpture compare, but renamed the
Aluse'e des Monuments francais after the old Lenoir museum, was not realized until the
1879 exposition; it had, however, been proposed under the Empire as the plan for it
by the fervently neo-Gothic architect Viollet-le-Duc had been exhibited as early as 1 855.
The nationalistic intention of this museum was unmistakable; it sought to affirm, by
means of casts, the superiority of French medieval and Renaissance sculpture by
comparing it with foreign examples. Today, the casts after foreign works have been
removed and the museum is devoted exclusively to reproductions of French paintings
or sculptures. Viollet-le-Duc's conception brings to mind an earlier museum that had
been created in Paris by the painter and world traveler Louis-Francois Cassas (1756-
1827); in existence from 1806 to 1814, it contained models of "architectural master-
pieces in different countries." In the Musee de Sculpture Compare considerable sums
were expended, not for works of art but for copies which assume great didactic value
1 17. Ottonian Art. So-called
when brought together as a collection; this is an important stage in the evolution of
Crown of Charlemagne in
the pedagogical function of the museum, an aspect developed more and more by the
Schats^kammer of the Hof-
I In' modern world.
burg, ienna. Events during the
I
Napoleon Ill's Musee des Souverains did not last beyond his reign. A decree of
wars of the Revolution resulted
in the placement in \ ienna of the
the provisional government dated May 8, 1872, ordered its dissolution — the very time

regalia of the Holy Roman Em- when Austria chose to open her museum. The defeat at Sadowa and, still more, the
pire and the Treasury oj Bur- elevation of William II, King of Prussia, to the title of Emperor of Germany were
gundy. This crown, which was used keenly felt by the Austrian nation, whose foundations the historian Franz Bock had
for the coronation of German established in a monumental work brought out in 1864 on the heraldic devices of the
emperors, was kept illNuremberg former empire of the House of Hapsburg. In 1871 the Austrian government decided
but was t iiken lo I 'ienna in 1796
along other
to open to the public the Treasury of the Hofburg with its enormous collection of
with pieces of the
imperial treasury at Nuremberg princely and imperial crowns and emblems; thus the Austrians could revel in the
in the retreat from Irene!) troops. spectacle of their grandeur at a moment when it was on the wane.

228
r <g»
v>-***
 About the same time Europe could admire another Musee des Souverains. In 1859 the
Danish King Frederick VII was motivated by dynastic devotion to regroup in
Copenhagen's small Chateau Rosenborg all the objects, mementoes and historical
portraits of his family as well as the most sumptuous furnishings of the various royal
residences, attributes of sovereignty ill-suited to a parliamentary monarchy. Filling
rooms devoted to the different reigns, these treasures, which have remained the per-
sonal property of the Crown, constitute a fabulous whole; the museum contains the
crown jewels, an extraordinary suite of furniture in solid silver made in Augsburg in
the eighteenth century, a fine collection of porcelain and crystal and magnificent
weapons and armor.
On the eve of its downfall, the monarchical regime delighted to contemplate its
extravagances. The museum is an institution which feeds on the used forms of life;
the Musee des Souverains of Napoleon III and Emperor Franz Joseph's Schatzkammer
were created to justify monarchy at the very moment it was about to perish.
Toward the middle of the century England also decided to celebrate her national
glories and in a particularly British way — through portraiture. In 1846 the historian
Philip Dormer, fifth earl of Stanhope, proposed forming a national portrait gallery.
In 1852 Parliament furnished funds for the project; after several temporary install-
ations, this gallery to the glories of Empire, a last incarnation of Paolo Giovio's
idea, found a permanent home in 1896 in a building erected at the expense of William
Henry Alexander of Shipton.
Denmark did not have to wait so long for her museum of historical portraits. In
1812 Christian IV had created a veritable Danish pantheon in the royal chateau of
Frederiksborg.
Nineteenth-century England, in the avant-garde of modern economy, was the first
country where industry influenced the museum; this was manifested in a seemingly
paradoxical way, through renewed interest in the arts mobiliers. In the nineteenth
century the dividing line between art and technology fell between the major and the
minor arts, an attitude derived from an old philosophical prejudice from Antiquity and
the Middle Ages which classified the arts as liberal or servile, the first being of a purely
intellectual nature; the second, essentially manual. The Renaissance freed the major
arts, but not the minor, from this "mechanical" condition; and the nineteenth century
ranked objets a" art, handmade creations, with industrial products at a time when the
latter still only required moderate use of the machine.
The state of affairs among artisans vis-a-vis the arts preoccupied the British Par-
liament at an early date; in 1835 it appointed a Select Committee on Arts and Manu-
118. Eltenberg Reliquary. factures to explore means for propagating knowledge of the arts and of the principles
Rhenish, 2nd half of the Xllth
century. Enameled and gilded cop-
of design, specifically among the working class. The Committee recommended opening
per. Victoria and Albert public galleries with exhibitions of models of art objects from the past; collections of
Museum, London. Acquired in this type were to be annexed to regional schools under the aegis of the Government
1861, this is one of the most School of Design, which also had a gallery.
ancient pieces among all the
The 1851 Great Exhibition (or World's Fair) in London gave strong impetus to this
magnificent Medieval objects of
— project. It was the first exposition of its kind in which the modern world took stock of
which this museum at that ti un-

known as the South

itself, re-evaluating the progress of industry and technology in an international com-
Kensington
Museum^is so rich. petition marked by a certain retrospective element. It took place in the Crystal Palace

230 118
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 in Hyde Park, an audacious structure of iron and
glass designed by Sir Joseph Paxton expressly for
the fair. Prince Albert, whom Queen Victoria
forbade any interference in politics, concentrated
his energies on the arts it was he who had made the
;

exhibition a success despite violent criticism; cer-

tain opponents went so far as to pretend that
England would lose her insularism and be invaded
by the "light-fingered gentry of Europe." The
Great Exhibition enjoyed such tremendous success,
however, that it was decided to prolong it with a
permanent institution. The following year, there-
fore, a Department of Practical Art (renamed the
Department of Science and Art a year later) was
founded. The profit of £186,000 realized by the
Exhibition was used to purchase land in South
Kensington while Parliament voted a loan of
£5,000 for acquisitions. On September 6, 1852 the
Museum of Manufacture opened in temporary
quarters at Marlborough House, with objects from
the Government School of Design and purchase
from the exhibition on display. In order to be
better understood by the artisans to whom they
119. Studio of Alexandre du Sommerard at the Hotel de
were directed, the collections were classed by
Cluny, by L. V. Fouquet. Muse'e des arts decoratifs, Paris.
materials: textiles, metals, ceramics, wood. The
( ounsellor at the (.our des Comptes, Alexandre dn Sommerard
installed himself in the Hotel de Cluny where he arc it wit Ia ted his successive names of the museum attest to a certain
Medieval and Renaissance collections. confusion about its nature; it became the Art
Museum, then the Museum of Ornamental Art and,
finally, the South Kensington Museum in 1857,
—
when it was relocated at its present site an adroit
way of avoiding too precise a designation. A large
iron structure to house it was completed in 1867
but the museum grew so rapidly that thirty years
later it needed more space. On May 17,1 899 Queen

Victoria laid the cornerstone for a new building;

the museum was opened on June 26, 1909 by
Edward VI, taking for its permanent name the
Victoria and Albert Museum; during the course of
the ceremony, its director was knighted, by the
flat of the sword, by the king himself, a medieval

spectacle that only England would dare at the

inauguration of a modern institution.
120. The first Refreshment Room of the Victoria and
Albert Museum, London, in 1865. From a water color by
The National Museum of Science and Industry,
Anthony Stannur. Since the XlXth century, Inglo-Saxon museums founded in 1857, is housed in a twin building near
hare concerned fh( mst Ires with the cow fort of visitors. the Victoria and Albert Museum. Both are admin-

232

^
 ;
!

istered by the Board of Education. As its founders had conceived it, art was to be
admitted to the museum on technical criteria alone, as a means of furnishing artisans
with useful examples. Thanks to the talents of its directors who had substantial funds
at their disposal, this museum boasts the most beautiful decorative arts collection in
the world. However, this aesthetictriumph has not submerged the original educa-
tional intentions.From the beginning the Victoria and Albert Museum was distin-
guished by this very Anglo-Saxon trait of being well organized from the pedagogical
point of view; it circulated exhibitions, lent books and lecture materials to all the
Commonwealth countries; in addition, public comfort was an early concern; the first
museum restaurant was set up in the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1863 in an Anglo-
Norman structure.
Interest in the decorative arts in France was also stimulated by a world's fair, the
third of its kind, held in 1855. A
comparative exhibition of old and new furniture
underlined the inferiority of contemporary productions and revealed the tendency of
artisans around mid-century to imitate earlier styles rather than to create their own. The
reporter for the Union des Arts et de r Industrie wrote in 1855, "To pastiche the past has
become a rule blindly and indiscriminately applied in art. How does one explain that
an entire society, catapulted into a dizzying world of innovations and novelties by its
discoveries in chemistry and physics, rather than demanding bold, new things from
the arts, rather than spurning whatever is old, copied or repeated, contents itself with
the most servile imitation of century-old styles?" It is curious that in 1855, at the
moment when railroads were just beginning, men felt nonplussed by the rapid changes
but Chateaubriand had also been troubled fifty years earlier by the prospect of steam-
ship travel A century of discoveries has made us, it seems, somewhat blase to Sputniks
!

Whatever it was, the cure was worse than the evil; opening well-installed and well-
catalogued museums for the decorative arts, putting before the eyes of artisans excellent
examples of the mobiliary arts of the past only encouraged the very imitation it was
meant to suppress. Everyone wanted an Henri II dining room, a Louis XV drawing
room, a Louis XVI bedroom.
In 1863 a Union Centrale des Beaux-Arts appliques a 1' Industrie was founded in France
its objectives were to create, "in the heart of industrial Paris," a museum, a library and

a professional school. Charles Blanc, in an article on the organization of this society for
his Gazette des Beaux-Arts (the oldest arts magazine, it was founded in 1859 and is still
being published) hailed it as a "great step toward the regeneration of drawing schools
in France and the re-application of the fine arts to industry." He cites Britain as an
example and states that "English industry, very unsophisticated from the standpoint
of art, has made prodigious progress in the ten years since the exposition of 1851 and
if it continues to develop at the same rate, we could soon be surpassed." The list of
founders gives some indication of their intentions; one encounters: "an architect-
decorator, a manufacturer of needlework patterns, a lace manufacturer, an upholstery
manufacturer, a financier, a rug manufacturer, a builder-mechanic, a manufacturer of
bronzeware, a manufacturer of fine furniture, a gilder and silverer, a piano maker, a
manufacturer of wallpaper, a manufacturer of fine plate."
The Union Centrale merged in 1882 with the Societe du Musee des Arts decora t/js,
founded in 1 880 the latter had installed a museum in the famous Galerie des Machines,
;

233
left vacant after the World's Fair of 1879. This fusion produced the Union Centrale des
Arts decoratifs which signed a contract with the State in 1897 to set up the museum,
library and school in the Pavilion de Marsan, a wing of the new Louvre.
The organization of a decorative arts museum in Paris was a long, slow process.
Lyons, on the other hand, began work on one almost immediately after the 1855
World's Fair; the museum was created by the Chamber of Commerce (in a resolution
dated January 24, 1856) and installed in 1864 in the recently completed headquarters
—
of this institution. The connection with industry is obvious here the aim was to furnish
artisans in the Lyons silkworks with a repertory of patterns. Therefore the museum con-
centrated especially on the acquisition of fabrics. Its textile section became so rich that
in 1890, at the suggestion of the great collector Edouard Aynard, then president of the
Chamber of Commerce of Lyons, it was established as a separate museum, the Musee
historique des Tissus, the finest of its kind in the world.
Curiously, decorative arts museums in several European countries were born out
of private initiative. Such was the case in Germany where as early as 1827 the two
architects Beuth and Schinkel had founded the Deutsches Gewerbemuseum at Berlin,
whose objective was the formation of an art school and museum; renamed the Kunst-
gewerbemuseum in 1879, henceforth the usual title for this genre of museum in
Germany, it w as installed in 1921 in the royal chateau on the Museuminsel, since
T

destroyed. Vienna's Oesterreichisches Museum fur Kunst und Industrie is older; it was
installed in a building erected from 1868 to 1871.
The slow and progressive formation of museums through chance gifts and felicitous
purchases offered visitors only incomplete collections. The idea was conceived of
presenting the public with temporary exhibitions methodically put together and
therefore pedagogically invaluable. In 1857 England set the example with a grandiose
exhibition organized with the working classes in mind. Manchester was chosen as the
site because it was an industrial city where works of art could serve local interests, in
this case the textile designing business. The Prince Consort could not help being
passionately interested in an exhibition so suited to his educational bent. It was a
mammoth show, presenting a wide variety of paintings from all schools; works were
on loan from private collectors, particularly from the Queen. Nor were sculpture and
the decorative arts neglected. There was even a refreshment room with facilities to
serve 100,000 meals daily and to cook 300 chickens in an hour. The Art Treasures of
Manchester was a succes fon; all Europe flocked to see it and a number of articles in the
foreign press hailed this dean of great art exhibitions. This was the first time the public
could see the famous collection Sir Richard Wallace was to make into the most exquisite
ensemble of French eighteenth-century art. It belonged at that time to Sir Richard's
father, the Marquis of Hertford, an eccentric who practiced amateurism as though it
were a sport; he relished triumphing in the salesroom at the expense of the Crown. But,
once acquired, the works no longer interested him; he would leave them crated. In
1897 Lady Wallace left the celebrated collection to England; one can admire it today
in London, in the former Hertford House, which was bought by the State. Frenchmen
could see other treasures lent by the Marquis of Hertford to the large exhibition
entitled Musee Ret rospect if which was organized in Paris in imitation of the Manchester
show and for the same reason, by the Union Centrale des Beaux-Arts Appliques a

234
 —

['Industrie; thus the society made its brilliant debut. The taste for exhibitions was

launched; the following century would

it end by denuding the museums.
Of all the domains invaded by museums in the contemporary period, the most
recent, the most unexpected has been that of popular culture. While museums con-
centrated on masterpieces or the scientific and archeological remains of mature civiliza-
tions, the humblest creations of popular art were long considered valueless. But
suddenly they became objects worth collecting and the study of their significance
sparked feverish activity among teams of specialists; the simplest bowl was given as
much care as a sculpture by Michelangelo. This re-evaluation of the products of
popular culture was prepared for by the discovery of the prehistoric civilizations of
the Nordic regions, mute civilizations whose traditions have been perpetuated by popu-
lar cultures. Actually the concept of archeocivilization assumes a common beginning
for civilizations, primarily agricultural in character, which would fall in the period
of humanity's first great technical discoveries, that is, in Neolithic times; variously
mutated by the mythologies, literatures and arts of mature civilizations, this nascent
culture would be preserved in its original state with remarkable constants in different
regions of the world until the Industrial Revolution brought about a rapid change. The
revelation of the importance of this common beginning — without the connection being
—
apparent to its own investigators was corroborated by Jung's discoveries in psycho-
analysis revealing the existence in the human psyche of a collective unconscious, source
of archetypes from which the reactions and attitudes of the individual flow.
This culture of the people was christened folklore by the English antiquary William
John Thorns (1803-1885) in 1846; in France a more complex term arts et traditions
—
populaires was used. Museums of folklore began to appear about 1875, a period when
the thrust of the modern world, growing more imperious, began to substitute a new
standard of life for the old beliefs and traditions, a consequence of industrialization.
Man experienced nostalgia for all those traditions that formerly constituted the poetry
of simple life and which, as variants on a common theme, gave a certain personality
to the provincial soul while human life developed within a regional framework
dominated by one or another craft or agricultural activity.
This form of museum found its most original expression in the Scandinavian
countries. It is part of a wealth of regional investigations which manifested themselves
with a great deal of precocity. The Swede, Johannes Rubens Burens (1568-1652) had
tried to decipher at a very early date the ancient runic writings. On May 20, 1630 King
Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden issued an edict ordering historians and antiquarians to
study ancient monuments and runic inscriptions; these instructions were renewed in
1643 and regional inspectors were charged with compiling inventories; military
successes did not keep Gustavus Adolphus from interesting himself in these investiga-
tions into the life of early Swedish people. A professor at the University of Uppsala,
Ulof Rudbeck (1630-1702), first set forth the thesis, on which Germanists later based
their constructo bellicistes, that the sources of European culture were to be sought in the
north rather than along the Mediterranean or in the Orient as generally supposed. In
the eighteenth century Linnaeus (Karl von Linne, 1707-1778) interwove in his re-
searches geography, ethnography and botany. Romanticism in Sweden was firmly
rooted in the exaltation of the protohistoric and popular culture of the nation the ;

235
121. Thirteenth century
timber church, transported
to the Bygdoy
open-air
museum, near Oslo. /// the
open-air museums belonging to
the art and folk- museums of
Scandinavia various examples of

rustic buildings I), ire been assem-

bled. Being const rue led of wood,
they can easily he dismantled.

1 1 ere at Bygdty can be seen one

of these famous Norwegian tim-
ber churches (Starkerk) which
was transported from the province
oj I fallingdal, restored and reas-

sembled in the heart oj a nood.

236
decade from 1850 to 1860 witnessed the founding of numerous scholarly societies
across the country for the exploration and study of Scandinavian folklore. The most
zealous champion of this movement was Dr. Artur Hazelius (1833-1901), an ardent
supporter of pan-Scandinavianism who in 1873 organized in this spirit a comprehensive
exhibition at Drottningatan and founded Stockholm's Nordiska Museet on the broad
concept of a Nordic civilization reaching from the Alps to Lapland. To show the
artifacts in a proper atmosphere, Dr. Hazelius created a new form of museum the —
open-air museum. In 1891 he opened his new genre of museum in Skansen Park, where
the public could visit many types of rural structures —
an early wooden church, a Lapp
village, farms, windmills and workshops —
in the middle of a botanical and zoological
park where the animals were uncaged. The interiors of the buildings were reconstruct-
ed men and women in regional dress plied the old trades, because one of the museum's
;

objectives was to continue the manufacture of traditional articles that were then sold
to the public. Concerts and folk fests were held periodically; in winter a family of
Laplanders came to live in one of the Lapp houses. Restaurants served regional dishes.
This museum is, in the words of Georges-Henri Riviere, "a microcosm of Sweden."

The undertakings of Dr. Hazelius were motivated by an instinct to preserve, at a

time when new agrarian laws and rapid industrialization were profoundly altering the
rural population, forcing it from its old habitations. This type of open-air museum
enjoyed enormous success in Sweden and in all the Nordic countries before spreading
to central and eastern Europe. It was particularly successful in regions where rural
timber construction permitted buildings to be moved easily. It was a question of
blockhouse rather than framed timber construction, a point confused by Strzygowski.
This type of construction made the house portable as it could be disassembled and
moved long distances one moved with one's house and all that remained of the former
;

dwelling were two stones the hearthstone and the doorstep. Tolstoi, when he inherited
;

his family's immense wooden palace, hastened to sell it, keeping for his use only the
portion built in stone.
Norway created her folklore museum, the Norsk Folkemuseum, in 1895, before she
voted to end the union with Sweden; its foundation was a claim to independence. The
Norse Folk Museum also had an open-air annex, the Folkemuseet on the Bygd</>y
Peninsula. Bernhard Olsen founded Copenhagen's Dansk Folkemuseet which opened
to the public in 1885; the open-air Frilandsmuseet near Kongens Lynby is one of the
most beautiful of its kind in Scandinavia and dates from 1901. Finland and the Baltic
states, following the example of Sweden, Norway and Denmark, encouraged the
creation of folklore and open-air museums. Scandinavia now has them by the hundreds.

The earliest open-air museum

western Europe was set up at Arnhem in the
in
Netherlands in 1912. In this Openluchtmuseum are houses in the various regional styles
of Dutch architecture, even including some stone structures others were copied in
;

brick, using the doorframes of the original houses. With the draining of the Zuider
Zee a whole regional culture dependent on fishing disappeared; to perpetuate its
memory a museum was installed at Enkhuizen, a port on the Ijsselmeer, in a former
customs house; the open-air annex consists of various types of boats grouped in a
canal at the end of the building. Thus museums feed on the death of a culture.

237
 The British Isles also boast a few open-air museums, notably at St. Fagans, Wales,
an annex of the Welsh Folk Museum.
Quite naturally this genre of museum enjoyed great success in socialist countries
where, according to Marxist principles, a humble object used by the people has more
value because it is a token of the collective life than a sculpture by Michelangelo, for
example, which represents nothing more than one time and one individual. Let us also
mention the village of Cloppenburg in Lower Saxony with its Museumsdorf, a recon-
struction of some twenty houses, a church and a foundry, scantling or framed timber
constructions brought in from the various outlying districts. Bucharest's musee-village
takes up ten acres of a municipal park; with its hundred or so rustic dwellings and two
churches, it is a microcosm of Rumania, illustrating ways of life in the different regions
— in the mountain, plains, hill and marshland cultures.
The formula, as we shall see in the next chapter, spread to the United States. One
of the last countries to show was France. There was, however, one
interest in folklore
quite typical museum of this genre, the Mouseon Arlaten, founded in Aries in 1899 by
the Provencal poet, Frederic Mistral (1830-1914). Study on a national scale of the
vestiges of popular culture is closely connected with politics in France. The govern-

ment of the Popular Front, backed by a majority comprised of communists, socialists

and radical left-wingers, took an interest in folklore art and traditions. A bill passed in
1937 provided for the creation of open-air museums in the country's principal centers
of provincial life they were to be under the aegis of a central Musee des Arts et Traditions
;

populaires at Paris where a synthesis of national folk treasures would be shown. A com-
mittee headed by Georges-Henri Riviere from the Musee de l'Homme encouraged
the formation of several folklore museums throughout France and amassed at Paris
hundreds of thousands of objects chosen from all over the nation. The central museum
is presently under construction but the open-air museums will never be realized their ;

establishment is made quasi-impossible by the fact that through most of France rural
construction is in brick, stone or sun-dried clay.
Folklore museums have close affinities with ethnographic museums. In France it
has become a custom to refer to European popular cultures as ethnologie and to foreign
popular cultures as ethnographie. (In English ethnography refers to the purely des-
criptive treatment of peoples and races while ethnology denotes their comparative
study and analytical classification.) The many ethnographic museums in Europe were,
for the most part, the by-products of colonial expansion, such as the beautiful museum
of Congolese art in Tervuren, Belgium; this is not the case, however, with two of the
finest museums of this kind, Hamburg's Museum fur Volkerkunde und Vorgeschichte
and the Musee de l'Homme in Paris, both born of purely scientific efforts and exploration
rather than conquest.
In general, these museums of popular culture strive for an exact as possible recon-
struction of the life of the past period costumes adorn more or less lifelike mannequins.
;

To this fashion that pleases the general public France, on the contrary, has preferred a
more scientific and abstract presentation.

238
239

J
> r «-S^"^^ f\
 Chapter

11

The New World

Even before their independence, the Thirteen Colonies experienced great intellectual
activity, which manifested itself in the creation of libraries, scholarly societies, educa-
tional institutions and, eventually, in museums. An overwhelming drive for knowledge
and culture was the heritage of an essentially Protestant and English beginning, a
heritage, as we shall see, that would profoundly alter the concept of the Museum in the
—
hands of the New World. Other factors especially patterns of philanthropy and
—
ingrained democratic traditions would also share in making the American museum
the unique institution it now is.
The first museological centers sprang up around learned societies, usually taking
shape as curiosity cabinets where works of art were extremely rare. Specimens of
natural history predominated, reflecting the passionate interest eighteenth-century
Americans took in this science. Harvard University, following the distinguished pre-
cedents set by Oxford and Cambridge, began collecting "curiosities" as early as 1750.
President Thomas Jefferson had a fossils cabinet in the newly constructed presidential
"Palace," not yet called the White House. There were few cultivated Americans who
were not naturalists of a sort. The Fine Arts were not entirely neglected, however.
By 1743, Benjamin Franklin could write in his Proposals for Promoting Useful Knowledge
amongthe British Plantations in America: "The first drudgery of settling new Colonies, which
confines the attention of People to mere Necessaries, is now pretty well over; and there
are many in every Province in Circumstances that set them at Ease, and afford Leisure
to Cultivate the finer Arts ... " Following a suggestion by Thomas Jefferson, the College
of William and Mary at Williamsburg added the Fine Arts to its curriculum in 1779.
122. Number I, 1948, by
When the Charleston Library Society (founded 1743) of Charleston, South Carolina,
Jackson Pollock. Collection voted in 1773 to annex a museum, this word appeared, it seems, for the first time in
the Museum of Modern Art, New America. The Society's collection was a curious mixture of art and scientific exhibits.
York. A remarkably efficient Philadelphia in the 1770's boasted two similar museums, one at the American Philo-
cult lira I institution, the Mu- sophical Society (founded in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin and others) and a second at the
seum of Modern Art in New
Library Company (founded 1731); the latter significantly expanded its art holdings in
York has a huge collection of
modern works from American 1784, with the acquisition of paintings and drawings by Pierre Eugene du Simitiere
and European artists. (1736-1784), whose works had been exhibited two years earlier at the American

241
 Museum in Arch Furthermore, the Library Company holds the distinction of
Street.
being the first commissions to native painters.
institution to entrust important
— —
A family of artists the Peales played an important role in the museological
growth of the United States. In 1802 Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827), celebrated
American portraitist who had served as a captain of volunteers during the Revolu-
tionary War, opened his Peale's Museum in Philadelphia; it was housed in Independence
123. Peale's Museum in
Philadelphia, from an old Hall. Portraits by Peale of the great men of the Revolution hung above fossils and shells
engraving. Charles W'illson Pea/e arranged in vitrines; ethnography was represented by wax figures of North American
(1741-1827), once a pupil of Indians, given their characteristic dress and weapons. There were also models of
Benjamin West in London, machines. The tendency to combine science, technology, and art began a museological
served as a captain during the
tradition that would continue into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: prime
Revolutionary and painted
II X'ar
portraits of war heroes. In 1784 examples include the Brooklyn Museum, incorporated as the Brooklyn Institute of
he founded, in Philadelphia, a Arts and Sciences in 1891, and the Los Angeles County Museum, opened in 1913. The
museum which was both histor- elder Peale instilled in four of his eleven children —
Raphaelle, Titian, Rembrandt and
ical and
f
scientific;

hung in rooms where one

portraits of
—
Rubens a museological interest. From 1814 to 1830 Rembrandt and Rubens ran a
gallery and art museum in Baltimore which became a rendezvous for artists and
i

could also see natural history

and ethnographic specimens and amateurs; Rembrandt gave lectures there and performed scientific experiments,
machine models. demonstrating, for example, the use of gas for lighting.

242
 ;

In 1825 the East India Marine Society (formed 1799), of Salem, Massachusetts,
opened a museum whose heterogeneous and specialized collections perfectly mirrored
the interests of its members. It contained portraits of Salem merchants, members and
officers of the East India Marine Society, nautical instruments, ship models and figure-
heads, the tools of the different marine industries, examples of maritime art and cos-
tumes, and a rich collection of ethnological material from the South Seas and the Far
East. Its name was later changed to the Peabody Museum of Salem, after George
Peabody of London who had enabled the Society to purchase the natural history
collections of the Essex Institute.
A Boston society known as the Athenaeum (founded 1807) opened a museum in
1826 to house the works of art it had been buying at the annual exhibitions it sponsored
the gallery adjoined the Society's library. Leaning heavily to sculpture, the pride of the
Athenaeum's collection was a copy of Hiram Powers' sculpture Greek Slave. In 1876
most of the Society's holdings went on permanent loan to Boston's newly established
Museum of Fine Arts to form the nucleus of that collection.
Although there were already some more or less questionable dealers who pretended
to sell "old works," by and large it was contemporary American painting which
attracted patronage. The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, founded in Phila-
delphia in 1805, took the initiative in building a first-rate collection of American paint-
ing and sculpture. It acquired important pictures by Benjamin West and Washington
Allston. In addition, the Academy's annual exhibitions afforded unknown artists and
architects an opportunity to show their work. Art schools were started which later
grew into museums, like the American Academy of the Fine Arts in New York, founded
in 1802 by Chancellor Livingston. Teaching art within the context of the museums
seems to be an American development.
Private collectors became the benefactors of the public, devoting themselves to the
establishment of institutions to further the cultural education of the masses. Daniel
Wadsworth, amateur architect, offered land to the city of Hartford, Connecticut, for
the construction of the Wadsworth Atheneum, the erection of which (1842-1844) was
in part financed by him; the neo-Gothic building opened in 1844 with some eighty
paintings, to which the collector added his own cabinet, rich in works by Trumbull
and Thomas Cole, a close friend. The museum formed a cultural complex with the
Connecticut Historical Society and the Hartford Young Men's Institute, later the
Public Library. Innovator, pacesetter, the Wadsworth Atheneum is America's oldest
museum in continuous operation. J. Pierpont Morgan financed new construction in
1910 and his son subsequently donated outstanding collections of porcelain and the
decorative arts a monetary gift from the latter made possible the purchase of the
;

Wallace Nutting collection of early American furniture. Thus, from the beginning, the
American museum depended primarily on private patronage. The Avery Memorial,
completed in 1934, added exhibition space for modern art, studio facilities, and a fully
equipped theater, which opened with the world premiere of Gertrude Stein's Four Saints
in Three Acts. The Atheneum thus became the first museum in the United States and
possibly in the world to list theatre among its regular activities. New York's Metro-
politan Museum of Art has recently attempted a daring experiment: bringing drama
into the gallery itself. At intervals throughout 1967 a non-profit theatrical group will

243
 perform fragments of plays before appropriate period settings, Euripides among the
Greek amphorae, Ionesco in front of Rauschenberg.
The concept of the university museum, a breed of institution virtually unknown in
Europe outside England, took shape in the first decades of the nineteenth century.
Yale set the precedent in 1832, building a gallery to house a large gift of paintings by
the famous artist-patriot Colonel John Trumbull, aide-de-camp to General Washington.
Yale took the pictures, giving Trumbull, in straitened circumstances, an annuity of a
thousand dollars until his death. From that moment, art collecting became one of the
University's active interests. A new gallery, in the Renaissance Pala^o style, was built
in the 1870's to house the expanding collections and in 1953 Louis Kahn designed a
glass-and-steel addition with facilities for the teaching of art history, architecture, and
design.
In 1966, Paul Mellon, philanthropist, collector and a Yale alumnus, gave the
University thirty-five million dollars' worth of British paintings, water colors, draw-
ings, prints and illustrated books. The collection spans the period between Hogarth's
birth in 1697 and Turner's death in 1851 —
the golden age of British painting. Mr. Mellon
will also finance the construction of a four-story gallery and library to house the dona-
tion. The gift of art complements Yale's vast holdings in British literary and social
research materials, which include the Walpole and Boswell papers; the University has
thus become the most important center outside England for the study of the cultural
life of eighteenth-century Britain.

The Honorable James Bowdoin III, an American minister to France and Spain,
bequeathed his collection of paintings and drawings to Bowdoin College (Brunswick,
Maine) in 1811. Among the drawings, valued at $7.50 the lot, figured a Bruegel land-
scape. It was not until 1857, however, that Bowdoin was to build a museum to house
the art. Harvard likewise began collecting at an early date. Its Fogg Art Museum,
founded in 1891, owns one of the finest collections of drawings in America, rivaled
only by the Metropolitan Museum and the Morgan Library in New York. It also
operates a conservation laboratory. These New England colleges — Bowdoin, Yale and
—
Harvard set a pattern that was subsequently followed all over the nation, making the
university museum a unique feature on the American cultural scene.
As Walter Pach noted, the men who figured prominently in the early history of the
museum were men —
who were serving the country well in other fields Jefferson,
Livingston, Bowdoin. "It is notable how, from the first, the men who represent the
country at its best in every field are the ones who aid in the movement for art."
The Corcoran Gallery in Washington was the first to combine a rich collection of
contemporary foreign works with an array of American paintings. Corot, Millet,
Theodore Rousseau, Diaz, Monticelli, Albert Thorvaldsen, Crawford, Canova and
Antoine Barye intermixed with John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart, Benjamin West,
124. Chinese Ceremonial Thomas Sully, Thomas Cole, Charles Elliott and Hiram Powers. William Wilson
Vase, Sbang Dynasty. Freer Corcoran (1798-1888) was a banker who had made a fortune in the Mexican War. In
Gallery of Art, Washington,
1859 he asked James Renwick, architect of the Smithsonian, to design a building to
D.C. The museums of the United
States are much richer in col-
—
house his collection and show it to the public "for the perpetual establishment and
lections of Far Eastern art than encouragement of Painting, Sculpture and the Fine Arts generally." With its Mansard
are those of Europe. roofs and square cupola, the building imitated seventeenth-century French archi-

245
 246 125

L.
 tecture. The on the second floor, with its neo-baroque decora-
large, sky-lighted gallery
Louvre. The collection, too, had a strongly Gallic
tions, recalled the Salon Carre of the
flavor. For instance, Corcoran instructed a trustee of the Gallery, the collector William
T. Walters of Baltimore, to order original replicas of every bronze the sculptor Barye
had produced. Because of the Civil War, the museum was not incorporated until 1869;
the collection was transferred to a new building in 1897. The original structure now
houses the United States Court of Claims.
The World's Fair held in New York in 1853 made that great American city aware
of its conspicuous lack of a museum; several years passed before one was proposed.
The idea took shape during a dinner for certain American personalities, among them
several diplomats, on Independence Day, July 4, 1866; the festivities were held at the
Pre Catelan, an elegant restaurant of the Second Empire in the Bois de Boulogne, Paris.
In 1869 a provisory committee of fifty prominent people was set up in New York, and
a board of trustees was appointed the following year. Monetary donations were soon
forthcoming. In 1871, the trustees bought at cost ($116,180.27) one hundred seventy-
four paintings, principally Dutch and Flemish works (e.g. The Malle Babbe of Frans
Hals). The pictures were stored in Cooper Union until the new museum could open in
temporary quarters. Oysters and punch were served at the vermssage of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art on February 20, 1872. Its earliest home was the Dodsworth Building
on Fifth Avenue between Fifty-third and Fifty-fourth Streets, During the first three
months there were six thousand visitors.
Following a contract with the City of New York, which granted the land and also
agreed to assist in erecting and maintaining the building, construction began in 1874
on a site in Central Park. The chartering of the Metropolitan starts a new tradition-
municipal aid to the art museum. City support has become the second largest source of
museum income in the United States as a whole. In 1953, municipal governments pro-
—
vided $8,400,000 for operating expenses alone about fifty percent of total operating
costs. In addition to direct city aid, museums have benefited considerably from tax
exemptions and gifts of land. The Philadelphia Museum of Art and The Detroit
Institute of Arts depend almost entirely upon their respective cities for maintenance
funds. A few institutions, like the St. Louis City Art Museum, receive money for
acquisitions from city taxes.
The Metropolitan's new building was completed in 1880; it was enlarged in 1888
and again in 1902, when McKim, Mead and White, architects for the renovations to the
White House, provided it with a classicizing, columned fagade.
The museum soon began a drive to increase its acquisitions fund. In 1903, Jacob
125. The Merode
Altar-
S. Rogers, an obscure citizen of Paterson, New Jersey, who had amassed a fortune as a
piece, by
the Master of
Flemalle. The Cloisters, Me- locomotive builder, bequeathed the institution $4,000,000.00 stipulating that the money
tropolitan Museum, New York. be used for the "purchase of rare and desirable art objects and ... books for the library."
.Acquired with great secrecy in In the decade that followed, the museum attracted a series of superb gifts. 1913 was an
1957 from thed'Ursel family historic year for the New York art world: the Armory Show introduced the American
for the Metropolitan Museum,
public to contemporary European art and the treasures of J. P. Morgan, Benjamin
this is one of the most impor-

tant works of art to be exported

Altman and William H. Riggs entered the Metropolitan. New York suddenly had an
from Europe to the United States international museum, encyclopedic in its scope — the equal of any major museum in
in recent years. Europe.

247
126. Philadelphia Museum
of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsyl-
r
vania. I nder construction from
1919 to 1928, this museum {at
that time known as the Penn-
sylvania Museum of Art) de-
monstrates the . Imerican predi-
lection for the Greek, revival style.

The first director of the Metropolitan Museum was an uncommon man, General
Luigi Palma di Cesnola (1832-1904). Of an old, noble Piedmontese family, he had
chosen a military career; he fought beside Garibaldi for Italian unity and, afterwards,
sought adventure in the United States which was then in the throes of the Civil War.
Cesnola served on the side of the Union, organizing an officers' school which later
became a military academy. In 1865 he was appointed by President Lincoln as consul
to Cyprus there he discovered a talent for archeology and, for nine years, carried out a
;

series of excavations. His most important discoveries were sold in 1870 for $60,000.00
to the Metropolitan Museum; he was later appointed director of the museum, a post
held until his death in 1904. A French dealer in antiquities, one Gaston Feuardent,
questioned the authenticity of the collection, declaring that, in part, it was made up of
forgeries. Shortly after the accusation was made, Palma di Cesnola published a brief
and total denial of the charges; Feuardent retaliated by suing him for libel. The general
won the case but never recovered from the affront. Some years later, however, other
objects from his collection brought $1,200,000.00 in a public sale. Today in a palace
in a small town in the Piedmont, the last descendant of the Palma di Cesnola family
guards the remains of this celebrated collection. Part of the collection at the Metropo-
litan Museum — the Babylonian cylinders, the Egyptian mummies and cases — is

considered unrivaled in the world.

248
 ;

From the beginning the Metropolitan Museum

aroused a lively curiosity. It was then open only on
weekdays; a proposition to open it on Sundays to
permit workers an opportunity to attend met with
violent opposition on the part of society. The
Sunday openings were later made possible through
funds raised by a committee of thirty thousand
citizens. And just recently, plans were made to keep
the galleries open late one evening a week. A great
period of prosperity began for this museum with
the election in 1905 of John Pierpont Morgan as
president. Simultaneously with the acquisition of
art works, the Metropolitan Museum undertook
active research in the sphere of archeology, holding
its own beside the British Museum and the Louvre
like the latter, endeavors to present the art of all
it

civilizations. Today the Metropolitan is the most

visited museum in the world the yearly attendance
;

MAIN FLOOR (2nd) is now over 6,000,000 and on one Sunday afternoon

in 1965 some 56,000 visitors were counted.

Boston, Philadelphia and New York all founded
127. Plan of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts. major museums within the same six years. This
Main Floor (2nd story). The facade of this museum was inspired by
sudden proliferation of art museums in the early
the Propy/aea of Athens (which was also the architectural source for
the British Museum). The central axis is formed around a monumental 1870's coincided with a deep concern among the
staircase with a vestibule and rotunda; the building was completed educated over the quality of American cultural life.
in 1909. The Civil War had just ended. Reconstruction and
immigration problems faced the nation. The found-
ing of settlement houses, educational institutions
and museums was viewed as a kind of constructive
charity: a means to improve the welfare, taste and
standards of the American public. Now, almost a
century later, we can say that museums have
become significant arbiters of contemporary taste,
influencing standards in industrial design, archi-
tecture, advertising and even in the home.
Collections of European Old Masters began to
penetrate the United States toward the end of the
nineteenth century. In 1871 James Jackson Jarves
sold to Yale University for $22,000.00 a fine
cabinet of Italian trecento and quattrocento paintings
which had been offered first to his native Boston
for the nucleus of a museum there but had been
refused. Italian Renaissance art in the United States
was assured a lasting success by Bernard Berenson
through his writings and, more directly, through

249
 his acquisitions for Isabella Stewart Gardner. Already a strong patron of the opera and
an ardent collector of rare books and manuscripts, she, encouraged by Whistler and
John Singer Sargent, became interested in painting in the 1880's. She became the
patron of young Berenson, an 1887 graduate of Harvard University: she helped finance
his study trips to Europe and entrusted him with assembling for her a collection of early
Renaissance paintings. By 1896 this collection had become important enough for
"Mrs. Jack" to think of having a building constructed to house it, which she wanted
to look like a Venetian palazzo. Fenway Court in Boston, a strange edifice filled with
marbles, ironwork and objets d'art imported from Italy, was completed in 1903. At her
death in 1924 it was left to the city of Boston as a public museum which could not be
changed from its original form. The place evokes the heady world of Ruskin and Walter
Pater, the quintessentially Anglo-Saxon ambience in which Berenson first made his
mark. Together Mrs. Gardner and Berenson created the prototype of the "period
museum" which was to become so successful in the United States.
In 1873 the city of Philadelphia received as a gift the William P. Wilstach collection
which contained some important European paintings. It was put on view in Memorial
Hall, a grandiose neo-baroque windowed edifice that had been built originally to house
the Centennial Exposition of 1876.
In this crucial moment of their development, American museums looked to Europe
for inspiration. Techniques of layout and exhibition were freely borrowed, but the
basic concept of the Museum — how it should function and whom and how it should
serve — was modified by "American patterns of philanthropy, education and govern-
ment." ( x ) In the gift she made to the city of Philadelphia, Mrs. Wilstach specified that
the proposed gallery be laid out like the one Carl Hasenauer had designed for Vienna's
new Kunsthistorisches Museum, a very practical plan subsequently copied by Amster-
dam. Boston's Museum of Fine Arts followed the same formula for its new building
designed by Guy Lowell and completed in 1909. The principle behind having two
lateral wings is to balance two quadrilaterals about a central axis comprising a large hall,
a monumental staircase and a rotunda the courts enclosed within the two quadrilaterals,
;

which are dismal corners in European museums, are here transformed into gardens for
the relaxation of the visitor, whose comfort preoccupied American museologists from
the start. The construction of the Boston Museum of Fine arts sparked in the United
States theoretical and technical studies on museology, particularly on problems con-
cerning the lighting of works. Boston was the first museum to create a series of small
galleries devoted to specific schools. The expatriate artist John Singer Sargent decorated
the upper hall and rotunda with allegorical frescoes in 1921-25. Boston's is truly an
encyclopedic museum. Its Asiatic collections are considered the finest in the western
128. Madame Charpentier world. Rich in Old Kingdom sculpture, its holdings rank second only to Cairo's. Since
and her Children, by Renoir. 1905 the museum has sponsored excavations in Egypt. It boasts an outstanding cabinet
Detail. Metropolitan Museum, of Greek and Roman engraved gems, comparable to those of Vienna and pre-war
New York. Acquired by the Dresden. The paintings collection is wide-ranging: choice examples of Flemish art,
Metropolitan Museum 1907
in
seventeenth-century French and Spanish works, first-rate Manet and Degas. Winslow
for the sum of $17,800, this
painting arousal such controversy
—
Homer and John Singer Sargent hang side by side in one gallery an interesting juxta-
that it cost the curator of paintings position that shows the two strains in late nineteenth-century American art, the native
his position. and the expatriate. This building, however, where all the services of a great museum

250
 have been rationally analyzed and disposed and which was the first art museum to
divide works into galleries for masterpieces and galleries for study, hides its functional
organization behind a neo-Greek facade. This style was frequently adopted for museum
architecture in America, possibly because it seemed to suit the dignity of an institution
consecrated to the arts and possibly because of its autochthonous associations with the
Colonial and Federal aesthetic. No building of this type was more ambitious than
Philadelphia's colossal Pennsylvania Museum of Art, erected from 1919 to 1928. (Its
present name, the Philadelphia Museum of Art was adopted in 1938.) Its sculpted and
painted pediments were the fruit of years of painstaking research to determine the
exact polychromy of the monuments of antique Greece. "Philadelphia's new art
museum... will be for several centuries, perhaps, the most interesting of these neo-
Greek edifices," wrote Horace H. F. Jayne, shortly after its completion. So much money
was lavished on this architectural display that hardly any funds remained for the dispo-
sition of the interior; although conceived according to Hasenauer's principle of the
double museum, it is functionally not too satisfying.
The Cleveland Museum of Art, completed in 1916, adopted the general plan of
Boston for its layout. All the galleries are on one floor, grouped about two large courts
and a rotunda. The superfluous grand staircase was thus omitted. Offices occupy a
lower level. Cleveland is one of the country's most important privately supported
museums. Detroit's Institute of Arts, designed in 1927 by Paul Philippe Cret, is an
elongated version of the Cleveland plan. Exhibition galleries occupy one level, offices
and working areas, another; a large interior garden leads to the auditorium at the end
of the long central axis. But once again, a neo-Greek facade hides a functional, carefully
planned interior. Fittingly, New York's Museum of Modern Art (completed 1939)
became the first major art museum to employ a contemporary style of building through-
out; movable walls and better artificial lighting were introduced.
The Worcester Art Museum (Worcester, Massachusetts), one of the finest small
museums in America, was founded in 1 896 by the industrialist Stephen Salisbury III. An
endowment fund comprised of gifts and bequests provides money for maintenance and
acquisitions; the only additional income derives from annual membership contribu-
tions. The custom of selling memberships, a universal practice in the United States,
is almost unknown in Europe. Worcester was the first museum to arrange its collection

chronologically in twenty galleries around a central court. One gallery is a reconstructed

Chapter House from a twelfth-century Benedictine Priory near Poitiers. The museum
has played an active role in the American art world, mounting important exhibitions
and hosting conferences on various aspects of the arts.
12 ). Annunciation, by Jan In contrast to their European colleagues the curators of American museums attach
l

van Eyck. National Gallery oj

great importance to exhibiting objects in period rooms, acquired at great expense in
1/7. Washington, D.C. This is

one of the 31 paintings from

Europe or in the United States. Another means of creating a total ambience is to install
the Hermitage which were pttr- a collection in antique frames. To understand this American taste for reconstitution,
chased from the Soviet govern- even more prevalent in science museums, one must remember that the European
ment in 1930 and 1931 for museum goer, surrounded by history since birth, has less need of this evocation of
v 7,000,000.00 Secretary
atmosphere than the American visitor whose sense of the past has been less keenly
of the Treasury indrew II".
developed by his environment. The opening of the American Wing of the Metropolitan
.

Mi lion who later gave his entire

form the basis of
collection to the Museum of Art in 1924 generated interest in this system of installation, actually first
National Gallery. used in Europe toward the end of the nineteenth century in the Swiss National Museum

252
253
130. Room from the Wentworth House, Portsmouth, New Hampshire (1671; wood paneling from
about 1710), Metropolitan Museum, New York. An exhibition devoted to Colonial America at the Metropolitan
Museum was instrumental in fashioning the rogue for Period Rooms in museums. As a result of the exhibition the
American If of the most popular departments in the Metropolitan Museum, was opened in 1924.
"ing, one

at Zurich. A gift to the museum from Mr. and Mrs. Robert W. de Forest, the three floors
of the American Wing comprise an evocation of the Colonial, Revolutionary and
Republican periods; reconstructed rooms containing period furnishings alternate with
exhibition galleries for metalwork, glass and silverware. An exhibition of American
painting and decorative arts, 1625-1825, held at the Metropolitan in 1909 in conjunction
with the Hudson-Fulton Celebration, and the subsequent gift to the museum of the
H. Fugene Bolles collection of Americana sparked its creation. The Philadelphia
Museum of Art has made the most systematic effort in this respect with its American
and European period rooms; the major styles of the Occident are recreated in settings
imported from France, England, Germany or Holland and from all over the United
States. The museum also has a sixteenth-century hypostyle from a temple at Madura
and the reception hall from an early nineteenth-century Chinese palace. Fiske Kimball,
a former director of the museum whose scholarly writings have made a great contribu-
tion to our knowledge of the French rococo style, devoted a great deal of effort to this
project.

254
 —
Even Paris has an ensemble of period rooms the eighteenth-century rooms
bequeathed to the Musee des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, commonly known as the
Musee du Petit-Palais, by the American Edward Tuck (1842-1938). This mode of pre-
sentation has been severely criticized on both sides of the Atlantic it presents, in effect,
;

numerous inconveniences; it renders the museum inflexible, making future alterations

difficult and costly. In keeping with the atmosphere of the period the lighting, whether
natural or artificial, is usually insufficient, which does an injustice to the paintings on
exhibition, frequently too far from the viewer in any case. Precious objects cannot be
protected under glass because this would destroy the ambience; a clear labeling of
works is almost impossible and the circulation of the public difficult because of the
narrowness of the passageways; moreover, dividing the museum into a succession of
small rooms complicates surveillance. Despite all these disadvantages, American
museologists have not abandoned this manner of presentation. Quite recently, in 1951,
an entire museum organized on this principle opened at Winterthur, Delaware: the
Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, which has 125 period rooms.
The re-location of ancient settings can even be applied to architecture. A case in
point is The Cloisters, a branch of the Metropolitan Museum. This magnificent
ensemble, which is, along with Washington's National Gallery of Art, the crowning
achievement of American museology, owes its origins to a collection of architectural
elements, chiefly large sections from four cloisters, acquired in France and Spain by the
American sculptor George Grey Barnard. In 1914 Barnard put his collection on display
in a special building he had constructed on Fort Washington Avenue; somewhat
Romantic in style, the composite structure recalled Lenoir's pastiches for his defunct
Musee des Monuments Francais. In 1925 John D. Rockefeller Jr., one of the great
benefactors in American art, bought the collection for the Metropolitan Museum,
supplementing the gift a year later with medieval pieces of his own. Barnard's building
soon seemed an unsuitable setting for this exemplary collection and plans were drawn
up for a new one. In 1930 Mr. Rockefeller gave to the city a 62-acre tract of land, Fort
Tryon Park the site chosen for The Cloisters was a wooded promontory at the end of
;

the park. To preserve the beauty of the view from the area, the patron also bought
property along the Palisades in New Jersey, on the opposite shore of the Hudson River.
Construction began in 1 934 the four cloisters were dismantled and re-assembled inside
;

the new building, a colored granite, tile-roofed edifice vaguely reminiscent of a Rhenish
burg. The whole is dominated by a high tower inspired by the twelfth-century one of
the Benedictine abbey of Saint Michel de Cuxa, whose admirable Romanesque cloister
has been reconstructed within (on a somewhat smaller scale than the original since one
gallery remained in France). The rooms radiating off the cloisters and chapels are filled
with some of the most beautiful objects from the medieval department of the museum.
Nothing has been overlooked in this evocation of life in the Middle Ages; near the
cloister of Bonnefont-en-Comminges (thirteenth and fourteenth centuries) lies a
monastic herb garden; another garden is planted with flowers found in the Unicorn
Tapestry. The museum continues to grow; the last monument imported from Europe
was the Romanesque apse salvaged from the ruins of the Church of San Martin at
Fuentidueha in central Spain; the Metropolitan Museum sent six medieval Spanish
frescoes to the Prado in exchange for it in 1 958.

255
 The atmosphere of The Cloisters is singularly suited for exhibiting the extraordinary
M erode . by the Master of Flemalle, bought in Belgium in 1957. This museum
Utarpiece
is very popular among New Yorkers for Sunday excursions but is less appealing to

European vis^ ors, especially the French who, having seen several of their cloisters
carried off to a new home on the Hudson, are wont to accuse Americans of "Elginism"
but the French have only themselves to blame since thev had allowed these chefs
d'ceuvre of their national architecture to fall into ruin. And while they sd audibly lament
the loss of the least stone from their soil, for half a century they have remained indifferent
to the exodus of major works by Renoir, Seurat and Gauguin — a loss much more
harmful to their national patrimony. In the last analysis, how can one remain unmoved
by so pious a tribute to one of the highest forms of western civilization? For my part,
I have often succumbed to the quiet charm of the place on a weekday. I have seen The

Cloisters in winter under a blanket of snow, in autumn when the surrounding beeches
wear a mantle of purple and gold and I felt a*, sharp a delight on my last visit as on
my first.

When Barnard's cloisters were dismantled to be rebuilt in the new museum, it was
discovered that Saint Michel de Cuxa contained a certain number of spurious elements
the dealers had had fabricated to complete the structure because they had been unable
to procure it in toto; the Philadelphia Museum of Art was happy to acquire this surplus,
with which it formed a small cloister. Other American museums joined the quest in
Europe for doors, windows, chimneys, even whole cloisters (e.g. the Cloister of
Saint Pons de Thomieres in the Toledo [Ohio] Museum of Art) which could be added
to their medieval galleries to impart "atmosphere."
A period reconstruction might also be a street, a section of a city or even an entire
town. Aware that their past in constantly threatened by the rapid growth of modern
society, Americans have undertaken important measures to safeguard their historic
houses and monuments, an enterprise vigorously supported by private organizations
similar to England's National Trust. The most ambitious project along these lines was
the reconstruction of an entire town in the colonial style, the idyllic early (from 1699
to 1780) capital of Virginia. Rustic yet urban Williamsburg, settled in 1633, figured as
prominently as Boston or New York in the life of the Thirteen Colonies. Thomas
Jefferson was graduated from its College of William and Mary, the second oldest
college in the nation. The First Continental Congress was called from here by the House
of Burgesses in 1774; during the Second Continental Congress the Virginia delegates
demanded independence for the colonies on May 15, 1776. At that time the British flag
was lowered from the mast atop the Capitol and a continental flag took its place. The
—
houses lining the principal avenue the broad, tree-shaded Duke of Gloucester Street-
have been restored or reconstructed to look as they were in pre-Revolutionary Williams-
burg. The reconstruction project, a dream of the Reverend W. A. R. Goodwin of
Bruton Parish Church, benefited from a generous gift of $35,000,000.00 from John
D. Rockefeller Jr. in 1926. (More than $76,000,000.00 in addition have been spent to
date.) Hundreds of reproductions of the old buildings have been erected, three hundred
reconstructed and eighty-three restored. Reconstruction of the Governor's Palace and
its delicious gardens began in 1930, made possible by the discovery of a floor plan

drawn by Thomas Jefferson, an even earlier engraving found in the Bodleian Library
at Oxford and a so-called Frenchman's Map which was also a chief source of material

256
for reconstructing other buildings. Today's visitor to Colonial Williamsburg enters an
enchanted world where all is as it was two centuries ago; at Raleigh Tavern, once a
favorite meeting place for Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry and other Revolutionary
patriots, liveried servants wait on the tables and the guests wear bibs knotted around
their necks just as their ancestors did; concerts of early music and costume balls are
held at the Governor's Palace; craftsmen in eighteenth-century costumes practice the
old traces of printer, silversmith, apothecary, wigmaker and blacksmith saddlers make
;

harnesses, winnowers weave baskets, pork is smoked in reconstructed ovens and in

the street pass wagons and carriages.

Nowhere more than in Colonial Williamsburg does one sense how much modern
man, caught in a whirl of constant change, seeks a refuge in searching out a past which
is at once so near and yet so far away. Twenty or thirty years ago one thought the

automobile would replace the horse and yet, in France today, a revival of the sport of
equitation even at the working-class level has created such a demand for saddle horses
that now they have to be imported. Automobiles are banned from the streets of
Williamsburg which echo, instead, the clip-clop of horses' hoofs.

In 1907 Bernard Berenson, already acclaimed for his scholarly works and for the
brilliant collection he had assembled for Mrs. Gardner in Boston, formed an association
with the English dealer Joseph Duveen; their collaboration ended when Berenson
refused to authenticate as a Giorgione a painting the dealer had sold as such to Samuel
Kress, considering it an early Titian {The Allendale Nativity in the National Gallery of
Art in Washington). After that time Berenson played the intellectual game of attribu-
tions for Italian Renaissance works, a brand of speculation that would foster another
—
kind financial speculation. Without exaggerating Duveen's role, one can say in all
fairness that he, more than any other dealer in the first half of the twentieth century,
helped to create the snob appeal of the expensive painting, going to the extreme of
paving a price higher than that which had been asked, relishing a dizzying rise in prices,
from which he ultimately profited. A lingering of the Anglo-Saxon taste for the Pre-
Raphaelites assured the success of Italian primitives in the United States. Berenson
periodically published his famous lists, a mention in which meant a price increase of
thousands of dollars. As early as the end of the nineteenth century interest was being
shown in all the early European schools as well as in the French Impressionists who
were not yet accepted in their own country. Thanks to important donations of money,
the Metropolitan Museum was able to undertake a methodical policy of buying which
would give it the richest painting collection in the United States before the opening of
the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Since the American public was not yet very
knowledgeable in matters of art, certain purchases were strongly criticized; an Adora-
tion of the Shepherds by El Greco, bought for $37,000.00, was described as a "disorderly
lot of badly drawn figures not worth $50.00." Despite the taste certain avant-garde
collectors showed for the Impressionists, they were not yet generally understood and
the acquisition of Renoir's Madame Charpentier and her Children in 1907 was a daring
move on the part of the Metropolitan's trustees; Roger Fry, curator of paintings for a
brief time, recommended the purchase and Bryson Burroughs, his assitant curator,
enthusiastically supported him. Three substantial gifts made to the Metropolitan in
1913 by J. Pierpont Morgan, Benjamin Altman and William H. Riggs launched that

257
philanthropic tradition which within half a century would enable American museums
to rival the established European institutions. These donations, made in the form of
cash or in works of art, were encouraged by a law which permitted an appreciable tax
deduction for a gift to a non-profit institution. (In France the amount allowed is only
.8%.) For a number of years a donor could make an official gift of works of art, keeping
the treasures in his possession until death while still taking advantage of tax exemptions
but this is no longer true. The system is held responsible by many for the inflation in
prices of works of art. Dealers, collectors and curators are to a certain extent responsible
for the constant rise in prices because the assessment of the value of a gift has such
bearing on a donor's decision to present it. When a Rembrandt jumps from $100,000.00
—
— a fairly normal price for paintings by this master to $2,300,000.00 (in 1961 for
Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer), all American collectors owning his works
suddenly found themselves in a position to realize considerable tax relief by either
selling or giving their art away.
Awed bv talent, some American collectors seem to buy only at high prices. A paint-
ing priced at less than $100,000.00 is little more than a trifle and difficult to sell. Thus
is re-established in the democratic twentieth centurv the old princely system of patron-

age. Now few except great corporation magnates can afford the art that fifty years
ago men of moderate means but sure taste could acquire. As a compensation, these
princes who surround themselves with such luxury, the spoils of fallen kings and
emperors, dukes and cardinals, often let the general public enjoy their treasures after
their death or even before. Further, they have sparked emulation at a more modest
level. The vogue for buying nineteenth-century furniture and appointments — a taste
current on both sides of the Atlantic — was precipitated not only by a dissatisfaction
with modern creations but also bv the attitude that an antique interior imparts prestige.
Most American museums are private, self-supporting organizations (gifts and
special appropriations from corporations and foundations constitute their capital) run
bv a Board of Trustees whose members really control the establishment more than the
directors and curators whom they choose to appoint. The directors are charged with
running their museums efficiently and the curators with the constant improvement of
their collections. The only similarly organized European museum is Copenhagen's
Carlsberg Glyptotek its founder, Karl Jacobsen, the great beer brewer, had a passion
;

for archeology; he concentrated his business profits on the formation of a museum,

proposed in 1888 and built soon after; to assure its continued existence, he established
the Nv Carlsberg Fondet in 1902, which is maintained by profits from the brewery.
|ames Smithson (1765P-1829), a brilliant English chemist and mineralogist, grew
embittered because his illegitimate birth had prevented him from his place in society
and from inheriting his father's title; spurning his native England, he turned to the
United States and bequeathed his fortune to a country "where no such contemptible
royal mortgage" hindered advancement. For ten years the Congress of the United
States deliberated over whether or not to accept the bequest but finally, in 1846, the
funds were used to set up the Smithsonian Institution, so named to respect a wish of its
founder. Subsequently enriched by many gifts and government subsidies, this organiza-
tion now plavs a global role in the advancement of learning and the diffusion of culture.
In the century since its creation the Smithsonian Institution has founded and developed
two of the finest science museums in existence but its art museum, the formation of

258
which was stipulated in a by-law of the society, is not particularly successful. One of
its newest branches, founded in 1962, is the National Portrait Gallery for the exhibition

and study of paintings and statues of those who have made significant contributions to
the history, development and culture of the United States. Lack of popular interest in
the arts in the United States is easily explained; science is immediately accessible to the
mind of a new country whereas the arts need to be cultivated no doubt America owes
;

its technological superiority over Europe to its early proclivity for scientific positivism.

Charles Lang Freer (1856-1918), Detroit manufacturer, fastidious connoisseur and

friend of the artist Whistler, bequeathed his admirable collection of Far Eastern art,
on exhibit in a museum annexed to his house, to the Smithsonian in 1904. For a long
—
while the Capitol had only one museum devoted to western art the Corcoran Gallery.
In an effort to remedy the situation, the Smithsonian Institution named a commission
in 1923 to study the creation of a national gallery and accumulated $10,000.00 for this
purpose through public subscription. This procedure was destined to fail; it was
hardly in keeping with the American tendency to put cultural institutions in the domain
of private initiative. A deus ex machina was not long in appearing in the person of
Andrew W. Mellon, a Pittsburgh financier who had been Secretary of the Treasury
from 1921 to 1931, then ambassador to the Court of St. James. Accused of tax evasion
by the government which claimed he owed several million dollars in additional taxes
and penalties for the year 1931, Mellon became the object of a famous Federal investiga-
tion in 1935. He was eventually exonerated in 1937, four months after his death. For
several years he had been building up a collection of rare paintings with the intention
of creating a national gallery. In 1936 Mellon handed over to the Smithsonian's trustees
not only his masterpieces but also sufficient funds for the construction of a large building
to house them, stipulating that the new institution be named the "National Gallery
of Art." By an act of Congress on March 24, 1937, Mellon's offer was accepted and the
A. W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust was authorized to undertake construc-
tion of the gallery. From that time, everything proceed'ed very rapidly. Four years later,
on March 17, 1941, the National Gallery of Art, located on the Mall, opened. Nothing
had been spared to make the building beautiful; its architect John Russell Pope and
his associates had designed it in the classical style traditional for Washington, giving it
an elegant yet unpretentious appearance. "The architects," wrote J. B. Eggen, "aspired
to follow the precepts of Washington and Jefferson, both of whom believed that the
architectural style to adopt for the Capitol ought not deviate from the broad funda-
mental base of classicism." The results were remarkable; whether one considers the
exterior masses or the interior spaces, the National Gallery of Art is of a correctness
and elegance of proportion that makes it a worthy twin of Munich's Glyptothek. The
exterior refinements were carefully done; thirty-five thousand blocks of marble were
specially cut from quarries in Tennessee, re-opened expressly for the task, and were
hauled to Washington in 800 wagons. As in the Altes Museum in Berlin, built by
Leo von Klenze more than a century earlier, the center of the structure is a vast rotunda,
inspired by the Pantheon in Rome, supported by twenty-four Ionic columns more than
thirty feet high, with shafts made of green Italian marble cut from quarries near Lucca.
Giovanni da Bologna's Mercury stands in the center of the rotunda. Mr. Mellon's hope
was realized: a beautiful museum attracts gifts. When the gallery opened, it contained
not only his collection but also that of Samuel H. Kress of New York, who established

259
funds for the purchase of paintings for the National Gallery and also for many other
American museums; in 1942 Joseph E. Widener presented his famous collection of
paintings, sculpture and decorative arts. One of the Gallery's greatest benefactors was
Chester A. Dale who made numerous gifts during his lifetime and bequeathed his
enormous collection. The finest paintings acquired by America between the two World
Wars converged on the nation's capital. Among" these number thirty-one canyases
from the Hermitage, sold bv the Soviets for the lump sum of $7,000,000.00; included
in this lot were Raphael's . I/ha Madonna and Saint MjchaeJ, Botticelli's [doration of the
Magi, Jan van Eyck's Anmimia-tio-n and Titian's f 'eiuts with a Mirror.
Museums are living institutions in this progressive country. As I write these lines,
there are more than four thousand of them scattered throughout the country, a total
which increases by one every 3.3 days. The least keepsake of a great historical-personage
is reverently preserved; the Kentucky log cabin in which Abraham Lincoln was born

has been enshrined in a museum the way former ages enshrined the Porziuncola at
Assisi, the Santa Casa at Loreto or the house of Peter the Great at Leningrad. Shortly
before his death President Franklin D. Roosevelt was drafting plans for converting
his country estate into a museum, indicating where he wanted his dressing gown put,
where his armchair should be placed.
America has tapped the artistic resources of the entire world in the last half century.
In order to understand the museological phenomenon in America, one must realize
that in the political life of the country the State does not have that authority — shaped by
Roman jurisprudence, monarchical absolutism, revolutionary nationalism, Hegelian
metaphysics, Prussian militarism, Machiavellian cynicism and Marxist dialectic — which
is unquestioned in old European countries. This "state-empire" will eventually suffo-

cate what it hordes and paralyze the life of European nations in the modern world. As
set forth in its Constitution, the American State owes its life to the general consent of the
people and is, therefore, nothing more than the representative of the nation.
Federal aid to museums has steadily increased since the 1930's. A recent survey
showed that specific contacts between museums and the federal government are varied
and complex, "involving at least fifteen bureaus, offices or departments of nine of the
twelve cabinet departments and five independent federal agencies." ( 2 ) Funds have been
provided for additional personnel, education programs and exhibitions. There is some
federal aid to museums for construction and renovation purposes, but in the period
1 957-1965, this accounted for only a small fraction of the total capital outlay on building.

On the other hand, the federal government is lavishing its support on research pro-
grams. Aid is channeled through a bureau or agency whose interests appear to coincide
with those of the museum in question. For instance, the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads
gave financial support to a state museum exploring methods of highway salvage
archeology. The Urban Renewal Administration gave aid to a city historical commis-
sion to prepare a report on the historical value of an area scheduled for redevelopment.
The Vocational Rehabilitation Administration of the U.S. Department of Health,
Education and Welfare has provided assistance to a state art museum designing exhibits
for the blind.
Perhaps the most significant contribution America has made to the concept of the
museum is in the field of education. It is common practice for a museum to offer

lectures and concerts, show films, circulate exhibitions, publish important works on

260
art. The museum has metamorphosed into a university for the general public — an
institution of learning and enjoyment for all men. The concept has come full circle. The
museum of the future will more and more resemble the academy of learning that
museion connoted for the Greeks.
Major museums opened in Los Angeles and New York in the last two years. The
Los Angeles County Museum of Art moved to new quarters in the Spring of 1965.
It now occupies a seven-acre site between downtown Los Angeles and Beverly Hills.
The land, valued at more than eight million dollars, was donated by Los Angeles
County, which will also provide annual funds for operation, maintenance and staffing.
Money to build the $11,500,000.00 museum was raised privately. The largest museum
west of the Mississippi, it is part of a newly emerging cultural establishment in Southern
California. The new building, designed by William L. Pereira and Associates, comprises
three separate pavilions around a central plaza; they are interconnected by a system of
—
open terraces and covered walkways a variant of the Museumsinsel theme. A shallow
reflecting pool or moat surrounds the entire complex. The Ahmanson Gallery, con-
ceived as a four-story atrium with galleries radiating off it, houses the permanent
collection. The Lvtton Gallery, with its movable walls, was designed for temporary
exhibitions. The third structure, the Leo S. Bing Center, contains a 602-seat theatre and
facilities for lectures, films, concerts and other educational programs.
The new Whitney Museum of American Art in New York opened in October 1966.
The five-story structure, designed by Marcel Breuer and Associates, looks like an
inverted pyramid with overhanging galleries, "meant to receive people before they are
actually in the building," as Breuer commented. A concrete bridge, spanning a sunken
sculpture garden, leads from the street to the lobby. The museum makes bold use of
—
few materials large masses of unpolished stone, raw concrete, slate, bronze and teak.
The seven oddly-shaped windows were conceived as sculptural contrasts to the strong,
unbroken contours of the building. Inside looking out, they frame a portion of street
or house and offer it for contemplation, "transforming 'the vitality of the street into the
sincerity and profundity of art," as Breuer desired. Museum offices occupy the fitth
floor; a restoration laboratory, the fourth; an adaptable area on the second floor can be
transformed into a 110-seat auditorium. Many technical innovations distinguish the
building: floodlights with diffusion lenses that spread light evenly on objects flagstone
;

flooring that cushions walking; floor-to-ceiling portable gallery walls and lights that
can be plugged into every six inches of ceiling; sliding storage racks; and facilities for
drive-in art delivery. Severe yet handsome, a building with dignity and presence, the
new Whitney has advanced the art of the museum, both technically and architecturally.
Fifty years ago America had so despaired of ever being able to compete with Europe
in the field of museums that an amateur architect, Franklin Webster Smith, ( 3) proposed
building in the District of Columbia a walled "city" made up of pastiches of the great
buildings of the world, filled with copies after renowned masterpieces; the Parthenon
was to be reproduced but half again as large as the original. The responsibility for
social service is firmly rooted in the souls of the citizens of this puritan and positivist
country where human advancement is by education. The magnificent flowering of
museums in the United States in less than half a century is the spontaneous creation of
the American public whose richest citizens have thus acquitted their debt to the less
fortunate.

261
 Chapter

12
Present and Future
By the beginning of the twentieth century, certain age-old museums were about to
suffocate to death; paintings climbed the walls, objets crowded the vitrines or sprawled
over the floors blocking passersby. These alarming conditions preoccupied curators,
Built in the last century, the great museums could not meet the
critics, aestheticians.
many demands imposed upon them: to offer to the general public a wide range of
masterpieces, to the amateur a more extensive choice, to the scholar complete series,
to visitors services facilitating the pedagogical exploitation of the collections.
all

In the course of the nineteenth century, many critics and museologists proposed
creating two collections: one for the public, one for connoisseurs. The English essayist
and critic John Ruskin dreamed of seeing paintings in London's National Gallery hung
in a single line, a desire its director Charles Eastlake also shared; toward the end of his
trusteeship and shortly before his appointment as director, Eastlake had published an
article in the London Times in 1853, in which he discussed the concept of the bipartite
museum, twenty years before the noted Swiss-American naturalist and museologist
Louis Agassiz would make the same proposal. Both had an illustrious predecessor in
Goethe who launched the idea in an article in Kunst und Altertum as early as 1821. The
English were the first to adopt this system of installation; when the Natural History
Museum was moved from Bloomsbury to its own quarters in South Kensington
(1881-1886), its vast collections were rearranged according to the bipartite concept. In
1907 the principle was applied to the installation of two art museums, the Bayerisches
National Museum in Munich and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. In Germany,
Dr. Wilhelm von Bode had discussed its merits as early as 1903 (in an article in the
131. View of the Museum
of Jerusalem. The most rcant
weekly Die Woche), but he did not follow it in the arrangement he made for Berlin's
of the world s museums (opened
'
Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum. In France, in an article for the Revue Archeologique in 1909,
in 1965) presents a plan of a Salomon Reinach, curator of Antiquities at the Louvre, suggested creating sub-
series of buildings forming inde- terranean storerooms under the museum; nearly sixty years later, his idea is becoming
pendent cells, which permits easy
a reality.
future development. It has two
rows of buildings devoted
Endeavoring to create more space, several American museums went to the extreme
vices ( This
to ser-

museum was damaged —

of selling less popular works an adventurous practice, because a revolution in taste
during the war of June 1967.) might very well restore to fashion works formerly considered demode. It is quite

263
^
 conceivable that the Barbizon painters, many of whose works the Metropolitan
Museum sold as "surplus" a few years ago, might return to vogue one day.
Meanwhile, museums still remained overcrowded. The Louvre made only half-
hearted attempts to disencumber its galleries. The concept of the museum was partly
to blame: "The dead corrupt the living," declared the French writer Maurice Barres
and the curator Salomon Reinach referred to museums as morgues, cemeteries, hypogea.
The attitude of avant-garde artists, willfully determined to upend traditional aesthetic
values in any case, was even more extreme: certain of the more rebellious ones proposed
razing all museums. Mere braggadocio, for these artists continued to seek inspiration
in museums Matisse, in the mainstream of French tradition, trained his eye by copying
;

the Old Masters in the Louvre, while Derain pondered over Gothic paintings; as for
Picasso, his auvre is the history of art recast in the Cubist idiom.
Wars rudely accelerate the course of history by creating a rupture between the Past
and the Present, by provoking a sudden awareness of new times. What had seemed
irritating before war became intolerable after it. The great museums, many of which
were partially evacuated from 1914 to 1918, would soon undergo a face lifting;
sparseness and rationality would govern the presentation of collections; museums
would leave a portion of their treasures in reserve and concentrate on showing only
their choicest pieces. Lavish pre-war interiors suddenly seemed outmoded; when
construction on the National Museum of Wales at Cardiff was resumed, after having
been interrupted by the war in 1914, the previously proposed heavy decor was eli-
minated. The museum must no longer be a palace but, as I termed it at the time of my
first course in museology at the Louvre in 1941: a clinic. A clinic for masterpieces, a
functional edifice where everything is designed to maintain the best possible conditions
for the conservation of objects and to assure the public's comfort. Proud of their
climate-control systems, curators hurry distinguished visitors through exhibition
galleries, impatient to whisk them off to cellars to admire motors, filters and valves. In
this clinical spirit two beautiful museums were conceived in Europe, Rotterdam's
Museum Boymans (1935) and Basel's Kunstmuseum (1932-36) and one in the United
States, New York's Museum of Modern Art, which was opened in 1939.
The state of affairs in museums is further aggravated by fluctuations in taste. In the
last half century, the public aesthetic has been profoundly modified. Statues must be
isolated in space, paintings hung far apart, a glittering jewel placed against a field of
black velvet and spotlighted; in principle, only one object at a time should appear in
132. The Rubens Room at the field of vision. Iconographic meaning, overall harmony, aspects that attracted the
the Kunsthistorisches Mu-
nineteenth-century amateur, no longer interest the contemporary museum goer, who
seum in Vienna before 1914.
is obsessed with form and workmanship; the eye must be able to scan slowly the entire

133.The Rubens Room at surface of a painting. The act of looking becomes a sort of trance uniting spectator and
the Kunsthistorisches Mu- masterpiece.
seum in Vienna after 1914. Partiality to a hedonistic aesthetic has fostered disdain for minor masters among a
The metamorphosis undergone by public blase to everything except the most impressive masterpieces. Works that once
this room is indicative of the
filled galleries to overflowing are now inundating the storerooms, with every curator
profound changes after the war
of 1914. All museums parti ally
inventing some ingenious system to make optimum use of limited space.
stripped their galleries and placed Museology was still a matter of habit rather than a science, but it was soon to have
many works in reserve. its theories and dogmata. In January 1926, Henri Focillon, professor of art history at

265
^
 the Sorbonne and one of the most perceptive critics his generation produced, delivered
a report to a special committee of the recently established League of Nations proposing
the formation of an international organization to assure lasting cooperation among all
—
museums in the member countries the International Office of Museums; the society
would continue on a vaster scale thework already begun by divers national museum
associations: the British Isles' Museums Association (founded 1889), the United
States' American Association of Museums (founded 1906), Germany's Deutscher
Museumsbund (founded 1917). In publications and at congresses and conclaves of
experts, the national societies in cooperation with the International Office of Museums
explored in depth matters of organization, administration, conservation and presen-
tation. Technical questions led to scientific investigation. Hereafter, every large
museum, following the examples set by Munich and the Louvre, would have its study
laboratory.

The International Office of Museums did not survive the League of Nations;
but following World War II, the American director of the Buffalo Museum of Science
took the initiative in founding a new international society of museologists, the Inter-
national Council of Museums (ICOM), which convened for the first time in 1947 in
Paris. Thanks to the efficacious support of UNESCO, a considerable rapport has devel-
oped among museum men the world over; direct contact has fostered a wonderful
esprit de corps, a veritable professional solidarity reminiscent of the spirit that animated
many of the medieval guilds. Opinions on controversial topics are freely traded. For
instance, there are two schools of thought on restoration, especially regarding the
restoration of paintings the English deplore the prudent practices of continental
;

Europeans, who in turn accuse Americans and Englishmen of too radical an approach
that risks altering the quality of an artist's brushwork, a criticism Baldinucci had
already leveled at restorers in the seventeenth century.,

Museums suddenly proliferated; even the smallest cities boasted them. Public
service became the raison d'etre of the museological institution; this was particularly
the case in America, where the pedagogical habit inherited from England metamor-
phosed into a veritable obsession. "The term collection fairly well defines a European
museum," wrote Laurence Vail Coleman, American museologist and former director
of the American Association of Museums. "One could define the American museum,"
he continues, "as an institution which uses its collections for a specific end: to raise the
general public's level of culture and knowledge; it does not serve the interests of a
particular class or group." Almost every American museum offers educational services
for adults, but the instruction of children is also a chief concern. Many museums have
their "junior wings" and there are even some institutions reserved exclusively for
134. Exhibition of modern young people, like the venerable Brooklyn Children's Museum, founded 1899. In the
painting at the Guggen- previous century, the German architect and aesthetician Semper had already remarked
heim Museum, New York, "Museums are excellent educators"; by the early 1900's several congresses and asso-
in 1954. A typical example of
ciations were exploring means for transforming German museums into pedagogical
'
the ' clinical' ' museum where works
instruments. Museums had to "speak"; if limited to original works, they risked being
of art are exhibited in an entirely
neutral setting —
no picture wires, incomplete and consequently less valuable as educational tools therefore, models,
;

no frames, and plain white walls. photographs and and written commentary were introduced; progress from room to

267
268 135
 room would then convey a sense of development or evolution. Munich's Deutsches
Museum (Deutsches Museum von Meisterwerken der Natiirwissenschaft und Technik)
is an unparalleled example of this genre of museum; founded in 1903 by the engineer
Oskar von Miller (1855-1934), it has grown into the largest and most important
institution of its kind, offering limitless opporunities for surveying developments in
science, engineering and industry; in addition to machines of historical importance,
there are working models and extensive exhibits; it also boasts an immense library
devoted to science and technology. The museum became such an integral part of every-
day life that totalitarian regimes saw it as a powerful means for conditioning citizens,
as an instrument of collective brainwashing. The Soviets suddenly found themselves
heirs to a prodigious patrimony the Revolution had spared, thanks to Lenin's inter-
vention; it constituted the palaces and art treasures of the czars as well as private
collections that had been confiscated. The Soviet government set about creating
—
museums five hundred forty-two were founded between 1921 and 1936. Their
purpose was not to delight but to re-teach Russian and world history according to
Marxist doctrines: "Beauty is but the manifestation of the ideas, aspirations, or biases
of one or another class," a prominent Soviet museologist wrote in 1930. The most
prestigious masterpieces were scorned. Beset by financial worries, the Soviets did not
hesitate to sell some of the finest works in the Hermitage to foreigners.

Germany also exploitedmuseums for their propaganda value. To this end, a new
breed of institution was created —
the Heimatmuseum over two thousand were founded
;

between the world wars. It was a matter of restoring national pride to vanquished
—
Germany and of awakening it to its strength prelude to agression. The new museums
were small and specialized, concentrating on the riches of a particular province, on the
genius of one man, on the development of a single industry, on early popular tradi-
tions, in short, on whatever had shaped the German soul. "Patriotism is a matter of
personal morality equally inspired by the land and its people, and the task of the national
museum is to give the visitor a picture of his ambience, to foster a deeper understanding
of the country, its people, and its economy." Born of an exhibition organized in 1925
to commemorate the thousandth anniversary of the annexation of the Rhineland to
the German Empire, the Haus der Rheinischen Heimat exemplifies the didactic,
nationalistic museum. Italy imitated the German example, but only at the level of
exhibitions. Held in Rome in 1937-38 to celebrate the bimillenary of Augustus' birth,
the Mostra Augustea della Romanita honored what Rome had given the world; it
constituted a deliberate attempt to awaken Italian imperialism. Freed of all political
overtones, the exhibition metamorphosed into a museum after World War II. Milan's
1939 Mostra di Leonardo da Vinci was similarly intended; considered the precursor of
135. Las Meninas (after modern technology, Leonardo was thrust before the world as evidence of the supe-
Velazquez), by Picasso. riority of Italian genius; the exhibition ended portentously with an immense photo-
Detail. Even the most audacious
graphic reproduction of a Leonardo drawing of a gun factory.
modern artists have not brought
an end to the prestige of mu- World War II interrupted this vigorous life. In the belligerent countries museums
seums which throughout the XXth
century have remained inexhaust-
were closed and collections evacuated to rural areas Spain had set the example earlier,
;

ible reservoirs of styles and inspi- when the Republican Government, fleeing the victorious Franco, sent the Prado's
ration. treasures to Geneva. Leningrad's collections traveled the farthest —
to a hiding place

269
136. View of a gigantic
inscription saying "Musee
du Louvre." During the last
world war special civil defense
measures were taken to protect
museums in all , the belligerent
nations of Europe, particularly
in England and France. Works
of art were evacuated to man-

sions and castles deep in the

country where arrangements were
made to receive them. In 1944 the
author of this book, who was
director of the depository for
works of art at Sourches, designed
an enormous notice made ofplanks,
painted white and placed on the
green lawns of the castle, as a
protective measure against air
raids, indicating the presence of the
depository.

beyond the Urals. France cached her art in provincial chateaux all over the country. A
member of the Resistance, the Directeur des Musees de France, kept the Allies informed
of the various depots, who in turn acknowledged the receipt of messages over the
B.B.C.: "La Gioconda smiles." "Reynolds salutes Fragonard." At the suggestion of
Count Metternich, the German army set up a Commission to safeguard works of art in
the occupied countries; the organization helped French museums protect themselves
against the perils of combat, the depredations of German troops and the requisitions of
Nazi leaders. Thus, in the heat of war, France was able to defend her national patrimony
through the cooperation of Germans and Allies. The most vulnerable countries were
Germany and Italy: confident of an easy victory, their governments had never even
considered the possibility of invasion and were forced to take hasty measures at the
last moment. Evacuated under fire, Dresden's Gemaldegalerie lost 704 paintings; the
havoc wrought in Berlin was unbelievable; in addition to the treasures that were
pillaged, 1 ,353 paintings were burned or lost, of which 427 were anterior in date to the
nineteenth century; a nearby explosion destroyed some of the most beautiful pieces in
the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum.
War-torn Europe heralded the re-opening of her museums as a sign of deliverance,
as a kind of phoenix. After four years of darkness, Paris rediscovered with joy the light
of the Impressionists, installed in 1947 in the Jeu de Paume, the first museum to open
in the Capital. The intoxication of peace sparked intense cultural activity, from which

270
 museums especially profited. Those in the pro-
vinces stirred from the lethargy into which they
had fallen after their golden age in the nineteenth
century; the evacuations effected during the war at
the insistence of the State had awakened munici-
palities to the value of their art treasures; museums
sprang up in small towns, in boroughs; regional
institutions similar to the German Heimatmuseen
flourished: theMusee du Tabac at Bergerac (1950),
the Musee du Vin de Bourgogne at Beaune (1947),
the Musee de la Chasse a Tir et de la Fauconnerie at
Gien (1952).
All of Italy had sustained heavy damage, but
within twenty years she completed a vast recon-
struction program that would change the museo-
logical face of the peninsula new museums were
;

created, old ones renovated. Some institutions

attempted boldly modern installations reflecting
period tastes fully as much as the heavy decor of
the nineteenth century (Palazzo Bianco, Genoa;
Castello Sforzesco, Milan; Galleria Nazionale della
Sicilia, Palermo). Others remained more tradi-
tional. Throughthe indefatigable efforts of its
director, Professor Fernanda Wittgens, the Pina-
coteca di Brera in Milan, almost completely
destroyed by bombs in August 1943, seemingly
rose from its own 'ashes within a few years; the
elegant yet restrained pre-war decor in precious
marbles was kept. The Palazzo Reale di Capodi-
137. Fragment of the Tomb of the Empress Marguerite
of Luxembourg, by Giovanni Pisano. Pala^o Bianco, monte in Naples, likewise burned, underwent
Genoa. In reaction against the too heavy presentations of the reconstruction from 1952 to 1957; its director,
past, Italian museologists are often tempted to exhibit art objects Professor Bruno Molajoli, installed the picture
in a futuristic fashion with the result that the modern materials gallery and history museum in a neoclassical
and styles for the exhibition accessories contrast violently with
makes beautiful use of the polychromed
setting that
the works.
marble revetment for which Italy is distinguished;
this palace hides a veritable factory — a generator
that can supply ten days' worth of electrical power,
an exhaust system for cleaning display cases,
automatic devices for regulating the amount of
light in the exhibition galleries. Italy can boast of
having built the world's technically most modern
museum.
The clinical interior went out of vogue after
the war and there was a return to the well-appointed
gallery; this taste is reflected in the presentation I

271
 designed for French nineteenth-century paintings at the Louvre; I installed the smaller
works in a series of remodeled garrets opening onto the Cour Carre the decor is simple,
;

restrained, suggesting rather than recreating a nineteenth-century ambience. At the

same time, contemporary museum architecture is rejecting the classical palace format
in order to explore the bold effects modern technology permits. An expanse of glass wall
gives an illusion of diaphanous space to the interior of the ultramodern Musee du Havre,
designed by Lagneau and Andigier. The Israeli Museum in Jerusalem gives a modern
interpretation to the old principle of the Museumsinsel; long galleries interconnect the
divers buildings. Frank Lloyd Wright designed New York's Guggenheim Museum as
a spiral unwinding skyward — symbol of the space-time continuum that distinguishes
the modern effort. But new buildings are the exception; European museologists prefer
an old structure on two accounts: it brings to the public's attention a monument worth
preserving and affords an opportunity of installing works of art in an authentic period
setting. Examples of such musees-monuments include Ca' Rezzonico in Venice, a splendid
eighteenth-century pala^o containing paintings, sculpture and furniture of the epoch;
the Palazzo Davanzati in Florence, a magnificent example of a trecento mansion; the
Barock Museum in Vienna; the imperial museum at Petropolis, Brazil. The American
public has a taste for historic houses, another type of museum-monument the restored
;

homes of former presidents, such as Wakefield, Washington's birthplace, and Mount

Vernon, his home in later life, Jefferson's Monticello, Theodore Roosevelt's delightful
summer place at Sagamore Hill, are particularly well-visited.
An astringent mode of presentation tends to be reserved for museums of modern
art or for archeological collections. The public's preference for museums with atmo-
sphere marks a shift in taste. The purely formal approach, the object of so much
speculation on the part of critics, philosophers and aestheticians in the last half century,
is being abandoned in favor of the older attitude that sees the work of art as a product

of its times, the expression of a particular temperament. Current literature on art

reflects this reorientation. Museums tend to concentrate on evoking the style of a
period rather than on showing off their masterpieces. Europe has assimilated the
American taste for period rooms. Versailles is making every possible effort to retrieve
the furnishings that graced the chateau under the Ancien Regime. Enormous sums are
being expended to recapture some of its former splendor; copies will replace lost
originals; the work of reconstruction has been pure hypothesis in many instances,
since no old models existed to serve as guides. A vigorous taste for the authentic, born
of a painstaking analysis of the work of art, is on the wane; a larger public, that lives by
sensation more than by knowledge, contents itself with appearances. The same public
is moresensitive to the quality of an installation than to the quality of the art it presents
it wants interior decorators for curators. An adroit museologist can elicit admiration
138. Guggenheim Museum, for a mediocre collection through recourse to draperies, laces, tassels, brocades,
Xeir York. Designed for the festoons and astragals because soigne interiors are particularly admired, curators have
;

display of modern paintings, this begun to borrow "ideas" from decorators. Abandoned by artists who have plunged
museum is the
last and the into the abstract, the informal, into pop and op art, the museum is no longer a course
most original work by the archi-
in art but a course in decorative art. Museums of modern art seem to have evolved into
Frank Lloyd Wright. The
exhibition areas are along the
a sort of laboratory where the public is confronted by the aesthetic experiments of the
rounded trails of a spiraling ramp. moment.

272
138 273

j
 The great museums like the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum, the National
Gallery in London have not been able to overcome an anchylosis the shock of war
accelerated. Only Washington's National Gallery has a future before it, thanks to the
wisdom of its founder who
provided ample space for new acquisitions and even set
aside land for future construction. The city of New York refused the Metropolitan
Museum permission to expand at the expense of Central Park the National Gallery in
;

London has not yet re-opened all the galleries closed on account of war damage. As
for the Louvre, its majestic facades mask fierce departmental competition for every-
—
thing a room, a corridor or even an armoire; the Louvre houses not only the largest
museum in the world but also all the administrative offices of the Direction des Musees
de France and a special school, the Ecole du Louvre; the complex occupies the entire
palace including the Pavilion de Flore, its original home eighty years ago. After the
last war, the attics were refurbished as galleries; subterranean reserves were created.
The crisis at the Louvre is common to all great twentieth-century museums that must
adapt themselves to buildings conceived at a time when the museological institution
was not yet beset by technical and administrative problems. At the Louvre as at the
Metropolitan Museum, it is a contest between collections and services. An ever-
increasing public is making enormous demands on the museum; it must provide
space for a whole battery of craftsmen including weavers, carpenters, upholsterers,
framers, locksmiths, binders; for a conservation center; for a climate-control system;
for shipping facilities; divers kinds of storerooms; parking facilities for museum per-
sonnel and visitors conference rooms for trustees, department heads and union repre-
;

sentatives; cloakrooms; cantines and rest areas for the general staff; all the technical
services including electricians, lighting specialists, photographers; custodial services,
temporary exhibition areas; a public relations department; a publications office; health
facilities a bookshop quarters for visiting museum officials an education department
;
;
;

a "Junior Wing"; an art reference library; photographic services; a fully-equipped

—
auditorium; archives; rest areas for the public; a cafeteria the Metropolitan offers the
choice of an elegant or simpler one. The Israeli Museum in Jerusalem, opened in 1965,
houses eighty offices, twice the number the entire staff of the Direction des Musees de
France occupies in the Louvre! Offices fill two thirds of the building; the collection,
one third. The present situation is by and large the reverse of that in the nineteenth
century; little by little, administrative offices have encroached upon exhibition space,
139. Prehistoric painting forcing curators to store more and more of their collections; storerooms have become
of an ox and horses in so overcrowded as to render any systematic arrangement impossible and consultation,
Lascaux (France). The caves therefore, increasingly more difficult.
at Lascaux, which con /din the
Another contemporary phenomenon is contributing to the dismantling of
most beautiful prehistoric paint-
ings, arc symbolic of tin- deteriora-
—
museums: the vogue for exhibitions. Everyone launches them scholars for study
tion oj works of art because of purposes, public officials for political reasons, curators to show off their talents; and
their usage by human beings. the general public clamors for more. Formerly, a good curator was one who built up
Intact until their discovery, the
a collection; today, it is one who has a flair for dramatic exhibitions. In 1965, two
paintings hare had to be withheld
European capitals witnessed this paradoxal situation: at the Louvre, part of the paint-
/row the public in order to avoid
'

hygrometric variations and micro-

ings collection was put in storage in order to make space for two temporary exhibitions
biologic formations which threaten in Brussels, the Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts emptied all its galleries in order to
to destroy them. install the exhibition Rubens and His Time. The state of affairs in Brussels is typical

274
139 275

J
 — although the city has, in contrast to Paris, a very functional exhibition hall, it is not
under the same administration as the Musees Royaux, to whose curator it was, therefore,
unavailable. The Musee Jacquemart-Andre in Paris is currently enjoying a renaissance,
thanks to the brilliant temporary exhibitions it has organized; but this success marks
in reality the failure of the museum, since it was obliged to store its permanent col-
lections in order to attract a public. As early as 1930, the American museologist Ralph
Clifton Smith declared, "The most beautiful sculpture in the world makes a greater
impact when workmen wheel it through the galleries on a little chassis than when it
is finally set up as part of a carefully planned, well-lighted installation." Tortured by a

desire for realism that has assumed neurotic proportions, contemporary man homo
—
televidens, the successor of ho mo sapiens will soon no longer evince interest in a work of
art unless it is somehow associated with aspects of daily life. The eternal will have to
masquerade as the temporal in order to entice him. The original purpose of a great
museum, to fortify the cultural reserves of the mind, has lost all reality except for a
handful of amateurs. Collections are constantly rotated and the museums themseves
are perpetually in repair; one begins to long for the old installations of the nineteenth
century, when works were never moved. With its well-stocked galleries — unchanged
for the last century, its rationally organized storerooms that facilitate consultation, its
up-to-date catalogs, the Hermitage is an amateur's paradise.
As for exhibitions, amateurs and scholars alike resent the phenomenon of mass
attendance, hating being obliged to wait in long lines before each work they clamor to
;

be admitted to exhibitions when they are closed to the general public, which poses
administrative and custodial problems. The attendance at certain museums is likewise
staggering; it is impossible to enjoy a quiet moment no matter what the time of year
in Michelangelo's Medici Chapel in San Lorenzo, Florence. Galleries resound with the
voices of guides chattering away in every imaginable language; few museums and
exhibitions have acoustiguides for rent. And if the visitor wants to know something
more about the collections? Catalogs are a rarity; the amount of scholarly preparation
that must go into such a work makes publication a long ordeal; moreover, curators
disdain this kind of work which once was their raison d'etre. There is no catalog to the
Louvre (excepting guides to specific areas of the paintings collection) and yet its team
of curators has found time to produce scores of exhibition catalogs over the last
thirty years. The situation in American museums is worse; their fabulous treasures are
known. In addition, the general public shows little interest in detailed catalogs; in
France, fewer than ten percent buy exhibition catalogs; in England, the percentage is
somewhat higher (25%). Quite often, guides to American collections are merely
perfunctory, illustrated lists.
—
Museums are frequented by a widely diversified public collectors, connoisseurs
and art historians intermingle with educated laymen, children, the man in the street.
—
Of all these yisitors, the connoisseur is the one who is shortchanged he feels the
masses have purloined an institution he helped to found. The contemporary museum is,
paradoxically, least geared to the individual most likely to understand it. But does the
general public at least profit from it? From the roster of exhibitions offered by the large
cities, in addition to the many other "must" activities that furnish cocktail conversation
among "in" people, a restless public absorbs only a predigested dose of culture, the

276
 educational value of which is dubious. A visit to
an exhibition or museum has considerably less
impact than it did in the past, when one frequented
them again and again, notebook in hand; going to
the movies, going to the museum, they leave the
same impression. This public rejects knowledge
and the attendant responsibility for a hedonistic
aesthetic. But what does it matter? All the efforts
are worth it for the few who do care. As for the
rest, as long as they are distracted, that is, able to
forget themselves for a while, that suffices.
So many thousands lined up to see the Mona
Lisa when it was exhibited in New York that each
visitor was allotted only a few seconds to view it.
And still everyone felt hallowed by the experience,
just as a medieval pilgrim did when, after having
waited for hours in the narthex of a church, his
turn finally came to approach the crypt and behold
140. A too curious visitor commenting on a picture at
the golden light emitted by the reliquary contain-
an exhibition. This expressive example of the daily dangers en-
ing the holy remains. Humanity's new idols: movie
countered by works of art shows how a too eager admirer runs the risk of
scratching a painting with her lorgnette.
stars, athletes, works of art. The contemporary
world treats the masterpiece as though it were
goods meant for consumption. Curators are con-
strained to hold colloquia to discuss the surest
methods for prolonging the life of the precious
things in their care; they are subject to countless
—
dangers sudden changes in climate, vibrations
sustained in transport, air pollution, vandalism,
theft, carelessness, even the fluctuations in humi-
dity caused by respiration. Will access to works of
art have to be restricted or even forbidden some
day? Monstrous but possible. Were not the
Lascaux caves, whose paintings remained intact
for thousands of years, closed to the public after
a short time, because exposure to the atmosphere
was causing their disintegration? The museum
devours the work of art.
Museums are hypersensitive to the forces at
work in the contemporary world, in particular to
the effects being wrought by the population explo-
141. Queue of visitors at the Picasso exhibition at the
sion and the rapid advances in technology. Pre-
Grand Palais in Paris in 1966. Mass culture poses a very grave
problem for museums and increases the impending danger of making fabricated housing can always be put up to shelter
works of art inaccessible to the very public for whom they are so widely the surplus of humanity, but it is quite another
offered. matter to try to establish a museum or a university
in an urban area in constant flux. The trend is

277
toward small museums in suburban settings that are a pleasure rather than an ordeal
to visit. One wonders if the great museums might not metamorphose into organisms
—
analogous to centralized libraries vast reference collections of authentic pieces,
consulted or read about but not casually visited. The study of art would continue in
"cultural complexes," flexible institutions coordinating the various disciplines —
art,
letters, science, the theatre; France and the United States already boast centers of this
kind.
The museum in its present state reflects the contemporary inclination toward
universality; a hybrid born of science, philosophy, ethics, politics; it has its U.N.,
it is

its technical commissions, its laboratories and research centers, its body of laws. Its

form seems perfected and yet it enters a difficult period. Must one agree with the
historical philosopher Mumford that an institution realizes its perfect form at the
moment when it is about to perish? Only the American museums seem to be escaping
this institutional vertigo. They seem better equipped to face the modern crisis because
they have been spared the sclerosis of state control. The following example is a case in
point: the curatorial and technical staff supervising all the museums and monuments in
Italy is two hundred strong, the same number which serves the Metropolitan Museum
alone! Endeavoring to wrest its artistic patrimony from political hands, Italy seeks to
entrust its care to an autonomous administration, as many States have done for certain
essential public services. American museums are not created by laws and decrees but
are the spontaneous product of American life. Continually befriended by amateurs,
they have managed to retain something of the original museological spirit. Private
organisms managed like corporations, their flexibility enables them to meet more
readily the challenge of change in this age that is the Museum Age.

278
 NOTES

Chapter I (
4
)
The Duke of Choiseul in the Square before St. Peter's (Arisi, No. 247)

The only original seen by Pausanias which would have been is in the National Gallery, Edinburgh (Collection, Lord Ellesmere).
(')

rediscovered in situ would be the Hermes of Praxiteles at Olympia but ( )

5
The Duke of Choiseul in the Gallery of Antique Rome (Arisi, No. 245)
is in the National Gallery, Edinburgh (Collection, Lord Ellesmere).
the present tendency of experts is to see it as a copy of great quality.
The Duke of Choiseul in the Gallery of Modern Rome (Arisi, No. 246)
is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Athenaeum Collection).
6 No. 249 and No. 250.
Arisi, op. tit.,
Chapter V ( )

( )
7
Arisi, op. tit., No. 252 and No. 253.
(') In 1676 this cabinet contained forty portraits of women; since then,
some have been replaced by portraits of men.
2
( ) Cf. Lada Nikolenko, The Beauties Galleries, in Gazette des Beaux-
Chapter IX
Arts, January 1966, pages 19-13.
(
J
) In 1797 the term museum, in French, adjudged archaic, was replaced
by muse'e; it was retained, however, in the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle.

Chapter VI
(!) Bachaumont is in error here.Louis Antoine Crozat, nephew of
Pierre Crozat the collector, was the Baron, not the Count, of Thiers. Chapter X
This staircase has not been used since the Soviets annexed the
( )
:

Winter Palace to the Hermitage; entrance to the museum is from the

Chapter VII Neva side of the palace.

(') Work was finished in 1719. Confiscated during the Revolution,

four of the paintings were sent to the Louvre while the other two went to
cities which were at that time, but are no longer, a part of the French Chapter XI
empire. In 1870-1876 when Bank of France, as owner of the gallery,
the (!) Daniel Fox, Engines of Culture; Philanthropy and Art Museums
sought to restore it, the Louvre refused to return its paintings and they (Madison, Wisconsin: State Historical Society of Wisconsin), 1963, p. 2.
were replaced by copies. 2
( )
Elena Van Meter, "A Continuing Look at Federal Aid to Museums,"
2
( ) F. Arisi, Gian Paolo Pannini, No. 208 and 209. Museums News, June 1967, p. 38.
(
3
)
The Duke of Choiseul Visiting St. Peter's in Rome (Arisi, No. 248)
3
( )
In a book entitled National Galleries of History and Art... The
is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Athenaeum Collection). Aggrandisement of Washington, 1900.

279
m

280
 Index

Abcedario (Mariette) - 110 Alcaeus - 15 amateurism in the 18th century - 107

Abcedario pittorico (Orlandi) - 110 Alcazar - cf Madrid 126

Abdu-1-hamid II, Sultan - 196 Alchemist, The (Stradano) - 65 Amboise - 62 ; Castle of Cloux - 63, 70
Abdu-l-kadir, Capture o/'(Vernet) 225 - Aldrovandi, Ulisse - 62, 144 Ambras, Castle - 73, 74, 75
Aboukir, Naval Battle at (panorama) - Alexander the Great - 20, 135, 153 Amerbach cabinet - 144
225 Alexander on the Nissus River, The Battle Amerbach, Bonifactus; Portrait o/" (Hol-
Academy of Fine Arts (Russia) - 126 o/'(Altdorfer)-72 bein) - 147
Academy of Painting and Sculpture Alexander, The Companions of - 20 American Academy of the Fine Arts
(France) - 117 "Alexander, the ruby of" - 37 (New York) - 243
Acropolis - cf Athens Alexander VI, Pope - 51 American Association of Museums -
Acts of the Apostles, The (Raphael) - 90 Alexander I, Czar - 185, 186, 224, 225 267
Adam and Eve (van der Goes) - 101 Alexander II, Czar - 215 American Philosophical Society (Phi-
Adhemar, Jean - 105 Alexander III, Czar - 215 ladelphia) - 241
Adoration of the Magi (Botticelli) - 260 Alexander, William Henry - 230 Amico, Vito - 115
Adoration of the Magi (Diirer) - 163 Alexandria (Egypt) - 6, 15, 16 Ammanati, Bartolommeo - 58
Adoration of the Shepherds (El Greco) - Algarotti, Count Francesco - 112, 121 Amsterdam - 124, 184;
84, 85, 107,
257 Ali, first Shiite imam
34 - Koninklijk Museum - 184 (drawing
Adriaen de Vries - 78 Allegories and Antiope (Correggio) - 92, of - 177); Rijksmuseutn - 109, 177,
aeditimui - 23 98 183, 184,215,250
Aegina: Temple of Aphaia - 198, 201 Allegory of Time and Love (Bronzino) -
Andigicr (architect) - 272
Aeginetan marbles - 201, 202 64,70 Angelico, Fra - 46
Aesculapius, Temple of - 11 Allegory oj Avalos (Titian) - 98 Angers: Archeological Museum - 218;
Agassiz, Louis - 263 . Ulendale Nativity (Giorgione ? Titian ?) Hcole Centrale - 180
Agiluf, King - 31 257 Angerstein, John fulius - 211; collec-
Agony in the Garden (Bellini) 110, 112 Allori, Cristoforo - 58 tion of - 209, 211
Agrippa - 19, 20
-

Allston, Washington - 243 Angerstein: Portrait of John Julius and —

Aix-en-Provence - 87 Altdorfer, Albrecht - 115; The Battle of His Wife (Lawrence) - 221
Aix-la-Chapelle - 31, 188 .Alexander on the Nissus River - 72 Angiviller, Count d' - 131, 153, 154,

Alba Madonna (Raphael) - 260 Althann, Count - 155, 158 155, 156
Albani, Cardinal Alessandro - 165, 166, Althann; Count presenting— Emperor \ngiviller, Count d' (Duplessis) - 153
167 Charles VI with the Inventory of the Angouleme, Duke d' - 225

Albert V of Bavaria -72, 74 Picture Gallery (Solimena) - 158 An'Najaf (Iraq) - 34

Albert, Prince - 232, 234 Altman, Benjamin - 247, 257 Anne (daughter of Emperor Ferdi-
Alberti - 43 Altotting (Bavaria) - 37 nand) - 72
Albertini, Francesco - 52 amateur, definition of- 70 Anne de Montmorency - 65

281
Anne de Pisseleu, Duchesse d'Etamps - Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer Augustus III of Poland (Frederick
64 (Rembrandt) - 258' Augustus II of Saxony) 118, 121 -

Anne of Austria - 92, 177 Aries - Hotel de Ville - 141;

89, 141; Aumale, Duke of- 67
Anne of England, Queen - 145 Minim Convent -141; Mouseon Aria- Austerlitz - 226
Annunciation, The (van Eyck) - 252, 260 ten - 238 Autun, Due d' - 151
Ansbach, castle at - 188 Armameritiorum heroicum serenissimi prin- Aynard, Edouard - 234
anticaglie64 - cipis Ferdinand! Archduci - 73
Anticythera - 17 arms, armor (see also Riistkammer) - Babylon - 207, 209 Gate of Ishtar
; - 1 96
Antiope (Correggio) - cf Allegories and 60,73 Bacchanals (Bellini) - 98
Antiope Arnhem (Netherlands): Openluchtmu- Bacchanals (Titian) - 98, 101
Antiphilus - 20 seum 237 - Bacchiacca, il - cf Francesco d'Umber-
antiquailles - 64, 65 Aruolfini, The Marriage of Giovanni and — tino
antiquaire, definition of - 70 Giovanna Cenami (van Eyck) - 72 Bacchus - 64
. ] ii ti qua ires de France, Socie'te des - 70 Arras - 57 Bachaumont - 114, 151
Antiquaires de Normandie - 70 Arrotino - 58 Bacon, Francis - 90
Antiquaires du Centre, Socie'te des - 21 Artemis, Temple of (Ephesus) - 202 Bailly- 151
antiquarian, definition of - 72 Artemision - 17 Baker, Samuel - 108
antiquarium - 57 Arundel, Earl of (Thomas Howard) - Baker, Samuel; Portrait of (Grignon) -

antiquities - 57, 58; counterfeit (see also 83, 90, 98 109

forgeries) - 65, 73; "restoration" of Arundel House - cf London Baldinucci, Filippo - 117, 162
(see also "completion") - 65, 89, 116 Ashikaga - 26 Baldung-Grien - 80
Antwerp - 84, 89, 135, 183, 187; Saint Ashmole, Elias - 144 Baldwin I, King - 32
Luke's Guild - 84 Ashmole, Elias; Portrait of (Riley) - 141 Baldwin II, King - 32
Antwerp: Arrival in —of Paintings Re- Ashmolean Museum - cf Oxford Baltimore, Lord - 112
turned by France (Titz) - 187 Ashurbanipal, king (palace of) - 209 Baltimore (Maryland) - 242
Anzio (Nettuno) - 47, 49 Assisi 260
- Baltrusaitis - 62
Apelles of Ephesus - 11, 23, 62, 135 Assumption of the I'irgin (Titian) - 186 Balzac, Honore de ( Le Cousin Pons) -

Apennino (Giovanni da Bologna) - 56 Assyrian Excavation Fund - 209 194

Aphaia, Temple of - cf Aegina Athena: Temple of (Lindus) - 14 Barberini, Cardinal - 92

Apollo, Portico of - 20; Temple of Temple of (Pergamum) - 14, 15 Barbizon painters - 265
(Delos) - 12; Temple of Epicurius — — Nike, Temple of (Athens) 201 - Barbo, Pietro - cf Paul II, Pope
(Phigalia) - 202 - Parthenos (Phidias) copy - 12, - Barnard, George Grey - 9, 255, 256
Apollo Belvedere - 47, 49, 169 15; — Polias Nikephoros, Temple of Barocci, Federico - 183
Apollonius - 41 - 14; — Promachos (Athens) 14 - Barres, Maurice - 265
Apostol, Cornelis - 184 Athens - 201, Academy - 18; Acro- Barthelemy - 174
Apotheosis of flower (Ingres) - 199 polis - 1 5, 201 201 ; Erechtheum - 1 8, Bartsch - 110
, [poxymenos (I.vsippus) - 19 Lyceum - 1 201 202;
8; Parthenon - 1 2, , Barve, Antoine - 245, 247
Aquileia: Biblioteca Marciana - 141 Prytaneum - 18; Temple of Athena Basan- 110
archeological museums in northern Nike - 201 Temple of Athena ; Basel- 56; Amerbach Cabinet - 144;
Europe - 222 Promachos - 14; Stoa Poikile - Kunstmuseum - 39, 147, 265
arche'ologie, Socie'te franc aise */' - 21 12, 18 Basra - 209

, [rcheologique, Revue - 263 Attahdis- 14, 15, 16 Bassano - 86

archeology -
90, 143, 147, 150, 218 (see Attic mixing bowl - 202 Baudoin, Comte de - 112, 124
also excavations) auctions, sales - 16, 84, 85, 86, 107, 108, Bavaria, Elector of- 188
Arcimboldo - 75 112, 114, 115, 118, 248 Bavaria, Crown Prince of - cf Louis I of
. Xrco, 1 'tew o/(Diirer) - 83 Aufsess,von und zu - 222 Bavaria
Ardier, Paul - 103 Augsburg - 137 Bayerisches Nationalmuseum - cf
Arditi, Michele- 185 August (Parisian artisan) - 125 Munich
Ires (Lodovisi) - 89 Augusta (Sicily) - 41 Bayeux, Cathedral of - 31
Wczzo-58, 60, 187 Augustus Caesar - cf Caesar Beaudoin - 108
Argonauts, Portico of the - 20 Augustus I of Saxony - 112 Beauharnais, Viceroy Eugene de - 181
Xriadne, Sleeping (sculpture) - 49, 51, 64 Augustus II of Poland (Augustus the Beaumont, Sir George - 211
Anstides - 16 Strong or Frederick Augustus I of Beaune: Musee du Vin de Bourgogne -

Aristotle - 17 Saxony) - 114, 118, 121, 135 271

282
 ; 11 ;

Beauregard, Chateau de - 103, 10-), 133 Biscari, Prince - cf Costello, Ignacio Bowdoin College - cf Brunswick
Beauties, Gallery of- 104, 135 Paterno Bracciolini, Poggio - 44
Beauvais, Vincent de - 195 Biscari family - 144 Brackeleer, Ferdinand de - 187
Bedford, Duke of- 37 Bischop, Jean de - 89 Brahe, Tycho - 75
Beechey, Sir William - 225 Bithynie - 1 Bramante, Donato - 49, 130
Begon, abbot - 32 Blanc, Charles - 233 Brantome, seigneur de - 72
Beistegui, Carlos de - 116 Blancherie, Pavin de la - 157 Brera - cf Milan
Bellini, Giovanni - 57, 98, 160; .
\gony Bloizot, Abbot J.B. - 142 Breuer, Marcel - 261
in the Garden - 110, 112; Pieta -181 Boccaccio - 41 Brienne, Lomenie de - 87, 89, 95;
Bellini, Vincenzo - 144 Bock, Franz - 228 Mimoires - 85
Belvedere - cf Vienna Bode, Wilhelm von - 196, 214, 263 Brignole-Sale family - 103
Belvedere Palace - cf Rome Boethus - 1 Brignole-Sale, Marchioness Maria -
r
Belvedere, I iew of the Gardens and the Boileau - 173 103
Cortile o/(Hendrick van Cleeve) - 49 Boisseree brothers - 213, 214 Bronzino - 60 Allegory of Time and hove
;

Belzoni, Giovanni Battista - 204 Bolles, H. Eugene - 254 -64,70

Benedict XIV, Pope - 166, 167 Bologna - 181, 187; Academy of Scien- Brooklyn (New York) Museum - 242;
Berenson, Bernard - 249, 250, 257 ces 144; Accademia Clementina -
- Children's Museum - 267
Bergamo: Accademia Carrara - 142 118; Accademia delle Belle Arti - 1 83 Brosses, Charles de - 1 163
16, 129, 131,
Berge, van den: Prince Eugene of Savoy University - 144 Brothers of Limbourg - 37
at Somer's - 1 09 Boltraffio, Giovanni Antonio - 183 Brouwer, Adriaen - 121
Bergerac: Musee du Tabac - 271 Bonaparte -cf Napoleon Bonaparte Bruce, Thomas - cf Elgin, Earl of
Berlin - 85, 95, 112, 121, 136, 195, Bonaparte, Caroline - 185 Bruegel the Elder, Peter - 75, 76, 101,
209; Altes Museum (Schinkelbau) - Bonaparte, Louis - 177, 183, 184 133, 245 The Tower of Babel - 76
;

195, 196, 214, 259; Bode-Museum Bonaparte, (drome - 184 Brueghel, Jan (Velvet)"- 101, 121, 135;
(formerly Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum) Bonaparte, Joseph - 184, 185, 188, 190 live Senses - 135
- 196, 270; Charlottenburg
263, Bonelli, Mme- 160 Briihl, Count- 121, 124
Palace 136; Kunstgewer-
- 107, Bonifazio de' Pitati (Bonifazio Vero- Brunswick (Germany) - 120
bemuseum (formerly Deutsches Ge- nese) - 183 Brunswick (Maine): Bowdoin College -
werbemuseum) - 196, 234; Modern Bonnafe - 87 245
Museum - 218; Museum Dahlem - Bonnier de la Mosson, Jacques - 137, Brunswick, Duke of- 188
197 Museum fur Volkerkunde - 196
; 139, 157 Brussels - 89, 101, 124, 180, 183, 186,
Museum fur Vor-undFriihgeschichte Bordeaux- 180, 181 ,187,188; Ancient Art Museum - 49;
- 196, 210; Museumsinsel - 195, 196, Borghese gallery - 103 Bibliotheque Royale de Belgique -
197, 234, 261, 272 (diagram of- 197); Borgia, Cesare - 52, 166 187; Chateau of Coudenberg - 89,
Nationalgalerie 196; Neues Mu- - Borovikovski, V. - 114 101, 135; Musees Royaux des Beaux-
seum - 199; Pergamon-
195, 196, Borromeo, Cardinal Federico - 103 Arts - 274
Museum - 196; Schloss-Belleview - Bosch, Hieronymus - 80 Brutus; The Lictors Bringing to the —
196; Schloss-Museum - 196, 197; Boschini 133- Bodies of his Sons (David) - 216
Vorderasiatisches Museum - 196 Boston - 215; Athaeneum - 243; Gard- Bucharest - 30; open-air museum - 238
Bernini, Giovanni Lorenzo - 89, 95, 98 ner Museum - 250; Museum of Fine Buckingham, Duke of - 85, 90, 144
Berry, Due de - cf Jean, Duke of Berry Arts - 243, 249, 250, 252, 263 Buddha Vairochana (at Nara) - 29, 35
Berthollet, Claude Louis - 174 Boswell papers - 245 Buontalenti, Bernardo - 56, 58, 60, 163
Bertoldo 46 - Botta, Paul Emile - 207, 209 Bupalus of Chios - 15
Besancon - 142 Botticelli: Adoration of the Magi - 260 Burens, Johannes Rubens - 235
Bessarion, Cardinal - 51 Boucher, Francois - 121 Burgundy, Duke of - 39
Betrachtungen iiber die Kaiserlich-Konig- Boulogne, Army at (panorama) - 225 Burgos: Convent of Santa Clara de
liche %u Wien (von Rit-
Bildergalerie Bourbons -117, 185 Pomar - 37
tershausen) 159 - Bourdeilles, Pierre de - 72 Burnley (England): Townlev Hall Art
Beuth (architect) - 234 Bourdon, Sebastien - 85, 87 Gallery and Museum - 148
bezoars - 37, 75, 76 Bourges: Cathedral - 39; lapidarv mu- Burroughs, Bryson - 257
Bibiena, Cardinal - 64 seum - 218 Burst of Sunlight (JLe Coup de Sole/ 1)
Bicetre; Chateau at - 39 Bousquet - 80 (Ruisdael)- 153, 154
Biedermeier style - 193, 214 Bouton, C. M. - 225 Bussy-Rabutin - 104

Bildersaal, Bildersale - 1 15, 135, 136 Bowdoin III, )ames - 245 Buss\ -Rabutin, Chateau of- 133

283
Buteux - 154 Carlisle, Count of- 67 Charles III, Emperor (Charles the Fat or
Bvres, James -112 Carlo of Bourbon - 144 Charles II of France) - 34
Byron - 202 Carolingian gospels - 30 Charles IV, Emperor - 51
Byzantine, Byzantium - 30, 32 Carpaccio, Vittore -183; The I 'ision of Charles V, Emperor (Charles of Spain) I

Saint Augustine - 51 - 72, 73, 78, 80

cabinet - 72, 87, 129-139; definition of Carpentras - 141 Charles VI, Emperor - 110, 155, 158
70, 129 Carracci, the - 86, 130 Charles V of France (Charles the Wise) -
"cabinet des curiosite^" - 67 Carracci, Anibale - 186 Fishing; Hunting ; 34, 35, 37
"cabinet des rarete^" - 70 - 151; Virgin- 85 Charles VI of France (Charles the Mad) -
Cabinet of Glassware in Rosenborg Carrara, Count - 142 34,37
Castle, Copenhagen - 139 Carta del Navegar pittoresco (Boschini) - Charles VII of France - 34
Caen- 180, 181 133 Charles VIII of France - 62
Caesar, Augustus - 18, 19, 20, 72, 269 Casanova, Francesco Giuseppe - 165 Charles IX of France - 34, 37, 67, 73
Caesar, Julius - 18, 30,228 Casino del Giardino - cf Sabbioneta Charles X
of France - 205] 225
Caesar, gardens of - 51 Cassas, Louis-Francois - 228 Charles I of England - 83, 84, 90, 91, 92,
Caffieri - 193 Castel del Monte - 41 95, 98
Cairo: Institut d'Egypte - 191, 207 Castiglione, Baldassare - 57 Charles the First (van Dyck) - 154
Calah (Nimrud) - 209 Castiglione, Baldassare; Portrait of Charles I, last emperor of Austria - 190
Callot - 99 (Raphael) - 85, 150 Charles of Bourbon (king of the Two
Cambaceres, )ean (acques Regis de- 17" Castiglione, Joseph: Salon Carre - 218 Sicilies)- 163, 164
Cambiaso - 86 Castiglione, Sabba da - 57, 58 Charles, Duke of Sondermanland - 167
Cambrai, Jean de - 39 Castile,Constable of- cf Juan de Velasco Charles Emmanuel II of Savoy - 104
Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University catalogs (see also inventories) - 35, 73, Charles Theodore, Elector - 155, 159,
- 241, 245, 249; Fogg Art Museum - 85, 86, 90, 105, 108, 110, 125, 135, 160
245 145, 158, 159, 274 Charles William Ferdinand, duke of
Cambridge University (England) - 144; Catania- 115, 116, 142 Brunswick - 120

Fitzwilliam collections - 150; Trinity Catherine II of Russia (Catherine the Charleston (South Carolina) Library
Hall - 150 Great)- 104, 112, 114, 115, 118, 121, Society - 241
Cameo of Saint Servin - 67 124, 125, 126, 166, 176 Charleton (or Courten), William - 1 4 5
Campana collection - 216 Caumont, Arcisse de - 218 Charlottenburg: Por^ellankabinett - 136
Campana di Cavelli, "Marchese" (Gian Caylus, Comte de - 116 Charpentier; Madame and her Children —
Pietro Campana) - 216 Cellini, Benvenuto - 65; Nymph - 65; (Renoir) - 250, 257
Canaletto - 12 1 saltcellar - 73 Chateaubriand - 218, 233
Canast, Francois - 17 1 Cephalus and Procris, The Reconciliation Chatel, Marquis of - cf Crozat
Canning, Stratford - 209 o/(ClaudeLorrain)-209 Chatsworth - 120
Canon of Pergamum - 15 Cephisodotus - 15 Chauvel-201,204
Canopus (Hadrian's Villa) - 18 Ceres, Temple of- 16 Chennevieres - 10 1

Canova, Antonio - 186, 202, 245 Cesnola, Luigi Palma di - 248 Cheremetiev collection - 125
Capitoline Museum - cf Rome Ceulen, Ghisbert von - 120, 12*3 Chicago (Illinois): Art Institute - 215
Capponi family - 44 Cezanne, Paul - 171, 194 Ch'ien Lung, E,mperor - 22
Capua 4 - 1 chambre des merveilles - 62 Chigi collection - 166
Caracalla, Baths of -20, 51, 163 Champaigne, Philippe de - 103 Chigi, Cardinal Fabio - 104
Caracteres (La Bruyere) - 99 Championnet, Jean Etienne - 185 Childe Harold (Byron) - 202
Caravaggio - 86 Death of the irgin-86,
; I Champoiseau, M. de - 204 Chimera of Arezzo - 58, 60
98; Lute Player 185; Madonna of the
- Champollion, Jean Francois - 191, 204, China, collecting in - 23, 26
Rosary - 1 54 205 Chinese Ceremonial Vase - 245
Cardenas, Alonzo de 90 - Chantelou - 98 Chiswick - 120
Cardiff (Wales): National Museum of Chantilly: Musee Conde - 67 Chocquet - 194
Wales 265 Chao Jen - 23 Choiseul, duke of- 133
C ordinal Niccolb Albergati (van Eyck) - Chaptal, Jean Antoine - 180 Choiseul-Gouffier, Count de - 201
101 Chardin, Jean Baptiste - 112, 121, 193 Christ Carrying the Cross (Simone Mar-
Cardinal Virtues, The: Temperance Charity (Andrea del Sarto) -ll 7 tini) - 193
(Pisano) - 42 Charlemagne - 31, 32; so-called crown Christian IV of Denmark and Norway -

Carleton, Lord Dudley - 85, 133 of- 188,228 78, 137,230

284
 1 1 1

Christie, James - 108, 109, 110 Colonna, Lorenzo - 104 Coulanges, abbot of - 86
Christie, Sir James (Gainsborough) - L09 Colonna, Prospero - 49 counterfeits - cf forgeries
Christie's, A Sale at (Rowlandson) - 1 09 Colonna gallery - 103 Coup de Soleil, Te (Burst of Sunlight)
Christina of Sweden - 78, 83, 84, 92, Com modus - 51 (Ruisdael)- 153, 154
118 Como: museum jovianum '
- 56, 57, 58, 60, Courten, William - cf Charleton
Christine of Lorraine 65 - 67,73, 139 Courtois - 226
Christy, Henry -207, 210 "completion" of art works (see also Courtonne - 137
Ciaranfi, Anna Maria - 131 antiquities, "restoration" of) - 64, Coxie, Michiel - 80
Cicero - 17, 43 89, 201, 204 Cranach, Lucas - 80, 142; Portrait of
Cicognara, Count Leopoldo - 186 Concert Champetre (Giorgione) - 98 Prince Wolfgang d' nhalt (?) - 1 42 A
Cima da Conegliano - 186 Concord, Temple of (Rome) - 19, 23 Crawford - 245
cimeliarchus - 145 Confessions of a Secondhand Dealer - 1 08 Cret, Paul Philippe - 252
cimeliarchium , cimelium, cimeliotheca - 87 confiscation of works of art - 170, 171, Cristofano dell'Altissimo - 58
Claude Lorrain (Claude Gelee) - 56, 101, 174, 176, 180, 181, 183, 188 Cristoforo, Gian - 52
1 86, 21 1 The Reconciliation ofCephalus
; Congress of Vienna - 186, 188 Crivelli, Carlo: Madonna with a Candle -

and Procris - 209 connoisseur, definition of - 87 174

Claudius- 19,23 conoscitore - 87 Cromwell, Oliver -90
Cleeve, Hendrick van: f ieir of the Gar- Considerations morales sur la destination des Croster, Vittorio - 160
dens and the Cortile of the Belvedere in outrages d' art (Quatremere de Quincv) Crozat, Antoine - 118
Rome - 49 - 191 Crozat, Louis Antoine - 1 18
Clement VII, Pope - 41 Considera^ione della pittura (Mancini) - 86 Crozat, Louis-Francois - 1 18
Clement XII, Pope (Lorenzo Corsini) - Constable, John - 211 Crozat, Pierre - 78, 1 1 2, 1 1
4 1 1 8, 1 24
—
,

141, 165, 166 Constantine, Emperor - 32, 37 Crusaders; Entry of the into Constanti-
Clement XIII, Pope - 167 Constantinople - 29, 32, 46, 201, 204, nople (Delacroix) - 226
Clement XIV, Pope - 166, 167 209; Golden Gate - 90 crusades - 32, 222, 226
Clerambault 105 - Convention Nationale - 170, 171, 173, Cryptoporticus, House of the (Pompeii)
Clerisseau - 124 176, 180 -20
Cleveland (Ohio) Museum of Art 252 - Copenhagen:* Carlsberg Glvptotek - airieux - 87 ; definition of - 70

Cloisters, The - cf New York, Metro- 258 Rosenborg Castle - 1 37, 221 230
; , Curieux des diverses villes - 89
politan Museum (Buffetkabinett - 137; Cabinet of Curiositdtenkabinett - 87
Cloppenburg (Lower Saxony) open-air Glassware 139; Dansk Folkemuseet
- "curiosities," curiosity cabinets (see
museum - 238 - 237; Porzellankabinett - 137) ,
also Wunderkammer) - 39, 67, 70, 72,
Clouet family - 65 Copernicus - 55 73, 116, 124, 137, 241
Clouet, Francois - 7 3 Hlisaheth ; de copies, copying (see also forgeries) - curiosities of nature - 62, 73
Valois - 67 18,41, 58, 86,89, 116, 117, 135, 171 Cynno - 1

Cloux, Castle of - cf Amboise Copley, Thomas Singleton - 245 Cyprian Chants - 20

Clovis - 32 Corcoran, William Wilson - 245, 247 Cyprus - 248
Clytie, so-called bust of- 149 Corcoran Gallery - cf Washington, D.C.
Cnidian Lesche, Delphi - 15 Cornelius, Peter von - 199
Coccale - 1 1 Corot - 245 Dagobert 173 -

Cochin - 108, 112 Correggio - 83, 101, 186; Allegories and Daguerre 225 -

Codex escurialensis - 47 Antiope - 92, 98; Mystical Marriage of Dale, Chester A. - 260
Codex Theodosianus - 30 Saint Catherine - 92 Damasippus - 19
cognoscente - 87 Corsini, Lorenzo - cf Clement XII Dan, Father - 67
Cola di Rienzo - 4 Cortegiano, II (Castiglione) - 57 Dana'e (Titian) - 75
Colbert, Jean Baptiste - 83, 92, 95, 98, Cortez, Hernando - 56 Danaides - 20
-
99, 151, 156 Cortona: Etruscan Academy - 142, 14 Daru, Pierre Antoine - 188
Cole, Thomas - 243, 245 Cos: Temple of Aesculapius - 1 David, Jacques-Louis - 176, 216; Lie-
Coleman, Laurence Vail - 267 Cospi, Marchese - 144 tors Bringing to Brutus the Bodies of his
Colmar: Unterlinden Convent - 218 Costello, Ignacio Paterno (Prince Bis- Sons, The - 216; Oath of the Horatii,
Cologne: Cathedral - 213; Reliquary of cari)- 116, 144 The -216
the Three Magi - 30 Cotte, Robert de - 131 David and Jonathan (Rembrandt) - 124
Colombier, Pierre du - 92 Cotton, Sir Robert Bruce - 147 Dawe (architect) - 224
Colonna, Cardinal Geronimo I - 131 Coudenberg - cf Brussels Decade philosophique - 1 72

285

1
de Forest, Mr. and Mrs. Robert W. -
Dobson, William - 91 Eight Dignitaries Taking a Springtime
'

254 Domenichino, II: Judith and Holofernes (Chao Jen)

'Ride - 23

Degas - 250 (copy) - 1 1 Elam -210

Delacroix - 174, Entry of
194; the Donatello - 44, 57 Elboeuf, Prince of - cf Emmanuel de
Crusaders into Constantinople - 226 Donati, Vitaliano - 204 Lorraine
de Lassav - 107 Dondi, Giovanni - 43 Eleanora da Toledo - 58
de rOrme, Charles - 99 Doort, Abraham van der - 90, 91 Elgin, Earl of (Thomas Bruce) - 90,
Delos, Temple of Apollo - 12 Doria gallery - 103 201,202
Delphi - 17; Cnidian Lesche - 15; Dormer, Philip - 230 Elgin marbles - 150,201,202
Treasury of the Athenians - 12 Dragonne, Simon Pierre - 183 Elicona, G.B. -58
Demidov collection - 125 drawing academies - 143 Elisabeth de I ahis (Clouet) - 67
Demidov, Nikita - 123 Dresden - 76, 114, 121, 123, 124, 135, Elizabeth I of England - 37
Denon, Baron Vivant - 165, 176, 177, 136, 160, 222; Gemaldegalerie - 118, Elizabeth of Austria - 73
180, 183, 185, 186, 188, 193, 195, 201 123, 215, 270 Elizabeth of Bavaria - 37
Denon, Baron I "ivant ; Portrait of Drottningatan - 237 Elizabeth, Czarina of Russia - 126
(Prud'hon) - 177 Drottningholm - cf Stockholm Elliott, Charles - 245
De Quincy, Quatremere - 176, 191, 221 Drovetti collection - 204 Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium -

Derain, Andre - 265 Drovetti, Bernardino - 204, 205 57

De Revolutionibus orbium coelestium Duban, Jacques Felix - 215 Eltenburg Reliquary - 230
Libri 7 (Copernicus) - 55
I Du Cange, Charles - 39 Emmanuel de Lorraine, Prince of
Descartes - 78, 173 Duchie, |acques - 39 Elbceuf- 163
Descent from the Cross (Deposition) Dufournv - 177 Encyclopedic (Diderot) - 153
(Rogier van der Weyden) - 44, 80 DuGuesclin- 104, 173 Ende (architect) - 196,210
Description de A/m(Guillebert de Metz) Dumas, Alexandre - 221 English Connoisseur (Martyn) - 120
-39 Dumont, Father - 141 Enkhuizen (Netherlands): open-air mu-
Description of Paintings in the Palms Duplessis, [oseph Siffrcin - 153 seum - 237
Royal - 194 Durand collection - 202, 204 Entombment The (Titian) - 98
',

Desiderio da Settignano - 44 Durer, Albrecht - 57, 75, 76, 80, 101, Ephesus: Temple of Artemis - 202
Desprez, Jean-Louis - 165; Transport of 115, 194, 222; Adoration of the Magi - Epidaurus - 17
intiques from the Portici Museum to the
. 163; Madonna of the Rosary - 75; equestrian iconography 103, 104, 105 -

Xap/es Museum - 164 Martyrdom of the 10,000 Christians - Erasmus - 144

destruction of works of art - 8, 9, 89, 170 75; Iiew oj Irco - 83. Erechtheum - cf Athens
DeTesse - KM Diisseldorf -120, 159, 160; Hall of the Erechtheum (Hadrian's Villa) - 18
Detroit (Michigan) Institute of Art -44, Italians - 155 Eros, Statue of (Boethus) - 1 1

247, 252 Duveen, Joseph - 257 Escorial - cf Madrid

Deutscher Muscumsbund - 267 Dvce, William -212,213 Este, Duke Alfonso d' - 98
Devonshire, Duke of- 120 Dyck, Anthony van - 89, 120, 121, 183; Este, Ippolito d' - 52
Devosges, Francois - 142 Bacchus and Iriadne (copy) - 16; Bag- 1 Este, Isabella d' - 52, 53, 92

Diana the Huntress - 64 fife Player, The (copy) - 1 16; Charles Este, Villa d' - cf Tivoli
/ )iam a la biche - 64 the First- 154; Portrait of a Man Estienne, Henri II - 64, 65
Diane de Poitiers - 64, 67 (copy) 116; Venus Requesting .Arms
- Estienne, Robert - 70
Diaz 245 for Aeneas (copy) - 16 1 Eugene of Savoy, Prince - 110, 159
Dichtung und Wabrheit (Goethe) - 160 Eugene of Savoy at Somer's in Amsterdam
Diderot, Denis 112, 123, 153, 169
- (van den Berge) - 109
Dietzenhofer, Johann 133 - East India Marine Society - 243 Eumenie (Eumenes) II - 14, 16
Dieulafoy, Mme [eanne; Dieulafoy, Lastlake, Charles Locke - 212, 263 Euphranor - 19
Marcel Auguste - 210 Ecole de la Cour de Charlemagne - 30 Euripides - 245
Dijon 142, 180; Palais des Etats - 142
- Ecouen - 92 Euthies - 1
Dilettanti, Society of the - cf London Edward VI of England - 232 excavations (archeology) - 116, 117,
Dimier, .ouis 63
I Edwards, Pietro - 117, 118, 181 143, 202; Alexandria - 16; Anti-
Diocletian, Baths of - 51 Eggen, J.B. -259 cvthera - 17; Aries - 141 ; Artemision
dioramas 225 Egypt -191, 202, 204, 205, 20", 250; - 17; Augusta (Sicily) - 41 ; Babylon -

Director) (Directoire) 176, ISO, 183, first museum of Egyptian antiquities 207, 209; Baths of Caracalla - 20, 51,
190 -204 163; Baths of Diocletian - 51 Baths ;

286
 ; -

of Titus - 20, 49; Caesar, garden Feuardent, Gaston - 248 Four Evangelists, The (Rubens) - 154
of -51; Calah - 209; Catania - 144; Fickler - 72 Fourment, Helena (Rubens) - 121, 123,
Cyprus - 248; Delphi - 15; Egypt - Fishing (Carracci) - 1 50 154
204, 205, 207, 250; Elam - 210 Fitzwilliam, Viscount Richard - 150 Four Saints in Three Acts (Stein) - 243
Herculaneum - 117, 163, 164, 185 Fitzwilliam collection - cf Cambridge Four Seasons (Poussin) - 87
Iran - 210; Khorsabad - 207, 209 University France, Anatole - 176
Kuyunijk - 209; Lagash - 209 Five Dynasties - 23 Francesco III, Duke - 123
Madhia - 11, 17; Mesopotamia - 207 Five Senses (Brueghel) - 135 Francesco d'Umbertino, il Bacchiacca -

209; Mycenae - 210; Neptune Flaxman, John - 202 61

Temple of - 51; Nimrud - 209 Flemalle, Master of: Me'rode Altarpiece - Francis I, Emperor (Francis of Lor-
Nineveh - 207; Pergamum - 14, 15 247, 256 raine) - 162
Piraeus - 17; Pompeii - 163, 185 Flora (Titian) - 163 Francis I of France - 63, 64, 65, 70, 73,
Russia, 125, 222; Susa - 210; Tello - Florence, Florentines - 41 43, 44, 46, 56,
, 74, 130
209; Thebes - 205; Tivoli - 18; 58, 60, 61, 144, 162, 163, 190; Accade- Franco - 269
Trajan's Forum - 51; Troy - 210; mia del Disegno - 187; Archeological Franconia - 133
Volterra - 142, 144 Museum - 60; Capella dei Principi de Franklin, Benjamin - 241
Evck, [an van - 52, 72; Annunciation, San Lorenzo - 61 (Medici Chapel - Franz Joseph, Emperor - 230
The - 252, 260; Cardinal Niccolb 274) Convent of San Marco - 46, 1 87
; Frederick II, Emperor - 41
Albergati - 101 Ghent Altarpiece -
; Egyptian Museum - 205; Museo Frederick II of Prussia (Frederick the
80; Marriage of Giovanni Arnolfini Nazionale di Storia della Scienza - Great) - 107, 112, 166, 176
and Giovanna Cenami - 72; (?) St. 160, 163; opificio delle pietre dure - Frederick II, king of Sicily - 116
Jerome - 44 61 Palazzo Davanzati - 272; Palazzo
; Frederick IV of Denmark - 137, 139
Pitti - 58, 60, 105, 129, 162, Frederick VII of Denmark - 221, 230
Facchetti, Pietro - 117 198, (Palatine Gallery - 129, 131 Frederick Augustus I of Saxony -
Faccioli -160 Museo degli Argenti - 60, 190) cf Augustus II of Poland (Augustus
Falconet, Etienne - 112 Palazzo Vecchio - 56, 58, 65 Uffizi ; the Strong)
Farnese, Alessandro - cf Paul ///, Pope Gallery - 58, 103, 105, 162, 163 Frederick Augustus II of Saxony -
Farnese, Elizabeth - 163 (Cabinet of Drawings and Prints - 61, cf Augustus III of Poland
Farnese Bull - 20 65; Gabinetto di Antichi Quadri - Frederick Henry, Prince of Nassau - 120
Farnese collections - 44, 51, 163, 166 162; Loggia dei Lanzi - 60, 98; Frederick William I of Prussia - 121
Farnese, Ta^a - 44, 66 Tribuna - 58, 60, 61, 163, 215, 218) Frederick William 111 of Prussia - 195,
Faustina, Empress - 52 Focillon, Henri - 265 , 213,216
Fauvel - 201 Fogg Art Museum - cf Cambridge Frederick William IV of Prussia - 213
Feast in the House of Levi (Veronese) - 1 86 Foix, Gaston de ; Portrait of (Giorgione) - Frederiksborg (Denmark), chateau of
Felton (architect) - 125 85 230
Fenaille - 172 folklore museums - 195, 235-238 Freer, Charles Lang - 259
Feodosiya: archeological museum - 222 Foligno Madonna (Raphael) - 176 Freer Gallery - cf Washington, Smith-
Ferdinand I, Emperor - 72, 73 Fontaine, Pierre - 176, 177, 198 sonian Institution
Ferdinand II, Emperor - 101 Fontainebleau - 64, 65, 67, 73, 90, 98, Fresne, Marquis of - 78
Ferdinand III, Emperor - 78, 101 117, 130 Fresnel - 209
Ferdinand I, king of Bohemia and Fontana (discoverer of Herculaneum) - Frilandsmuseet - 237
Hungary - 73 164 Fromantiou, Hendrik van - 85
Ferdinand VII of Spain - 185 Fontana, Domenico - 165 Fronde of the Princes - 92
Ferdinand I, son of Charles IV of Fontane - 163 Frontinus - 44
Bourbon- 164, 165 Forbin, Count de - 199 Fry, Roger - 257
Ferdinand II, king of the Two Sicilies - Forchoudt, Guillaume - 84 Fugger family - 72
185 Forchoudt brothers - 84 Fussli, Heinrich (Henry Fuseli) - 201
Ferdinand II, grand duke of Tuscany - forgeries (see also copies) - 64, 65, 73,
65, 190 85, 143, 147
Ferdinand III, grand duke of Tuscany - Fornovo - 62 gabinetto - 129
162, 163 Forster, Ludwig - 227 Gabinetto di Antichi Quadri - cf Flo-
Ferdinand of Tyrol - 37, 56, 73, 104 Forza (or Forzetta), Oliviero - 43 rence, Uffizi
Ferrara - 98, 101 Bellini collection
;
- Fouquet, L.V.: Studio of Alexandre du Gagarine, Prince - 123
144 Palazzo Schifanoia - 105
; Sommerard - 232 Gagneraux: Pope Pius VI Visiting the

287
 Vatican's Pio-Clementino Museum with Giovanni di Monte Oliveto, Fra - 57 Griinewald: Isenheim Altar - 218
Gus tarns III of Sweden - 166 Giovio Paolo (see also Como, museum Guardi, Francesco - 12 1

Gaignieres, Roger de - 101, 105, 226 jovianum) - 56, 57, 67, 105, 226, 230 Guardi, Gian Antonio - 116
Gainsborough, Thomas - 1 10; Sir James Giovio, Paolo, Portrait of - 5 7 Guarnacci, Monsignor Mario - 142
Christie 109 - Giradon, Francois - 89 Gudea, King - 209
G ulilea's Lens - 160 Giuliano da Sangallo - 56 Guercino - 131, 183
gallery - 129-139; definition of - 129 Giustiniani collection - 166, 213 Guermantes, chateau at - 116
Gallery of Beauties, The- 104, 135 Glomy- 110 Guerra, Giuseppe - 147, 165
Gallic Wars, Commentaries on the (Caesar) Godefrov - 117 Guise family - 70
-228 Goering, Hermann - 17 Gustavus III of Sweden - 166, 167
Ganymede - 165 Goes, Hugo van der: Adam and Eve -
Gustavus Adolphus - 235
Gardner, Isabella Stewart - 250, 257 101
Garibaldi - 248 Goethe- 160, 199,213,263 Hadrian, Emperor - 18, 198
Gaudreau, Antoine - 193 Gogel- 184 Hadrian's Villa (Villa Adriana) - 18, 44,.
Gauguin, Paul - 256 Golden Fleece, emblems of the Order 58
Gazette des Beaux-Arts - 233 ofthe-188 Hague, The - 84, 85, 187
Gemaldegalerie - cf Dresden Gohki - 224 Halicarnassus - 90; Mausoleum of- 202
Gemma Augustea - 72, 75 Golnitz, Abraham 89- Hals, Frans: Malle Babbe - 247
Geneva- 180, 186 Gonzaga, Elizabeth 52 - Hamburg (Germany): Museum fur Vol-
Genie dit Christianisme (Chateaubriand) - Gonzaga, Francesco - 62 kerkunde und Vorgeschichte - 238
218 Gonzaga, Giovan Francesco II - 52 Hamilton, Emma Lyon - 120
Genoa - 103, 130, 183; Brignole-Sale Gonzaga, Rodomonte - 57 Hamilton, Gavin - 112, 166
collection - 103; Museo Civico - 103; Gonzaga, Cardinal Silvio Valenti - 46, Hamilton, Sir William - 120, 150
Oratorio di San Filippo - 181; Pa- 133 Han Dynasty - 23, 26
lazzo Bianco - 271 ; Palazzo Rosso - Gonzaga, Yespasiano - 57, 58 Hansen, Theophil - 227
103 Gonzaga, Vicenzo II - 92, 104 Hapsburgs (see also Margaret of Aus-
Geoff rin, Madame - 112 Gonzaga cabinet - 83, 84, 90, 92, 98 tria) - 72, 73, 78, 101, 188, 227, 228

George II of England - 14" Goodwin, W'.A.R. -256 Hardwick Hall- 120

George III of England - 1 1 Gossaert, Jan (Mabuse) - 80 Harley, Robert (Earl of Oxford) - 147
Germain (Parisian artisan) - 125 Gothic Room (Munich) - 220 Hartford (Connecticut): Wadsworth
Germanicus: - 30; cameo of - 32 Gothic Room (Nuremberg) - 220 Atheneum - 133, 243 (Avery Memo-
Gersaint - 10", lid Gouthiere - 125 rial, Connecticut Historical Society,

Gersaint, I'Enseigne de - 107, 109 Goya, Francesco - 185 Hartford Young Men's Institute,
Getty, Paul - 109 Grammont, Order of - 34 Wallace Nutting Collection - 243)
Ghent Mtarpiece (van Evck) - 80 Grandes Chroniques de France - 37 Harun al-Rashid - 31
Gheyn, Jacob de - 103 Granicus, Battle of - 20 Harvard University - 241, 245
Ghiaceti (d'Adjacet) - 72 Greco, El: Adoration of the Shepherds -
Hasenauer, Carl - 215, 250, 252
Ghiberti - 44 257 Haussmann, Baron - 220
Giacomo da Yignola 64 - Greece, Greeks - 17, 18, 19, 32, 90, Hauterive, Marquis de - 98
Gien (France), Musee de la Chasse a Tir 199, 201, 202 Havre, Musee du - 272
et de la Fauconnene - 271 Greek revival style - 198, 204, 21 1, 252 Havdon, Benjamin Robert - 201, 202;
Gilles (Watteau) - 193 Creek Slave (Powers) - 243 Horse of Selene - 201
Giocchino - 1 17 Gregory XVI -205 Hazelius, Dr. Artur - 237
Gioconda, I .a (Leonardo) - 64, 276 Grenoble- 181 Hector of Troy - 58
Giordano, Luca (Luca Fapresto) - 86 Grignon, Charles: Portrait of Samuel Heemskerck, Maerten van - 41
Giorgione - 52, 86, 194; (?) Allendale Baker- 109 Hegel - 6
Nativity - 257; Concert Champetre - 98; Grimani, Cardinal Domenico - 141 Heiligenkreuz, Abbey of- 115, 136
Portrait of Gaston de loix - 85 Sleep- ; Grimani, Giovanni - 141 Heimatmuseum - 269
ing I enus - 121; Three Philosophers, Grimani, Marino - 141 Heinecken - 123, 160
The 99, 101 Grimm - 1 12 Heloise and Abelard - 173, 174
Giotto - 1611 Gros, Antoine - 174 Henry VI of England - 37
Giovannangelo da Montorsoli - 47 Grosley, P.J. - 160 HenrvYHI of England -70
Giovanni da Bologna: Apennine 56; - Grottaferrata - 49 Henry II of France - 64, 65, 67, 70, 233
Mercury - 259 Groussaye, chateau at - 116 Henry III of France - 67

288
 2

Henry IV of France - 58, 90, 103 Hundred Years' War - cf War lerusalem, Israeli Museum - 263, 272,
Henry, Patrick - 257 Hunting (Carracci) - 151 273
Hera Argiva, Temple of- 12 Joanna of Aragon, Portrait of (Raphael) -

Heraclius - 37 ICOM - cf International Council of 64

Herbouville, d' - 183 Museums Johann Wilhelm - 159, 162
Herculaneum - 1 17, 163, 164, 185; Por- Idea dell' architettura universale (Scamozzi) |ohn of Saxony Prince - 222 ;

tici - 164, 165, 185 - 130 John the Baptist (Leonardo) - 64, 98
Hercules - 41 Ihnes (architect) - 196 John (Raphael) - 58
the Baptist
Hercules (statue) - 49 Iliad, The - 20, 58 John the Good of France - 105
Hercules Commodus - 64 Imam-Reza - 34 John the Good, Portrait of- 101
Hermitage - cf Leningrad imitations - cf forgeries, copies Jones, Iriigo, 90
Herodas - 12 Imperato, Ferrante - 55 Jordaens, Jacob - 183
Herodotus - 15,207 Industrial Revolution - 235 Joseph Emperor
II, - 78, 158, 162
Hertford, Marquis of- 193, 234 Ingres: Apotheosis of Homer - 199 losephine, Empress 186 -

Herzogenburg - 1 15 Inguinbert, Monsignor d' - 141 Jourdan, Marshal - 188

Hesse, Landgrave of- 160, 186, 188 Innocent VIII, Pope - 49, 130, 167 Julienne, Jean de - 107, 135
Hesse-Cassel, Prince of- 120 Innsbruck - 73 Julius II, Pope (Giuliano della Rovere) -

Hien-ti, Emperor - 26 International Council of Museums 47,49,51,55,65,70

bieropoei - 1 (ICOM) - 267 Juno, Temple of (Rome) - 20
Hildesheim - 32 International Office of Museums - 267 Jupiter - 30, 165; Temple of (Rome) - 20;
Histoire amoureuse des Gaules - 1 04 inventories (see also catalogs) - Ambras — Capitolinus, Temple of- 23
Histoire de France (Michelet) - 221 Castle 74 Charles I of England - 90
- ; Justus of Ghent ( Joos van Wassenhove)
Historia Naturalis (Pliny) - 62 Charles V of France - 35; Charles VI -51
Hitler - 74, 222 Emperor - 123
155, 158; Dresden - Juvenal - 17
Hobbema - 194 Fontainebleau - 67; Gaignieres - 105
Hoefnagel, Joris - 76 Hermitage - 125, 126; Jabach - 98 Kabinett - 87
Hoey, Jean de - 90 Mazarin - 92, 95, 103; Medici - 44, Kahn, Louis - 245
Hofburg - cf Vienna 162; Nevers family - 99; Richelieu - Kammer - 72, 87
Hoffmann of Nuremberg - 76 92; Shoso-in - 35; Stallburg - 158 Kassel- 160, 184, 186
Hogarth, William - 120, 245 Ionesco - 245 Kaulbach, Wilhelm von - 199
Holbein the Elder, Hans: Portrait of Iran - 34, 210 Kaunitz, Chancellor Wenzel Anton von
Bonifacius Amerbach - 147 Isenheim Altar (Griinewald) - 218 ,
- 157, 159

Holbein the Younger, Hans - 98, 144; Islam, shrines in - 34 Keller family - 64
Portrait of the Duke de Berry - 39 Itinerarium Gal/iae - 89 Kepler, Johannes - 75
Holy Family, The (Raphael)"- 64, 1 17 Ivory Binding for a New Testament - 30 Kerch, archeological museum - 222
Holy Family, The (Rembrandt) - 112 Kermesse (Rubens) - 98
Homer - 15 Khorsabad - 209; Sargon's palace - 207
Homer, Winslow - 250 Jabach, Evrard - 83, 84, 85, 92, 95, 98 Khosrau I, Sassanide king - 32
Homo, Leon - 19 Jabach and his Family, Portrait of (Le Kimball, Fiske - 254
Hoppner, John - 225 .Brun)-95 Kircher, Athanasius - 86
Horace- 17, 19 lacobsen, Karl - 258 Klenze, Leo von - 15, 126, 198, 199,214,
Horatii, The Oath of the (David) - 216 James I of England - 37 259 Water Color for the Hall of Italian
;

Houghton Hall (Norfolk, England) - 1 15 (ames of England - 145

II Works -212; Water Colorfor the Dutch
Howard, Sir Henry - 65 Jamnitzer, Wenzel: Nautilus - 72 Gallery - 213
Howard, Thomas - cf Arundel, Earl of lapan, collecting in - 23, 26, 34 Knight, Payne -120, 201
Howard Castle - 67 larves, (ames Jackson - 249 Koenigsmark - 76, 78
Hradcany Castle - cf Prague Jayne, Horace H.F. - 252 Komyo, Empress - 34
Hsien-Yang, Palace at - 26 jean, Duke of Berry - 37, 39 Koninklijk Museum - cf Amsterdam
Hsuan-ho, palace - 23 Jean, Duke of Berry, Portrait of (Holbein) Korai (Acropolis) - 15
Hsudn-ho-hua-p'u - 23 -39 Krahe, Lambert - 160
Hsuan-tsung, Emperor - 26 Jefferson, Thomas - 241, 245, 256, 257, Kremlin Museum - 73
Huis ten Bosch - 184 259, 272 Kremsmiinster - 115
Hui-tsung, Emperor - 23 Jena -186, 188,226 Kress, Samuel H. - 257, 259
Humboldt, Wilhelm von - 195 lenkins, Thomas - 166 Kriiger collection - 213

289

i
Kunst und Alter turn - 263 LeoX, Pope -51, 55, 58, 64,90 House - 120; Dilettanti, Society of
Kuvunjik - 209 Leo X, Portrait ^/(Raphael) - 58 the - 120, 201,202; Elgin's Museum -

Kyoto - 29, 34 Leochares - 47 201 ; National Gallery - 63, 64, 70, 72,
Leonardo da Vinci - 57, 63, 101, 269; 110, 112, 209, 210, 21 1, 212, 213, 221,
Laborde, Alexandre Louis Joseph - 225 Gioconda, La - 64, 276; John the 263, 274 National Museum of Science
;

Baptist - 64, 98 Leda - 64 Madonna of and History - 232; Royal Academy of

La Bruyere, lean: Caracteres - 99 ; ;

Lacabax - 226 the Rocks - 63 Madonna of the Spindles -

; Arts - 120, 163, 201, 21 1 South Ken- ;

Lafaille, Clement - 137, 142 63; Saint Anne -64,70,92 sington Museum (Natural History) -
La Fontaine - 173 Leopold II, Emperor - 188 232, 263 Tate Gallery -218; Victoria
;

Lagash - 209 Leopold I, Grand Duke - 160, 162, 163 & Albert Museum - 30, 230, 232, 233
La Mothe, Vallin de - 125 Leopold II, Grand Duke - 205 {First Refreshment Room, Stannur -
Lamy - 220 Leopold-Wilhelm, Archduke - 84, 87, 232); Wallace Collection - 193, 234
Lancret, Nicolas - 121 89,99, 101, 135, 158 (Sotheby Collection - 109) Whitehall ;

Lanfranco - 86 Lepicie, Michel Nicolas Bernard - 153 -90, 142

Langlois, Jean-Charles: Battle of Nava- Le Roy - 121 Longobardi - 31
rino 225
- Le Sueur, Eustache - 154 Lopez, Alfonso - 84
Lanzi, Luigi 162, 163
- Leucippus, The Rape of the Daughters of Loreto - 260
Laocoon - 20, 49, 64, 169 (Rubens)- 121 Lorrain, Claude - cf Claude Lorrain
"lapidary" museums in France - 218 Leyden, Lucas van - 57, 90 Lorraine - cf Christine of Lorraine
Laplace - 151 Liancourt, duke of- 85 Lorsch (Germany) - 30
La Rochelle - 137; Academie - 142 Liang K'ai - 26 Los Angeles (California) County Mu-
Lascaux - 276 prehistoric painting - 274
;
Library Company (Philadelphia) - 241, seum - 242, 261 Ahmanson Gallery, ;

La Tour, Maurice Quentin de - 142 242 Leo S. Bing Center, Lytton Gallery -
Latour-Allard collection - 210 Library Society of Charleston - 241 261
Lawrence, Sir Thomas 225; - 211, Ligozzi, Jacopo - 61 ; South American Louis VII of France - 32
Portrait of John Julius Anser stein and Rat - 65 Louis IX of France (Saint Louis) - 31,
his Wife - 221 Lille- 180 32, 226; "diamond" of Saint Louis -
Lavard, Austen Henry - 209 Limbourg, Brothers of- 37 37
Lebrun- 107 Limoges, Bishop of - 34 Louis XII of France - 63, 98
Lebrun, Mme Vigee - cf Vigee-Lebrun Lincoln, Abraham - 248, 260 Louis XIII of France - 84, 92, 103, 104,
Le Brun, Charles - 87, 95, 98 Lindus, Temple of Athena - 14 130
Lechi, General - 183 Linnaeus (Karl von Linne) - 235 Louis XIV of France - 34, 35, 49, 63, 64,
Le Comte, Florent - 63 Lippi, Fra Filippo - 57 83, 89, 90, 92, 95, 98, 105, 116, 130,
Leda (Leonardo) - 64 Li Tai Po - 26 150, 153, 156,215
Leda (II Rosso) - 63, 64 Litoux, Mile- 129 Louis XIV style - 137

Leda and the Swan (copy after Michel- Lives of the Most Excellent .Architects, Louis XV of France - 34, 65, 136, 150,
angelo) - 63 Painters and Sculptors (Vasari) - 56, 1 62 153, 154, 176,233
Ledebur, Leopold von - 195 Li via, Empress - 19 Louis XVI of France - 110, 153, 154
Lefuel, Hector-Martin - 156, 215 I .ivingston, Chancellor - 243, 245 155, 176, 183,233
Leipzig, 84 Livy - 43 Louis XVIII of France (Monsieur) -
Leland, lohn -70 Lodoli, Father - 160 155,173, 185,204,205,216
Le Mans- KM, 105, 18(1 Lodoviso Ares - 89 "Louis-philippard" style - 193, 198, 214
Le Nain - 85 Lombardi-Baldi collection - 213 Louis-Philippe of France - 56, 103, 193,
Lenin - 269 London - 83, 85, 92, 108, 109, 1 10, 1 12, 216,222,225,226,227
Leningrad (Saint Petersburg) - 1 12, 120, 115, 118, 120, 124, 195, 196, 202; Louis (Ludwig) I of Bavaria - 37, 198,
260, 269; Hermitage - 91, 112, 114, Apsley House, Wellington Museum - 199,201,202,214,218
123, 124, 125, 126, 135, 214, 215, 216, 188, 190; Arundel House - 90, 131 ;
Louis II de Bourbon - 173
224, 252, 260, 269, 274 (Drawings British Museum - 37, 115, 120, 147, Louvre in Ruins (Robert) - 172

Cabinet - 212, 213; Rembrandt room 148, 149, 150, 191, 198, 201, 202, 207, Louvre Museum - cf Paris
-211); Winter Palace (Palais d'Hiver) 209, 210, 211, 212, 215, 216, 249 Lowell, Guy - 250
- 125, 126, 215, 224, 225 (Gallery of (Department of Natural and Artifi- Lucian - 44
War Heroes - 226) Productions - 147, 150; founding
cial Ludovica, Anna Maria - cf Medici,
Lenoir, Alexandre - 173, 174, 221, 228, of- 147; Montague House- 147, 198) Anna Maria Ludovica d'

255 Crystal Palace - 230, 232 Devonshire ; Ludovisi, Cardinal - 101

290
 1 5 6 4 ,

Ludovisi family - 98 Margaret of Austria - 72 Medici, Cosimo 1 de' (the Great) - 56,
Lute Player (Caravaggio) - 185 Marguerite of Luxembourg - 271 58,60,61,64, 160
Lyceum - cf Athens Maria of Hungary - 80 Medici, Cosimo II de' - 61, 131
Lyons (France) - 180, 181 ; School for Maria Theresa, Empress - 158, 181, 227 Medici, Cosimo III de' - 105, 162
history painting - 220; Musee histo- Marie Louise of Austria - 180 Medici, Ferdinand I de' - 58, 65, 103
rique des Tissus - 234 Mariette, Jean Pierre - 63, 1 10 Medici, Ferdinand II de' - 131
Lysippus - 19, 20 Marignano - 63 Medici, Francesco I de' - 56, 58, 60, 65
Marignv, Marquis of- 153 Medici, Giovanni Gastone de' - 162
iMcKim, Meade and White - 247 Marigny, de (Count of Thiers) - 1 1 Medici, Cardinal Leopoldo de' - 103,
Mabillon- 173 Marlborough, Duke of- 89 105, 162
Mabuse - cf Jan Gossaert Marolles, Abbot of- 99 Medici, Lorenzo de' (the Magnificent) -

Madhia- 11,17 Maron, Signora - 124 43,44,46,52,58,60, 130

Madonna da Montefeltro (Piero della Marquetry Commode (Gaudreau) - 192 Medici, Lorenzo II de' - 64
Francesca) - 181 Marriage at Cana (Veronese) - 1 1 Medici, Marie de' - 58, 92
Madonna della Sedia (Raphael) - 58, 129 Marriage of the Virgin (Sposali-^io) (Ra- Medici, Marie de' ; Portrait <?/'(Pourbus
Madonna of the Innocents (Rubens) - 98 phael) - 183 the Younger) - 103
Madonna of the Rabbit (Titian) - 1 5 Marseilles - 87, 133, 180, 181, 201 Medici, Piero de' (Peter the Goutv) - 44
Madonna of the Rocks (Leonardo) - 63 Marsigli, Count - 144 46
Madonna of the Rosary (Caravaggio) - 1 54 Marsyas - 41 Medici chapel - cf Florence, San Lo-
Madonna of the Rosary (Diirer) - 75 Martelli family - 44 renzo
Madonna of the Spindles (Leonardo) - 63 Martial - 17 Medici collections -44, 60, 61, 131, 162,
Madonna with a Candle (Crivelli) - 1 74 Martini, Simone: Christ Carrying the 163, 166, 190
Madrid - 74, 78, 86, 89, 90, 101, 184, Cross - 1 93 Medici family - 44, 58, 60
1 88 Alcazar - 80 Buena Vista Palace
; ; Martyn, Thomas - 120 Medici Gallery - cf Paris, Palais du
- 184; Escorial - 78, 79; Prado Mu- Martyrdom ofSaint Lievin (Rubens) -154, Luxembourg
seum - 78, 80, 98, 185, 255, 269 183 Medici Villa - cf Rome
Maffei, Francesco Scipione di - 142, 144 Martyrdom of the 10,000 Christians (Dii- Meissen, Albrechtsburg castle - 121
Magi, Adoration of the (Diirer) - 163 rer) 75-
'
Melgounov, General - 222
Maine, Lacroix du - 72 Mary of Burgundy - 188 Melk - 115
Mainz- 180, 186 Massimo collections 166
- Mellon, Andrew W. - 252, 259
Malle Babbe (Hals) - 247 Massouma-Ghom - 34 Mellon, Paul - 245
Mamum, caliph - 34 Massys, Quentin - 80, 135 Melos, island of - 204
Manchester - 234 Mathematischer Turm - 1 1 Memoires (Anne-Marie- Louise d'Or-
Mancini, Antonio - 39 Matisse, Henri - 171, 265 leans) - 131
Mancini, Giulio; Consideration sulla Mattei collection - 166 Memoires (de Brienne) - 85
pittura 86 - Matthias, king of Hungary and Bohe- Memoires secrets (Bachaumont) - 1 14
Mancini, Maria - 104 mia - 75 Memorial de Sainte He'lene (Napoleon
Manet, Edouard - 250 Maulbertsch - 159 Bonaparte) - 225
Mannheim collections - 120 Max Emanuel, Elector - 101, 120, 123 Mengs, Raphael - 124, 147, 165, 167
Mansard, Francois - 130 Maximilian I (uncrowned emperor) - Meninas, Las (Picasso, after Velazquez)
Mansart (architect) - 95 188 -269
Mantegna, Andrea - 43, 52, 57, 92, 160; Maximilian I, Duke - 101 Menou, General - 191
Triumphs - 83, 90 Maximilian of Bavaria - 76, 214, 221 Merari^lied'arte (Ridolfi brothers) - 87
Mantua - 43, 52, 57, 83 ; Palazzo del Te -
Mazarin, Cardinal - 84, 85, 92, 95, 98, Mercier, L.S. - 158
105 103, 104, 130, 133 Mercury (Giovanni da Bologna) - 259
Mantua, Duke of - 86, 117 (see also Mazarin ; Cardinal — in his Town House Merelles - 16 1

Gonzaga) -95 Me'rode Altarpiece (Master of Flemalle) -

Man with a Glove (Titian) 98 - Mechel, Chretien de - 157, 159 247, 256
Man with a Gold Chain (Rembrandt) - Mecklenburg - 78 Meshed (Iran) - 34
154 Medici, Alessandro de' - 58 Mesopotamia - 207, 209
Maratta, Carlo - 131 Medici, Anna Maria Ludovica de' - 162, Messel, Alfred - 196
Metamorphoses (Ovid) - 62
Marchionni, Carlo - 167 190
Marcius Philippus, Portico of- 20 Medici, Catherine de' - 65, 67, 70, 130 Metropolitan Museum - cf New York
Marco d'Oggione - 183 Medici, Cosimo the Elder - 44, 46, 58 Metternich, Prince von - 194

291
Metternich, Count - 270 Mont Saint Michel 34 - Mycenae - 210

Metullus - 20, 58; Portico of - 20 Monuments historicjues, Commission Myron 20 -

Metz, cathedral of- 31 de-218 Mytens, Daniel - 131

Metz, Guillebert de - 39 Monza, Cathedral of- 29, 31
Meudon, chateau at - 64 Moretto da Brescia - 183 Nancy (France) - 180
Mexican mask in turquoise mosaic - 207 Morgan, J. Pierpont - 243, 247, 249, 257 Nantes (France) - 180
Michaux, Andre - 205 Morison, Colin - 1 12 Naples - 117, 120, 144, 163, 165, 166,
Michaux stone - 205, 207 Moscow Kremlin Museum
:
- 123; Rus- 185; Galleria Nazionale di Capodi-
Michelangelo - 41, 47, 57, 64, 166, 235, sian National Museum - 1 14 monte (formerly Palazzo Reale di
238, 274; Slaves - 65, 70, 92; Leda and Mosson cf Bonnier de
- la Mosson Capodimonte) - 163, 165, 271 Museo ;

the Swan (copv) - 63 Mosul - 207,209 borbonico - 144, 163; Museo Nazio-
Michelet, Jules - 74, 221 1 Mount Vernon - 272 nale - 44, 51, 165, 185; Reggia - 163
Michelozzo - 58 Mouseion of Alexandria - 16, 153 Naples Museum, Transport of Antiques
Mignard: Nicolas, Paul, Pierre - 104 Mshatta, Arabian palace at - 196 from the Portici Museum to the -

Milan - 64, 73, 75, 76; Academy - 181 Mumford, Lewis - 6, 277 (Desprez) - 164
Biblioteca Ambrosiana - 103, 141; Mummius - 16 Napoleon Bonaparte - 74, 76, 174, 176,
Castello Sforzesco - 271 ; Mostra di Munich (Germany) -72, 76, 78, 101,120, 180, 181, 184, 185, 186, 188, 190, 191,
Leonardo da Vinci - 269; Pinacoteca
135, 198; Alte Pinakothek - 15, 123, 198, 204, 215, 222, 224, 225, 226
di Brera (formerly Santa Maria di 187, 199, 215; Bayerisches National- [Napoleon] Bonaparte showing the Apollo
Brera) - 174, 181, 183, 185, 186, 271 Museum - 220,' 221, 222, 263; Belvedere to his Deputies - 1 69
Miletus, market place - 196 Deutsches Museum - 269; Feld- Napoleon III - 215, 216, 220, 227, 228,
Miller, Oskar von - 269 herrenhalle 198; Glyptothek - 198,
- 230
Millet -245 199, 201, 259; Kdnigsplatz - 199; Napoleonic museums - 224, 225

Mineralienkabinett - 87 Modern Museum - 218; Neue Pina- Nara, Shoso-in (in Todaiji monastery) -
Mirabilia urbis Romae - 41 kothek - 199; Residenz - 72, 130, 198 29, 34, 35
Miracles of St. Francis Xarier (Rubens) - (Antiquarium - 74, 130); Ruhmes- National Gallery - cf London
154 halle - 19 c); Secession Palace - 199; National Gallery of Art - cf Washington
Miseron, Husebius 76- Siegestor -198; Staatsbibliothek - 1 98 Naturalienkabinett - 87
Mistral, Frederic - 238 Munnich, Count Finest - 125 Natural History (Aldrovandi) - 62
Mithridates - 18 Murat, [oachim - 185 natural history cabinets - 55, 74, 76, 137,
Mnesicles - 14 Murillo, Bartolome 121, 184, 190 - 139, 142,241
Modena 123 Musaeum Tradescantianum - 144 Nautilus (Jamnitzer) - 72
Mohammed - 34 musarum ailtor - 70 Navarete - 184
Monte - 174 musee his tori que - 104 Navarino, Battle o/~(Langlois)- 225

Molajoli, Bruno - 271 Museo borbonico - 144 Negroponte, Giorgio 52 -

Moliere- 173 Museographia (Neickel) - 1 15 Neickel, Caspar F. - 115, 116

Mona Lisa ciGioconda, La
- Museo Mediceo - 58 Nelson, Horatio - 120
Monge, ( raspard 174 - museo naturale - 62 Neptune, Temple of - 51
Montague House cf London, - British Muse ii in central des arts et des sciences Neri, Cardinal - 166
Museum (Diderot) - 169 Nero - 19; Domus Aureus - 19, 20, 49
Montaiglon - Id 1 museum, derivation of word - 16 Nettuno (Anzio) - 47, 49
Montaigne 61, 65 - museum, first public in France - 141, — Nevers family - 99
Montboissier, Cardinal Claude Francois 143 New Haven (Connecticut), Yale Uni-
de- 133 museum attendance - 274, 276 versity - 245, 249
Montefeltro, Duke Federico da - 51, 63 museum organizations and associations New York City: American Academy of
Montespan, Madame de - 105 -267 Fine Arts - 243 Armory Show (1913)
;

Montfaucon, Bernard de - 105, 173 museum services - 274 - 247 Cooper Union - 247 Guggen-
; ;

Monthelon, Antoine Ferrand de - 142 museum jovianum - cf Como and Paolo heim Museum - 267, 272; Metropoli-
Monticelli245 -
Giovio tan Museum of Art -12,1 33, 243, 245,
Monticello 272 - museums, folklore - 235-238 247, 248, 249, 250, 257, 265, 273
Montign) Grandjean de - 184
, museums, open-air - 237, 238 (American Wing - 252, 254 Bolles ;

Montmorency, Duke of- 92 museums of decorative arts - 233 Collection, Wentworth House - 254 ;

Montmorency family -
6" museums of natural history - 62 Cesnola collection - 248; The Clois-
Montpellier - 181 museums of science - 86 ters - 4, 9, 247, 255, 256); Morgan

292
 ; -;

Library - 245; Museum of Modern Onatos of Aegina - 15 nal - 32, 55, 89, 92, 99, 130, 151, 170,
Art -241, 252, 265; Whitney Museum open-air museums - 236, 237, 238 207 (Cabinet des Etampes - 99; Cabi-
of American Art - 261 Wildenstein ; Opusculum de mirabilibus novae et veteris net of Medallions - 116, 205); Champ
Collection - 164 World's Fair (1853)
; I 'rb/s Romae (Albertini) - 52 de Mars - 174; College de France - 16;
-247 Orbis Romanus - 72 Couvent des Capucins - 170; Couvent
Niccoli, Niccolo de - 44 Orlandi, Antonio - 10 1 des Cordeliers - 170; Couvent des
Niccolo da Tolentino at the Rattle of San Orleans, Anne-Marie-Louise d' - 130 Genofains - 116; Couvent des Grands
Romano (Uccello) - 213 Orleans, Louis d' - 116 Augustins - 169, 170, 173; Couvent
Nicholas I, Czar -126, 214,215 Orleans, Louis Philippe d' (Philippe des Grands Jesuites - 170; Couvent
Nicholas II, Czar - 215 Egalite)- 110 des Petis Augustins - 169, 170, 173,
Nicolas V, Pope (Tommaso Parentu- Orleans, Philippe d' (Regent of France) 174; Couvent de Saint Martin des
celli) - 46 -78, 118, 124, 150, 166, 194 Champs - 169; Ecole des Beaux Arts -

Night Watch (Rembrandt) - 183, 184 Orsini, Cardinal Giordano - 41 176; Elysium (Lenoir's Museum) -
Nike (from Samothrace) - 204 Orti orice liarii - 52 173, 174, 221 Grand
Palais (Picasso
;

Nikeratos of Pergamum - 19 Oslo (Norway): Bygd</>y, stavkerk in exhibition) 277; Hotel Bullion,
-

Nikias- 19,20 open-air museum - 236, 237; Norsk auctions at - 107; Hotel Bretonvil-
Nikolayev, archeological museum - 222 Folkemuseum - 194, 195, 237 liers - 130; Hotel d'Alligre, auctions
Nik (sculpture) - 49, 51 Otto I of Bavaria- 198 at - 107; Hotel de Cluny - 221, 222,
Nimrud - cf Calah Ottoman art - 228 232; Hotel de la Vrilliere - 130, 131
Nineveh - 207 Ovid -43,62 Hotel de Lignieres - 130; Hotel de la
Niobids (statuary group) - 58, 162 Oxford (England) - 145; Ashmolean Marine- 156; Hotel de Lambert- 130;
Nizzoli collection - 205 Museum - 141, 144, 145, 198 (Regu- Hotel de Nesles -170; Hotel des Inva-
Nollekens - 166 lations of- 145); Bodleian Library - lides - 154; Hotel Mazarin (galerie
Norblin - 220 257; Old Logic School, Old Philo- mazarine) - 130, 131 Hotel Tubeuf ;

Norsk Folkemuseum - 237 sophy School, Sheldonian Theatre - 130; Jardin des Plantes - 169; feu de
Northumberland, Duke of- 63 145 Paume - 270; Louvre Museum, see
Nota delli Musei, galerie e ornament i di Oxford, Earl of- cf Harley, Robert below; Lycee Henri IV (Abbey of
Statue e pit tare ne'palasgj e ne'giardini Saint Genevieve) - 137; Malmaison -
di Roma - 89 Pach, Walter - 245 186; Musee de Cluny - 221; Musee
Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres et des Paestum - 12 de l'Armee - 73 Musee de l'Homme -
;

Arts (de Blancherie) - 156

la Palermo, Galleria Nazionale della Sici- 67, 238; Musee des Antiquites Natio-
Noyer, des - 63 lia - 271 , nales - 228; Musee des Arts Decora-
Novon, Cathedral of - 31 Palissy, Bernard - 70 tifs - 232; Musee des Beaux Arts de

Number I (Pollock) -241 Pallavicini gallery - 103 la Ville de Paris (Petit Palais) - 255;

Nuremberg - 73, 188, 228; Germa- Palma di Cesnola - cf Cesnola Musee des Invalides - 74; Musee des
nisches National-Museum - 220, 222 Palomino - 87 Monuments Francois - 169, 173*228;
Nutting, Wallace - 243 Pannini, Giovanni Paolo - 131, 133; Musee d'Histoire Naturale - 169;
Nymph (Cellini) - 65 Interior of St. Peter's - 133; Square Musee Guimet - 22; Musee Jacque-
Nys, Daniel - 83, 84 before St. Peter's - 1 33 mart- Andre - 276; Musee Napoleon
panoramas - 225; Army at Boulogne (Musee Central des Arts) - 176, 177,
Observations sur I'ltalie et les Italiennes (Paris), Battle of Trafalgar (London), 184, 185, 193, 194, 224; Museum
(Grosley) - 160 Encounter at Tilsit (Paris), Naval National - 169; Palais des Rois de
Octavia, Portico of- 20 Aboukir (London)
Battle at France, Sainte-Chapelle - 31, 32;
Odescalchi collection - 166 Pardo Venus (Titian) - 98, 151 Palais du Luxembourg - 87, 92, 1 17,
Odescalchi family - 78 Parentucelli, Tommaso - cf Nicolas V, 150, 151, 156, 199, 216 (Medici Gal-
Odessa, archeological museum - 222 Pope lery - 150, 155); Palais Royal (Palais

Oiron: Benedictine collection at - 105; Paris- 34, 56, 74, 84, 101, 104, 107, 108, Cardinal) -92, 103, 110, 118, 135, 156,
chateau at - 101 110, 112, 114, 124, 151, 158, 169, 176, 157, 194; Pere la Chaise - 174; Tuile-
Olivares - 101 180, 181, 183, 190, 191, 194, 195, 196, nes - 108, 130, 151, 172, 180 (Galerie
Olivieri,Annibale - 141 247;Abbey of Saint Denis - 173, 221 des Ambassadeurs - 151)
Olsen, Bernhard - 237 Academie d' Architecture - 155, 172; Paris : Louvre Museum - 12, 32, 51, 63,
Olympia - 17 Temple of Zeus
; - 204 Academy of Painting and Sculpture - 64, 65, 70, 83, 87, 90, 92, 95, 98, 101,
Ombre du Grand Colbert, le Louvre et la 110, 117, 155, 174; Archives Natio- 103, 105, 130, 133, 151, 153, 154, 155,
Ville de Paris, L' (Saint Yenne) - 151 nal - 154, 177; Bibliotheque Natio- 169, 171, 172, 176, 177, 180, 185, 186,

293
 188, 193, 195, 198, 199, 201, 202, 204, Pembroke, Earl of- 166 Pietro della Vecchia - 86
205, 207, 215, 216, 218, 221, 227, 249, Percier, Charles - 176, 198, 199 Pigafetta, Filippo - 58
263, 265, 270, 273; Apollo Gallery - Pereira, William L. - 261 pinakothekai, definition of - 14
103, 130; Assyrian Museum - 207, Pergamum, Pergameniens - 6, 14, 15, Pinakotheke, Alte - cf Munich
209; Cabinet of Medals - 116, 153; 16; Altar of - 196; Canon of - 15; Pio, Cardinal Carlo - 167
Colonnade - Cour du
156, 209, 228; library of- 15; sanctuary of Athena -
Piraeus - 17, 201
Carrousel - 198; Departement des 14 Pisa- 187;Duomo-41,42
Objets d'Art - 220; Direction des period rooms and reconstructions - 250, Pisanello - 37, 43
M usees de France - 274; Ecole du 252, 254, 255, 256, 257 Pisano, Giovanni - 41 The Cardinal ;

Louvre - 129, 274; Egyptian collec- Shah of - 76

Persia, 1 Temperance - 42; Tomb of the
irtnes:

tions - 205, 207; Grande Galerie - Perugino - 57, 92 Empress Marguerite (fragment) - 271
130, 154, 156, 171, 172, 174, 180; Pesaro - 141 Pisano, Niccolo - 41, 42
Musee Americain (Musee Mexicain) - Peter the Great of Russia - 1 1 2, 1 25, 222 Pitti Palace - cf Florence
210; Musee Carnayalet - 220; Musee Peterhof, palace at - 104, 135 Pius II, Pope (Enea Silvio de Piccolo-
Charles X - 198, 199; Musee des Sou- Petrarch -41, 51 mini) - 46
verains 228; Natural History Cabi-
- Petronius - 20 Pius VI, Pope (Giovanni Braschi) - 1 66,
net - 153; Paintings Department - Petropolis (Brazil) - 272 167
215; Pavilion de Flore - 274; Pavilion Petrus Christus: Portrait of a Young Pius VII, Pope - 225
de Marsan - 234; Royal Library - 53 1 Woman - 216 (?) St. Jerome - 44 ; Pius IX, Pope -216
Salle Clarac - 199; Salon Carre - 107, Phidias - 12, 15, 23, 201 Horse drawing ; Place, Victor - 209
155, 171, 172, 180, 215, 247 (Cour the Chariot of Selene - 201 Plaisance, Convent of Saint Sixtus - 1 1

Carre - 272); Salon Carre, Castiglione Phigalia, Temple of Apollo Epicurius - Plato - 5
-218 202 Pliny - 16, 19,44,62
Parma - 163, 186; Conyent of Saint Philadelphia (Pennsylvania): American Plotinus - 6
Sixtus - 1 14; Museum of Antiquities Museum - 241, 242; American Philo- Poccetti, Bernardino - 61
- 144 sophical Society 241 Library Com- - ; Poggio-49, 130
Parnassus (Mengs) - 167 pany - 241, 242; Peak's Museum - Poitiers - cf Diane de Poitiers

Parthenon - cf Athens 242; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Poitou - 92

Parthenon, copy near Regensburg - 199 Arts - 243; Philadelphia Museum of Poliakov (architect) - 224
Parthenon marbles - 201, 202 Art (formerly Pennsylvania Museum Polignac, Princess de - 133
Passion, The (Rembrandt) - 120 of Art) - 247', 248, 249, 250, 252, 254, Pollio, Gaius Asinius - 20
Pater, )ean Baptiste Francois - 121 256 (Wilstach collection- 250) Pollock, Jackson: Number I - 241
Pater, Walter 250 - Philip of Spain -79, 8(1
11 Polybius - 6
Patinir, |oachim - 80 Philip.IVof Spain -86, 98, 101, 163 Polygnotos - 14, 15, 20
Paul II, Pope (Pietro Barbo) - 44, 46 Philip V of Spain - 163 Muse - 142, 147
Polyhymnia, the
Paul III, Pope (Alessandro Farnese) - Philip, Duke of Bourbon - 144 Pommersfelden, castle of- 133
51,73, 163 Philip, Duke of Parma - 114, 144, 186 Pompadour, Madame de - 176
Paul I of Russia- 126 Philoctetes - 41 Pompeii - 117, 163, 185; House of the
Pausanias 12, 14, 15, 16, 44 Philosopher, I 'he (Rembrandt) - 154 Cryptoporticus - 20
Pausias - 20 Philostratus - 44 Pompey -18; Portico of - 20
Pavilion under the Trees (Ts'ao Chih-po) - Pibrac, chateau of- 104, 133, 135 Pondre, Paulin - 116
22 Picasso, Pablo 265; Las Meninas (after
- Pontormo - 58
Paxton, Sir Joseph - 232 Velazquez) 269; exhibition at the
- Pope, lohn Russell - 259
Pazzi family - 44 Grand Palais - 277 porcelain collections - 137
Peabody, George - 243 Picault- 117 porcelain manufacture - 60, 121
Peabody Museum of Salem - 243 Piccinino - 73 Portici - cf Herculaneum
Peak, Charles Willson - 242 Piccolomini family - 46 portraits, portraiture - 39, 67, 103, 104,
Peale family (Raphaelle, Rembrandt, Pichon, Baron - 37 105, 139,230
Rubens, Titian) - 242 Piero della Francesca: Madonna da Mon- Portrait of a Man (Titian) - 151
Pcalc's Museum - 242 te fe/tro - 1 8 Portrait of a Young Woman (Petrus
Peinlre Grarure (Bartsch) - 1 10 Piero di Cosimo - 58 Christus) - 216
Pciresc, Nicolas Claude Fabri de - 87, Pietii (Bellini) - 181 Portrait of Leo X (Raphael) - 58
104, 116 Pietrasanti, [acopo di - 167 Pourbus the Younger, Frans - 104;
Peking - 23 Pietro da Cortona - 86, 103, 131 Portrait of Marie de Medici - 1 03

294
 1 5 1

Pour traits ct vie des Hommes illustres Rainaldi, Girolamo - 166 Renieri, Nicolo - 86
(Thevet) - 67 Raphael - 51, 57, 85, 86, 101, 160, 172; Rennes- 180
Poussin, Nicolas - 85, 89, 98, [03, 121, Acts of the Apostles, The - 90; Alba Renoir, August - 256; Madame Char-
131; Four Seasons - 87; Martyrdom Madonna - 260; Foligno Madonna - mid her Children - 250, 25 7
pentier

of Saint Francis Xavier - 131; Seven 176; Holy Family, The - 64, 117; Renwick, James - 245
Sacraments 103; enus- 8 - I
(
>
John the Baptist - 58 ; Madonna della Residenz - cf Munich
Powers, Hiram - 243, 245 Greek Slave ;
- Sedia (or Seggiola) - 58, 129 ; Parnassus restorations, repairs (see also "com-
243 (copy) - 116; Portrait of Baldassare pletions" - 18, 19, 65, 89, 116, IP,
Pozzo, Cassiano del - 63, 103 Castiglione - 85, 151 ; Portrait of 118, 176
Prado Museum - cf Madrid A
Joanna of ragon - 64 Portrait of Leo ; X Revoil, Pierre - 220
Prague - 75, 78, 83, 84, 101, 194; - 58 Saint George - 98 Saint Margaret
; ; Revolution, French - cf Wars
Hradcany Castle 75, 76, 78, 166; - - 65 Saint Michael - 64, 65, 98, 117,
; Reynolds, Sir Joshua - 63, 1 10, 120
Mala Strana - 76 260; School of Athens (copy) - 116; Revnst brothers of Amsterdam - 83
Pratolino - 56 Sis tine Madonna - 1 14, 1 18, 123 Sposa- ; Rheims: Academie de Rheims, Mu-
Praxiteles - 11, 15 li^io or Marriage of the I 'irgiri) - 183; seum - 142
Prenner, Anton von - 15S 1 "irgin - 65 Ribalto, Juan - 184
Pre-Raphaelites - 212, 257 Rdritatenkabinett - 87 Ribera - 86
Presentation in the Temple (Titian) - 186 Rassam, Hormuzd - 209 Riccio - 61
Prevost, Pierre - 225 Rauschenberg - 245 Rich, Claudius James - 207
Prexon - 1 Ravenna, San Vitale - 43 Richelieu, Cardinal - 70, 84, 87, 92, 98,
Priam - 58 Rawlinson, Henry - 209 103
prices for art works - 16, 52, 86, 112, Raymond (architect) - 180, 198 Richmond, Duke of -142
114,120,147,193, 194,202,204,207, Reflections on the drawing styles of principal Ricordi (Sabba da Castiglione) - 57
209, 213, 247, 250, 257, 258, 260 painters (Mariette) - 110 Ridolfi brothers: Meraviglie d'arte - 87
Primaticcio, Francesco - 64, 65, 1 16 Reflexions sur quelques causes presentes de Rigaud, Hvacinthe - 112
Princeton (New Jersey), Institute for la peinture en France (Saint Yenne) - Riggs, William H. - 247, 257
Advanced Study - 16 151 Rijksmuseum - cf Amsterdam
Prodomus theatrum artis pictoriae (van Reformation - 65 Riley, "
|ohn: Portrait of Llias Ashmole-
Stampart & von Prenner) - 58 1 Regensburg - 199 141
Project for Lighting the Gallery of the Reichenau - 31 Rittershausen, von - 159
Museum by Means of a 1 'a nit anil for Reims - 34 ; 32 Cathedral - Riviere, Georges-Henri de - 237, 238
Dividing it without Obstructing the long Reinach, Salomon - 263, 265 Riviere, Marquis de - 204
r
I iew (Hubert Robert) - 172 reliquaries - 29, 30, 32 Robbia, della - 61
Proposals for Promoting I rsefui Knowledge Reliquary, A-Shaped - 31, 32 Robert, Hubert - 133, 154, 172, 180;
among the British Plantations in merica . 1 Reliquary, Eltenburg - 230 Main Gallery of the Louvre during
(Benjamin Franklin) - 241 Reliquary of the Three Magi - 30 Restoration,The; Plan for Arranging
Propylaea: 14 copy in Munich - 199; Rembrandt - 85, 86, 183; Aristotle the Main Gallery of the Louvre - 180

Prud'hon, Pierre Paul: Portrait of Baron Contemplating the Bust of Homer - Robertet, Florimond - 63
I "ivant-Denon - 17" 258; David and Jonathan - 124; Robespierre - 174, 176
Prvtaneum - cf Athens H endrickje S toffels - 154; Holy Rocamadour, Abbey of - 31
Ptolemy, Ptolemies - 15, 16, 44 Family, The - 112; Alan with a Gold Rockefeller, |ohn D. 255, 256 |r. - 9,
Public museums, the earliest - 141-143 Chain - 154; Night Watch - 183, 184; Roger of Sicily- 188
II

Pyramids, Battle of the - 191 Passion, The - 120; Philosopher, The - Rogers, |acob S. - 247
Pythagoras of Paros - 1 154; Portrait of the Artist as an Old Rogier van der Weyden - 80; Descent
Man - 98 Saskia (copy) -116; Syndics
; from the Cross (Deposition) - 44, 80
Quadriga, bronze Venice) (in - 32 of the Drapers' Guild - 184; Supper at Roland - 31
Quarenghi (architect) - 124 Emmaus - 154 Tobias, Return of - 211 ;
Roll, Alfred Philippe - 226

Quedlinburg - 32 Rembrandt room in the Hermitage Rolland, Romain

80 -

Queen Thomjris (Rubens) - 98 Museum - 21 Romano, Giovanni Cristoforo - 52, 57

Quintilian - 19 Remi, Saint - 32 Romano, Giulio - 57, 64
Quirites - 19 Remus - 49 Rome (personified) - 72
Remy - 110, 114 Rome, Romans (see also Vatican) - 16,
Raffaello da Brescia, Fra 57 Reni, Guido - 86, 1 31 ; David and Goliath 17, 18, 19, 20, 23, 29, 30, 32, 41, 46,
Raffenstein -124 (copy) - 16 1 52, 57, 78, 83, 85, 86, 103, 112, 1 18,

295
 124, 133, 144, 163, 165, 166, 177; Rubens and ins /////('(exhibition in Brus- St. Michel de Cuxa, Cloister of- [2], 9,
Capitoline Museum - 42, 49, 51, 165, sels) - 273 255, 256
166, 174, 176, 177; Colonna Gallery - Rubens Room, Vienna - 265 St. Peter s, Interior of (Pannini) - 133
Rucellai family 44 Square before (Pannini) - 133
41,49,103, 131 ;Farnese Palace- 130, - St. Peter's,
163, 166; Madonna della Scala - 86; Rucellai, Bernardo - 52 St.Petersburg - cf Leningrad
Mostra Augustea della Romanita - Rudbeck, Ulof-235 Saint Remi - 32
269 Museo delle Terme - 89 Muse*
; ; > Rudolf II, Emperor - 72, 75, 76, 78, 101 Saint Quentin (France) -142
Pigorini - 87; Palazzo dei Conserva- 123, 158, 188 Saint Servin cameo - 67
tor!- 49, 166, 167; Palazzo Venezia - Ruhelust, chateau of- 104 Saint Seurin - 31
46; Pallavicini Gallery - 103; Pan- Ruhmor - 213 Saint Yenne, Lafont de - 151, 171
theon - 135, 259; Porta San Paolo - Ruisdael, |acob - 153, 194; Burst of Salem (Massachusetts): Peabodv Mu-
58; San Pietro in Yincoli - 47, 49; Sunlight (Coup de Sole! I) - 153, 154 seum (formerly p],ast India Marine
Spada Gallery - 103; Villa Albani Ruskin, John - 250, 263 Society) - 243
(Torlonia) - 167; Villa Bonaparte - Russia, excavations in - 125, 222; mu- sales- cf auctions

133; Villa Giulia - 72; Villa Medici -

seums in - 269 Salisbury III, Stephen - 252
58 Rustkammer - 73 Sallust - 43
Romulus - 49 Rv, Simon Louis du - 184 Salt, Henry - 202, 204, 205
Roncevaux, Battle of- 31 Salzburg- 190
Roosevelt, Franklin D. - 260 Samothrace - 204
Roosevelt, Theodore - 272 Sabbioneta - 57, 73; Antiquarium - 57, Sancta Sanctorum, Lateran - 31
Rosa- 158, 159 58; casino del giardino - 57, 58, 130 Sankt Florian - 1 15
Rosalba- 123 Sachetti cabinet - 167 San Lorenzo fuori le Mura - 51
Rosenborg - cf Copenhagen Sadowa, battle of - 228 San Marco, Convent of- cf Florence
Rosetta Stone - 191 Saepta Julia, Portico of the- 17, 20, 23 Santoni brothers - 202, 205
Rossellini, Ippolito - 205 Sagamore 272 Hill - San Vitale - cf Ravenna
Rossi (architect) - 224 Saint Inue (Leonardo) - 64, 70, 92, 98
. San Zanipolo - cf Venice
Rosso, II -63,64,65, 130 Saint Aubin, Gabriel de - 108 Sappho - 1

Rotterdam: Museum Boymans - 265 Saint . lugustine, The I ision of (Car- Sargent, John Singer - 250
Rouen - 180, 181 Musee des Antiqui-
; paccio) - 51 Sargon, palace of - 207
tes de la Seine Inferieure - 218 Saint Catherine, Mystical Marriage oj - Sarto, Andrea del - 58, 64, 65 ; Charity -

Rouergue, Abbey of Conques - 31, 32 Correggio) - 92 117

Rousseau, Theodore - 245 Saint Cyr, military academy of - 226 Sarzec, Ernest de - 209
Rovere, Giuliano della cf Julius II Saint-Denis - 30, 32, 37 Sauvageot, Charles - 194, 220, 221
Rowlandson, Thomas: Sale at I Sain/e I le/ene. Memorial tie (Napoleon) - Savoia, Carlo Felice di - 204
Christie's in London - 109 225 Savonarola - 46
Royal Academy of Arts 120 - Saint Fagans (Wales) - 237 Savoy, Duke of- 112
Royal College of Physicians England) - ( Saint Francis Xavier, Martyrdom oj (Pous- Scaliger - 39
145 sin) - 131 Scammacca, Father Placidio - 1 15
Royal Cold Cup of tin Kings of France Saint Francis Xavier, Miracles of (Ru- Scamozzi, Vincenzo - 130
and England - 35, 37 bens) - 154 Schat^kammer - 72, 73, 75
Royal Society for Improving Natural Saint George (Raphael) - 98 Schifanoia, Palazzo - cf Ferrara
Knowledge - 145 Saint Ignatius of Loyola - 87 Schilders-band- 84

Rozier, Pilatre de - 15" Saint Jerome (van Lyck?, Petrus Chris- Schinkel, Karl Friedrich - 195, 196, 213,
Rubens, Peter Paul 85, 86, 87, 89, 90, - ms?) - 44 234
92, 101, 116, IP, 12o, 135, 150, 155, Saint 1 .ievin, 'The artyrdom of{Rubens) - M Schleissheim (Germany) - 121
183,184; Bacchanal (copy) - 16; Four 1 154, 183 Schliemann, Heinrich - 90, 210
Evangelists, The - 154; Helena Four- "Saint Louis, diamond of" - 37 Schliiter, Andreas - 196
ment and her tiro Children - 121, 123, Saint Louis (Missouri) : City Art Schonborn, Lothar Franz von - 133
154; Kermesse - 98; Madonna pj tin Museum 247 - Schulenburg, Mattia von - 116
Innocents -
98; Martyrdom of Saint Saint Luke's Guild - cf Antwerp science cabinets and museums - 86, 87,
I ievin, II- 134, 183; Miracles of Saint Malo - 34 137, 143, 163
Saint Francis Xavier - 154; Queen Saint Margaret (Raphael) - 65 Scopas - 58
Thomy ris - 98; Rape of the Daughters of Saint Michael (Raphael) - 65, 98, 1 1 7, 260 Sebastiano del Piombo - 64, 194
Le it tip pus, Tin - 121 Saint Michel, gold cup of - 37 Seidl, Gabriel von - 220, 222

296
 f

Seitenstetten (Austria) - 115, 137 Sotheby's -108, 109 Susa-210

Selene, Drawing of the Horse oj (1 lavdon) Soufflot- 154, 156 Sustris, Friedrich - 73
-201 Soult, Marshal Nicolas - 188 Symeoni, Gabriel - 72
Selene, Horse Drawing the Chariot of- 201 Smith \merican Rat (Ligozzi) - 65 Syndics <ii the Drapers' Guild (Rem
Semper, Gottfried -215, 26 7 South Lambeth (near London) - 144 brandt) - 181
Seneca - 17, 43 Souvigny, Abbey of - 31
Sens - 32 Spada gallery - 103 Tableau de Paris (Mercier) - 158
Septimius Severus, Emperor -
166 Speculum Ma/us (Vincent de Beauvais) - Taipei - 23
Serapeum (Hadrian's Villa) is 195 Tallard sale in Paris - 1 14
Settale, Manfredo -Ml Spencer, Earl of - 63 Talleyrand - 186
Seurat - 256 Spinario - 49, 64 Taipei Museum (Formosa) - 23
Seusenhofer, J6rg - 73 Sposali^io ( Marriage of the Virgin) Tartaglio - 67
Seven Years' War - cf Wars (Raphael)- 183 Tate, Sir Henry - 218
Sevigne, Madame de - 86, 104, 220 Squarcione, Francesco - 43 Tatichtchev, V. - 222
Shah-Abdol-Azim - 34 Stampart, Frans van - 158 Tauriscus - 124
she-wolf, Etruscan - 4 (
) Standish collection - 216 Taylor, Baron - 193
Shih Huang Ti, Emperor - 26 Stanhope, Earl of- cf Dormer, Philip Ta^a Farnese - 44, 46
Shiite imam 34 - Stannur, Anthony: First Refreshment Teheran: Museum of Shah-Abdol-Azim
Shomu, Emperor - 29, 34 Room at the 'ictoria and llbert I -34
Shoso-in - cf Nara Museum - 232 Tello - 209
Siena: Museo dell'Opera del Duomo -
Statius - 17 Tempe, Vale of - 18
12 Stein, Gertrude - 243 Temperance (personified) - 41, 42
Silanion - 15 Stern, Raffaele - 197 Teniers, David - 87, 89, 99, 101, 135;
Simitiere, Pierre Eugene de - 24 1 Sthennis of Olynthus - 19 Collection of A
rchduke Leopold- W'ilhelm
Simonetti, Michelangelo - 167, 198, Stoa Poikile - cf Athens - 89 Theatrum pictorium Davidis Te-
;

214 Stockholm - 78; Drottningholm - 78; niers antverpensis - 89, 135

Sistine Madonna (Raphael) - 114, 118, 1 23 open-air museum - 237 Terenzio da Urbino - 85
Emperor 22
Siuan-tong, - Stoffels, Hendrickje (Rembrandt) - 154 Tervuren (Belgium): Museum of Con-
SixtusIV,Pope-44,46, 49 storehouses for confiscated art - 180, golese Art - 238
Slaves (Michelangelo) - 65, 70, 92 218 Thayer (panoramist) - 225
SleepingVenus (Giorgione) - 121 Storffer, Ferdinand - 135, 155, 158 Theatrum pictorium Davidis Teniers ant-
Sloane, Sir Hans - 145, 147 Storia pittorica dell' Italia (Lanzi) - 163 , verpensis - 89, 135
Smirke, Sir Robert - 1%, 2()2, 210, 211, Storia pittorica dell' Italia del Risorgi- Thebes 205 -

212 mento delle belle art/ presso al fino del Theodolinda, Queen - 31
Smith, Franklin Webster - 261 A' I III secolo (Lanzi;)- 162 Thevet, Andre - 67, 70
Smith, Joseph (Consul) - 10, 112 1 Strack (architect) - 196 Thiers, Count of- 114
Smith, Ralph Clifton - 274 Stradano, Giovanni: Alchemist, The - 65 Thirty Years' War - cf Wars
Smithson, lames - 258 Strasbourg - 180 Thorns, William John - 235
Smithsonian Institution - c Stroganov collection - 125 Thorvaldsen, Bertel (Albert) - 201, 202,
\\ ashington Strozzi, Roberto - 65, 70 245
Socie'te du Musee des \rts decoratifs - 233 Strozzi family - 44 Thouin (botanist) - 174
Societe francaise d'archeologie - 218 Stuart, Gilbert - 245 Three Philosophers, The (Giorgione) - 99,
Sodoma 58- Stuck - 199 101
Soissons, vase of - 32 Stiiler (architect) - 195, 196 Tiber (sculpture) - 49, 51
Soissons, hotel de - 65, 70 Sublime Porte - 90 Tiberius, Emperor - 19, 72
"Solomon, plate of - 32 Suermondt, Berthold - 213 Tiepolo- 181
Solimena, Francesco: (.mini . llthann Suetonius - 17, 19 Tilly, Count von - 76

presenting Emperor Charles \ 1 with Suger, Abbot - 30, 32 Encounter at (panorama)

Tilsit, - 225
the Inventory of I he Picture Gallery - 1 58 Sulla- 11, 17, 18 Tintoretto -86, 101,183
Solly -213, 216 Sully, Thomas -245 Titian - 64, 72, 78, 89, 101, 121, 160,
Somer- 109 Supper at Emmaus (Rembrandt) - 154 257; - lllegory of . Ivalos - 98; Issump-
Sommerard, Alexandre du - 221 Supper al limmaus (Titian) - 98 tion of 86 Bacchanals - 98,
I he I irgin - 1 ;

Sommerard, Uexandre du; Studio of Supper in /he House oj Simon Veronese ( I

101 Dana'e - 75; Entombment, The -
;

(Fouquet) - 232 98 98 Flora - 1 63 Madonna of the Rabbit

; ;

297
 - 151 ; Man with a Glove - 98; Pardo Turin: Egyptian collection - 204, 205; - 181, 186; San Zanipolo - 117, 181,
Venus - 98, 151 Portrait of a Man -
; University - 144 186; Scuola di San Giorgio degli
151; Presentation in the Temple -186; Turner - 245 Schiavoni - 51
Supper at Emmaus - 98 Venus with a ; Venus: (Capitoline) - 41, 42; (Medici) -
Mirror - 260; Woman at her Toilet - Uccello, Paolo: Niccolb da Tolentino at - 58; (Poussin) - 89; (statue from
98 the Battle of San Romano - 21 Aries) - 89; (Tauriscus?) - 124
Titus, Baths of -20, 49 Uffelen, van - 85 Venus de Milo - 204
Titz, Louis: Arrival in Antwerp of Uffizi - cf Florence Venus Genetrix, Temple of - 18
paintings returned by France - 1 87 Uhde, Fritz von - 199 Venus with a Mirror (Titian) - 260
Tivoli (Tibur): Hadrian's Villa - 18, 44, Ulrich, Anton - 120 Vernet, Horace -112; Capture of Abdu-l-
58, 198; Villa d'Este - 56 Ulysses Belgico-G alliens - 89 kadir - 225
Tobias, Return of (Rembrandt) - 21 Ungarelli, Luigi Maria -205 Verona - 144, 187 Accademia Filarmo-
;

Tochon collection - 202, 204 Unicorn Tapestry - 255 nica- 142

Todaiji monastery - cf Nara Unicorn, Salon of the - 26 Veronese - 101, 131, 183; Feast in the
Tokyo, National Museum - 26 Union Centrale des Arts decora tifs - 234 House of Levi -186; Marriage at Cana
Tolbiac, battle of - 226 Union Centrale des Beaux-Arts appliques a (copy) - 116; Supper in the House of
Toledo (Ohio) Museum of Art - 256 I' Industrie - 233, 234 Simon - 98
Tommasi, Marquis - 147 Union des Arts et de I' Industrie - 233 Verres - 17
Tornabuoni family - 44 United States, museums in the - 23, 241, Verrine Orations (Cicero) - 1

Torso Belvedere - 41, 49, 51 261 Verrocchio - 46

Toulouse - 104, 133, 180 Capitole - 105 ; Urbino-51, 52, 63,64 Verrue, Countess de - 118
Couvent des Grands Augustins - 180, Ursino, Castello - 144 Versailles - 56, 98, 103, 150, 151, 169,
218 Urville, Dumont d' - 204 172, 176, 193, 272; Galerie des
Toulouse, Count of- 131 Uylenburgh, Gerrit - 85 Batailles and Salle des Batailles - 226
Tours -181 Hall of Mirrors - 35, 130, 131, 172;
Tower of Babel, The (Bruegel) - 76 Valenciennes, Pierre-Henri de - 176 historical museum
- 225, 226; Musee

Towneley, Sir Charles - 120, 147, 149, Valenti, Cardinal - 166 de Versailles - 103, 153; Salle des
150 Valery - 43 Croisades - 222, 226
Towneleys Library on Park Street (Zof- Valladolid- 117 Vertue-Berthee - 90
fany)- 148 Valois, Elisabeth de (Clouet) - 67 Vesuvius - 147, 165
Toynbee - 6 Vasari, Giorgio - 56, 58, 64, 65, 70, 95, Vicenzo I, Duke of Mantua - 86
"Tradescant's Ark" - 144 160, 162 Victor Amadeus II of Savoy - 1 18
Tradescant the Elder, John - 14 1, 144 Vasse - 131 Victoria, Queen - 232, 234
Tradescant the Younger, John - 144 Vatican - 30, 51, 124, 130, 167, 174, 176, Vien, Maria Joseph - 112
Trafalgar, Battle of (panorama) - 225 177; Belvedere Palace - 41, 47, 49, Vienna - 73, 74, 76, 84, 101, 110, 135,
Traite de pierres gravees (Mariette) - 1 10 130, 167; Braccio Nuovo - 197; 158, 190, 224, 225; Ambras
188,
Trajan's Column - 41 ; Forum - 51 Egyptian Museum - 205; Museo Castle 188; Barock Museum - 272;
-

Treaty of Paris (1814)- 185 Pio-Clementino - 139, 166, 167, 180, Belvedere - 154, 157, 159, 171;
Treaty of Pressburg - 181 \98,2\4 (Pope Pius I 'landGustavusIII Heeresgeschichtliches Museum (for-
Treaty of Saint-Germain (1919) - 188, of Sweden I 'isiting the Pio-Clementino merly Heeresmuseum, arms museum)
190 Museum, by Gagneraux - 166) - 227; Hofburg - 31, 228 (Schatzkam-
Tres riches heures de Monseigneur - 37 Vaudreuil, Count de - 153 mer - 188, 228); Hofgartengalerie -
Treviso-43, 183 Veglia-104 160; Kunsthistoriches Museum - 72,
Triumphs (Mantegna) - 83, 90 Velasco, Juan de - 37 76, 89, 99, 101, 215, 216, 250 (Rubens
Troy - 90, 210 Velazquez, Diego - 86, 101, 184; Water Room - 265); Museum of Natural
Troy, Jean Francois de - 121 Carrier of Seville, The - 1 88 History - 74; Oesterreichisches Mu-
Triibner- 199 Vendramin, Doge - 83 seum fur Kunst und Industrie - 234;
Trumbull, John - 243, 245 Venice, Venetians - 32, 41, 43, 60, 83, Stallburg- 158, 159
Ts'ao Chih-po (Yun-hsi) - 22 84, 86, 98, 110, 112, 117, 118, 130, Vies des dames galantes - 72
Tsarkoye Selo - 114, 135, 172 139, 181; Accademia- 118, 181, 186; Vigee-Lebrun, Madame - 107
Tschudi, Hugo von - 196 Archeological Museum - 141; Ca' Vignerod, Armand de - 92
Tuck, Edward - 255 Rezzonico - 272; Church of the Frari Villanueva, Juan de - 185
Tunis: Musee du Bardo - 1 - 186; San Bartolommeo - 75; San Vincente, ]uan San - 184
Turenne - 173 Marco - 32; Santa Maria della Carita Viollet-le-duc - 228

298
Vipsania, Portico - 20 (American) - 247, 248, 249 Civil War ; Williamsburg (Virginia): College of
Virgil -17 (Spanish) - 269 Franco-Prussian War
; William and Mary - 241, 257; Colo-
Virgin (Carracci) 85 - - 226; Greek War of Independence - nial Williamsburg - 256, 257
Virgin (Raphael) 65 - 204; Hundred Years' War - 34; W llstach, Mr. & Mrs. William P. - 250
Virgin, Death of the (Caravaggio) - 86, Peninsular War - 188; Revolution W inckelmann, fohann Joachim - 147,
98 (American) - 242, 256, 257; Revolu- 164, 165, 166," 167
I irgin, Marriage of the (Raphael) - 183 tion, French - 34, 78, 108, 109, 110, Windsor Castle - 224 ; Waterloo Cham-
Visconti, Ennio Quirino - 67, 1 77, 1 80, 1 115, 116, 131, 167, 169, 191, 218, ber - 224, 225, 226
201,202 222, 224; Seven Ydars' War - 121, Winterthur (Delaware): Henry Francis
Visconti, Giovanni Battista - 167 123; Thirty Years' War - 76, 101, du Pont Winterthur Museum - 255
Visconti, Louis-Tullius - 215 227; World War I - 265; World Wittelsbach collections - 101
Visitation (Sebastiano del Piombo) - 64 War II - 56, 58, 226, 267, 269, 270 Wittgens, Fernanda - 267
Vitoria (Spain) - 188, 190 Water Carrier of Seville, The (Velazquez) Woche, Die - 263
Vitruvius - 18, 44 -188 Wolfgang d' \nhalt, Prince (Cranach)
.
-

Vivant-Denon - cf Denon, Baron Waterloo - 224, 225 142

Vivant Waterloo Chamber at Windsor Castle - Woman at her Toilet (Titian) - 98
Voet, Ferdinand - 104 224, 225 Worcester (Massachusetts) Art Mu-
Voits (architect) - 199 Watteau, Antoine -107, 121, 177; En- seum - 252
Voltaire- 124, 176 seigne de Gersaint, L' - 107 Gilles - 193 ; World War - cf Wars
Volterra - 142, 144 Watteau, Louis - 180 Wright, Frank Lloyd - 272
Vouet, Simon - 103 Washington, George - 245, 259, 272 W u, Emperor - 26
Voyage de France pour I' instruction et la Washington, D.C.: Corcoran Gallery - Wunderkammer - 62, 73, 74, 76, 115
commodite tant des francais que des 245, 247, 259; National Gallery of Wundermenschen - 74
etrangers - 89 Art - 252, 255, 257, 259, 260, 273; Wurzburg Museum - 84
Voyage pittoresque de Naples et de la Sicile Smithsonian Institution - 245, 258,
(Denon) - 165 259 (Freer Gallery of Art - 245, 259; Xanthus: monument of the Nereids -

Vrilliere, Phelippeaux de la - 131 National Portrait Gallery - 259); 202

Vries de - cf Adriaen de Vries White House- 241, 247
Wellington, Duke of- 188, 190
Yale University - cf New Haven
Welsh Folk Museum - 238
Waagen, Gustav - 213, 214 Wen-Ti, Emperor - 26 Yen-Chou - 26
York, Duke of - cf James II
Wadsworth, Daniel - 242 Wentworth House - cf New York,
Wadsworth Atheneum Yun-hsi - cf Ts'ao-Chih-po
- cf Hartford Metropolitan Museum
Wagram 226 West, Benjamin
Yussupov, Prince - 104 ; collection - 125
- - 201, 242, 243, 245
Wakefield 272 - Wicar- 174
Wallace, Sir Richard - 234 Widener, (oseph E. - 260 Zante - 201
Wallace collection - cf London Whistler, James MacNeill - 250, 259 Zeus, Temple of (Olympia) - 204
Wallenstein - 78 Whitehall - cf London Zeuxis - 19
Walpole, Horace - 115 Wilkes, John - 115 Ziebland (architect) - 198
Walpole, Robert - 115 Wilkie, Sir David - 225 Zinzerling - 89
Walpole collection - 115, 124, 150; Wilkins, William -210,211 Zoffany, ]ohann - 150, 163; Towneley's
papers - 245 William (Wilhelm) II, Kaiser - 196, 228 Library on Park Street- 148, 149
Walters, William T. - 247 William IV of Bavaria - 72 Zuccali (architect) - 121
War, Wars - evacuation of and safe- William V, Stadholder - 184 Zurich: Swiss National Museum - 252;
guarding works of art during - 269, William of Pfalz-Neuberg - 120 Wasserkirche - 14 1

270 Carlist War - 1 93, 21 6 Civil War

; ; Williams- 110 Z winder - 136, 215

299

J
 300

*»
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1. The Cloister of Saint-Michel de Cuxa, The Cloisters, Fort Tryon Park, 51. View of the History Gallery of the Chateau of Beauregard, near Blois.
Nov York. 2. Boethus, Statue of Eros, Muse'e du Bardo, Tunis. 3. Treasury 52. Jean-Antoine Watteau, L'Enseigne de Gersaint. Charlottenburg
of the Athenians, Delphi. 4. Model of the Sanctuary of Athena, Pergamum. Palace, Berlin. 53. Thomas Rowlandson, A sale at Christies in London
5. A
Scene from the Iliad or from the Cyprian Chants in the House of the about 1805. Christie Gallery, London. 54. Van den Berge, Prince Eugene
Cryptoporticus, Pompeii. 6. Ts'ao Chih-po, Pavilion under the Trees. of Savoy at Somer's, the art dealer, in Amsterdam. Ri/ksmuseum, Amster-
Muse'e Guimet, Paris. 7. Chao Jen, Eight dignitaries taking a springtime dam. 55. Charles Grignon, Portrait of Samuel Baker. Sotheby Collection,
ride. Taipei Museum. Formosa: 8. Liang K'ai, Portrait of the poet Li Tai London. 56. Thomas Gainsborough, Sir James Christie. Paul Getty
Po. National Museum, Tokyo. 9. The Shoso-in in the Todaiji Monastery. Collection, Sutton Place. 57. Giovanni Bellini, Agony in the Garden.
Nara, Japan. Ivory Binding for a New Testament, traced to the Abbey
10. National Gallery, London. 58. Rembrandt, The Holy Family. Hermitage
of Lorsch. Victoria and Albert Museum, London. 11. A-Shaped Reliquary. Museum, Leningrad. 59. V. Borovikovski, Catherine II walking in the
Abbey of Con que s in Rouergue, France. 12. Royal Gold Cup of the Kings of Tsarkoye Selo Park. Russian National Museum, Moscow. 60. Raphael,
France and England. British Museum, London. 13. Hans Holbein, the The Sistine Madonna. Gemdldegalerie, Dresden. 61. Peter Paul Rubens,
Younger, Portrait of the Duke de Berry. Kunstmuseum, Basel. 14. Apollo- Helena Fourment. Alte Pinakothek, Munich. 62. Peter the Great, wax
nil's, Torso Belvedere. Vatican. 15. Giovanni Pisano, Cardinal Virtues- figure. Hermitage Museum, Leningrad. 63. Plan of the Winter Palace and
Temperance. Duomo, Pisa. 16. The Capitoline Venus. Capitoline Museum, the Hermitage Museum, in G. Ba-^in: Les maitres de la Peinture an Muse'e
Rome. 17. Tazza Farnese. Museo Nationale, Naples. 18. The Apollo de I'Lrmitage. 64. Raphael, Madonna della Sedia. Palatine Gallery, Pitt/
Belvedere. Garden of the Belvedere, Capitoline Museum, Rome. 19. Hendrick Palace, Florence. 65. Picture Gallery in Pommersfelden Castle, Germany.
van Cleeve, View of the Gardens and the Cortile of the Belvedere in 66. The Gallery of Beauties in the Chateau of Pibrac, near Toulouse, France.
Rome. Brussels Ancient Art Museum. 20. The She- Wolf. Capitoline Museum, 67. Museum of the Abbey of Heiligenkreuz, in Austria. 68. Cabinet of
Rome. 21. Vittore Carpaccio, The Vision of Saint Augustine. Scuola di Glassware in Rosenborg Castle, Copenhagen. 69. John Riley, Portrait of
San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, Venice. 22. The Natural History Cabinet of the Elias Ashmole, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. 70. Lucas Cranach, Portrait
Neapolitan Naturalist and Chemist Ferrante Imperato. Bibliotheque Natio- presumed to be that of Prince Wolfgang d'Anhalt. Rheims Museum.
tiale, Paris. Paolo Giovio, from the Basel edition of the
23. Portrait of 71. Regulations of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. 72. Hans Holbein
Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium.24. The Antiquarium. Casino del the Elder, Portrait of Bonifacius Amerbach. Kunstmuseum, Basel.
Giardino in Sabbioneta, near Mantua, Italy. 25. Chimera of Arezzo. Archeo- 73. Polyhymnia the Muse. Etruscan Academy, Pala^o Pretorio, Cortona.
logical Museum, Florence. 26. Tribuna of the Uffizi, Florence. 27. After 14. Johann Zoffany, Towneley's Library on Park Street, in 1782.
Michelangelo, Leda and the Swan. National Gallery, London. 28. Jacopo Toivneley Hall Art Gallery, Burnley, England. 75. First Century Roman
Ligozzi, South American Rat. Uffizi Museum, Florence. 29. Giovanni art, The So-called Bust of Clytie. British Museum, London. 76. Jacob
Stradano, The Alchemist. Pala%%o Vecchio, Florence. 30. Francois Ruisdael, Le Coup de Soleil. Louvre Museum, Paris. 77 Joseph Sifi rein
.

Clouet, Elisabeth de Valois, Daughter of Henry II of France. Muse'e Conde, Duplessis, Count d'Angiviller at 49. Muse'e de X'ersailles. 78. The Hall of
Chan/ill). 31. Leonardo da Vinci, Saint Anne. Louvre Museum, Paris. Italians at the Diisseldorf Gallery. Germany. 79. Page of the illustrated
32. Bronzino, An Allegory of Time and Love. National Gallery, London. inventory of the paintings gallery of Emperor Charles VI in Vienna.
33. Michelangelo, Slave. Louvre Museum, Paris. 34. Gemma Augustea. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. 80. Plan of the Paintings Gallery
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. 35. Wenzel Jamnitzer, Nautilus installed in Schloss Belvedere. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
mounted in a Goldsmithery Setting. Residen^museum, Munich. 36. Gallery 81. Galileo's Lens. Museo Nationale di Storia della Scien^a, Palasr^p Cas-
of Antiques in the Residenz. Munich. 37. Various objects in silver at tellani, Florence. Jean-Louis Desprez, Transport of Antiques from
82.
Ambras Castle. Austria. 38. Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Tower of the Portici Museum to the Naples Museum. Wildenstein Collection,
Babel. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. 39. One of the Capitulary Rooms New York. 83 and 84. Medallion struck for Clement XII, Rome.
of the Escorial Palace. Madrid. 40. Albrecht Durer, View of Arco. 85. Gagneraux, 1784. Pope Pius VI visiting the Vatican's Pio-Clementino
Louvre Museum, Paris. 41. The Market Place at Prague. Wur-^burg Museum, Museum with Gustavus III of Sweden. Prague Chateau. 86. Bonaparte
Wur^burg. 42. David Teniers, The collection of Archduke Leopold- showing the Apollo Belvedere to his Deputies. From an old engraving.
Wilhem at the Coudenberg Castle, Brussels. Kunsthistorisches Museum, 87. First page of the Instructions prepared on the order of the National
Vienna. 43. William Dobson, Portrait of Abraham Van der Doort. Convention for the preservation of cultural objects. Bibliotheque Nationale,
Hermitage Museum, Leningrad. 44. Correggio, Antiope. Louvre Museum, Paris. Carlo Crivelli, Madonna with a Candle. Pinacoteca Brera,
88.
Paris Ab. Engraving by Nanteuil after Van Schuppen, Cardinal Mazarin Milan. 89. Pierre Paul Prud'hon, Portrait of Baron Vivant-Denon.
in the Gallery of his Town House. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. 46. Charles Louvre Museum, Paris. 90. Drawing showing the arrival of the first visitors
le Brun, Portrait of Jabach and his family, formerly in a Berlin Museum. to the Koninklijk Museum on September 15, 1808. Drawings Cabinet,
47. Peter Paul Rubens, Kermesse. Louvre Museum, Paris. 48. Titian, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Hubert Robert, Plan for arranging the
91.
Bacchanal. Prado Museum, Madrid. 49. Giorgionk, The Three Philos- Main Gallery of the Louvre as a museum. Louvre Museum, Paris. 92. Hubert
ophers. Kunsthistorisches Museum. Vienna. 50. French Schooi XIVth Robert, The main Gallery of the Louvre during restoration before its
century, Portrait of John the Good of France. Louvre Museum, Paris. reopening in 1799. Louvre Museum, Paris. 93. Rembrandt, The Night

301
Watch. Rijksmuseum, Xmsterdam. 94. Louis Titz, Arrival in Antwerp of theHo/burg, Vienna. 118. Rhenish, 2nd half of the XIIth century.
paintings returned by France. From the original work by Ferdinand de Hltenberg Reliquary. Victoria and Albert Museum, London. 119. L. V.
Brackeleer, in the Bibliothique Royak de Belgique. 95. Diego Velazquez, FOUQUET, Studio of Alexandre du Sommerard at the Hotel de Cluny.
The Water Carrier of Seville. Wellington Museum London. 96. French Art. Musee des arts decoratifs, Paris. 120. Antony Stannur, The first Refresh-
Antoine Gandreau, Marquetry Commode. Wallace Collection, Hertford ment Room of the Victoria and Albert Museum. London. 121. Thir-
House, London. Diagrammatic plan of the "Museum Island" in
97. teenth centurv timber church, transported to the By gd0y open-air museum,
Berlin. 98. Phidias, Horse drawing the Chariot of Selene. British Museum, near Oslo. 122. Jackson Polloch. Number I, 1948. "Collection" the

London. 99. Benjamin Robert Haydon, Drawing of the Horse of Museum of Modern Art, New York. 123. Peak's Museum in Philadelphia,

Selene. British Museum. London. 100. Attic mixing bowl from the last from an old engraving. 124. Shang Dynasty. Chinese Ceremonial Vase.
quarter of the 5th century. Louvre Museum, Paris. 101. Egyptian Art. Freer Gallery of Art, Washington. 125. Robert Campin, The Campin
IV Dynasty, Louvre Museum. Paris. 1(12. The Michaux Stone or Sumerian Altarpiece (Master of Flemalle, The Merode Altarpiece). The
Kudurru. Cabinet oj Medallions. Bibliothique Xationale. Paris. 103. Mexican Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters. Purchase collection. 126. The
Mask in Turquoise Mosaic. British Museum, London. 104. Anonymous Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 127. Plan of the
engraving. Arrival of a Winged Bull from Khorsabad at the Louvre. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts. 128. Renoir, Madame
Bibliothique Nationale, Paris. 105. Claude Gelee, Le Lorrain, The Charpentier and her Children. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
Reconciliation of Cephalus and Procris. National Gallery, London. York. 129. |an Van Eyck, Annunciation. National Gallery of Art,
106. Interior view of the National Gallery, London. Private collection. Andrew Mellon Collection, Washington, D. C. 130. Gallery View -
107. The Rembrandt Room in the Hermitage Museum, Leningrad. American Wing. Room from the Samuel Wentworth house in Ports-
From an old engraving. 108. Leo von Ki nze, Hall of XVIth- and XVIIth-
i mouth, N. H. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 131. View of the
Century works. Drawings Cabinet, Hermitage, Leningrad. 109. Leo
Italian Museum of Jerusalem. 132. The Rubens Room at the Kunsthistorisches
von Klenze, The Dutch Gallery at the Hermitage. Drawings Cabinet, Museum in Vienna before 1914. 133. The Rubens Room at the Kunsthis-
Hermitage, Leningrad 110. Petrus Christus, Portrait of a Young Woman. torisches Museum in Vienna after 1914. 134. Exhibition of modern paint-
Staatliche Museen, Berlin. 111. Joseph Castiglione, The Salon Carre ing at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 1954. 135. Picasso, Las
in 1865. 112. Gothic Room in the chapel of the Germanisches Museum, Meninas. Private collection. 136. View of a gigantic inscription saying Musee
Nuremberg, Germany. 113. Gothic Room in the Bayerisches Museum, du Louvre. Sourches, France. 137. Fragment of the Tomb of the Empress
Munich. 1 14. Sir Thomas Lawrence, Portrait of John Julius Angerstein Marguerite of Luxembourg. Pa/a^o Bianco, Genova. 138. The Guggen-
and his wife. Musee du Louvre, Paris. 115. View of the "Salle des Croisades" heim Museum, New York. 39. Prehistoric painting of an ox and horses in the
1

at Versailles. 116. View of the Waterloo Chamber at Windsor Castle. Lascaux Caves, France. 40. A too curious visitor commenting on a picture
1

117. Ottonian Art. So-called Crown of Charlemagne. Schat^kammer of at an exhibition. 141. Queue of visitors at the Picasso Exhibition. Paris.

PHOTOGRAPHY CREDITS

Agraci 31, 44, 47, 91, 101. Alinari 25, 26. Musee des Arts Decoratifs 19. 1 42 and jacket. Museum Israel 131. Kontos 3. Kunsthistorisches
Kunstmuseum Basel (Phot. Hinz) 13, 72. Balzarini 88. Bavaria Verlag Museum Wien 49. 79, 132, 133. Bildarchivphoto Marburg 46. The
35, 36, 61. Phototheque G. Bazin 20, 43, 55, 62, 63, 69, 71, 82, 85, 90, Metropolitan Museum of Art 1, 125, 128, 130. Meyer 34, 38, 117.
94, 97, 100, 107, 108, 109, 112, 113, 134, 136, 140. Bazzechi 15, 81. National Gallery 27, 32, 57, 105. National Palace Museum Taipei 7.
M usees Royaux des Beaux- Arts de Belgique 19. Benrido 9. Bonnefoy The Museum of Modern Art, Geoffrey Clements Photography New
115. Museum of Fine Arts Boston 127. British Museum 12, 75, 98, York 122. Norway Embassy 121. Nuova Editoriale 21. Osterreiche
99, 103. Bulloz 30, 70. County Borough of Burnley 74. With the National Bibliothek 67 (Photo Alpenland), 80. Prado Museum 48.
permission of Editions Cercle d'Art 135. Christie Gallery 53. Ciganovic Philadelphia Museum of Art, photograph by A. J. Wyatt. Staff Photo-
5, Connaissance des Arts 24, 37, 40, 51. With the
14, 16, 17, 73, 83, 84. grapher 126. Reunion des Musees Nationaux, Versailles 50, 77, 89,
permission of the Lord Chamberlain's Office, Cooper Ltd 116. Courtesy 92,111,114. Rijksmuseum 54, 93. Rosenborg 68. Russian Museum 59.
of The Detroit Institute of Arts 123. Deutsche Fotothek Dresden 60. Scala 28, 29, 64. Staatliche Museum Berlin 4, 110. Walter Steinkopf 52.
Dorka 18, 22, 23, 86, 87, 102, 104. Hermitage Museum 58. Le Figaro Thames & Hudson 106. National Museum of Tokyo 8. Musees Natio-
141. Foto Mas 39. Freeman 95, 96. Freer Gallery of Art 124. Comune naux de Tunisie 2. U.S.I.S. 138. J. Vertut 139. Victoria & Albert
di Genova, Direzione Belle Arti 137. The Museum (Carlton Studios) 10, 118, 120. G. Woschnagg 78. National
J. Paul Getty Museum 56.
Giraudon 11, 45, 76. Musee Guimet 6. Hirmer Verlag 65. J. Hyde 33, Gallery of Art Washington 129. Museum Wurzburg 41. Yan 66.

302
 1

Contents

Foreword Page 5

Chapter I PRELUDE Page 11

Chapter II INTERLUDE Page 29

Chapter III RENAISSANCE Page 41

Chapter I\
r
MANNERISM Page 55

Chapter V ROYAL ART Page 83

Chapter VI MUSEOGRAPHIA Page 107

Chapter VII THE CABINET AND THE GALLERY Page 129

Chapter VIII THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT Page 141

Chapter IX REVOLUTION Page 169

Chapter X THE MUSEUM AGE Page 193

Chapter XI THE NEW WORLD Page 24

Chapter XII PRESENT AND FUTURE Page 263

Notes Page 279

Index Page 281

List of Illustrations Page 301

Photography Credits Page 302

THIS VOLUME WAS PREPARED UNDER THE
DIRECTION OF MARC VOKAER. THE ENGLISH-
LANGUAGE EDITION WAS PREPARED BY
ELIZABETH EARL, WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF
JANE VAN NUIS CAHILL. THE COVER DESIGN IS
BASED ON A DRAWING BY PIERRE PASTEELS.
THE LAYOUT WAS PREPARED BY MARINA
PONJAERT; DOCUMENTALIST: MYRIAM SICOURI-
ROOS: COLOR AND BLACK-AND-WHITE
ILLUSTRATIONS WERE ENGRAVED BY THE
IT A BLISSEMENTS DE REPRODUCTIE
COMPAGNIE, ROTTERDAM. THE BOOK WAS
PRINTED AND BOUND BY THE IMPRIMERIE
DESOER, LIEGE.

(E-
J
 BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY

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BRIGHTON
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BR IGHTON
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The Dav ^ocket indi-
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book should be returned to the Library.

Please do not remove cards from this

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I.
 It

mitive Painters
/ .KOVSKY
reference work concerns itself with the
co, lively neglected but increasingly important
world of primitive painting. Anatole Jakovsky, a well-
known European art authority, selected 300 artists
from all over the world for inclusion in this dictionary.
Each entry includes a biographical sketch, selected
bibliography, a photograph of the artist and a repro-
duction of one or more of his or her paintings. This
handy dictionary will prove an invaluable tool for
librarians, students and art collectors.

450 pages, 12 color plates, 12 black-and-white plates,

300 portraits, 300 black-and-white illustrations.
$29.50

FLEMISH TAPESTRIES
From the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century
by ROGER-A. D'HULST, foreword by H. Liebaers
historical account by
J. Duverger
translatedfrom the Dutch by Frances
J. Stillman

This luxurious volume is devoted to the unsurpassed

works accomplished from the 15th to the 18th century
by the tapestry weavers of Flanders. Emphasis is placed
on 34 tapestries chosen for their superb workmanship
and historical value. Attribution to specific cartoon
painters, weavers and ateliers is given when
possible as
well as historical documentation about the
personages
who commissioned the works, the events or cir-
cumstances which were commemorated and the names
of various owners down through the centuries.

Tremendous technical difficulties had to be sur-

mounted to achieve the remarkable results shown in
this book because so many of the
tapestries could not
be moved to a suitable place to be photographed.
No
expense was spared in erecting scaffolding or bringing
in generators for floodlights. From the painstaking
research on the part of the author to the care
lavished
on the engraving and printing of the plates, this de luxe
volume reflects the ultimate in the art of publishing.

3 As a visual delight and an incomparable treatise

on an
important subject, this book is essential for everyone
> interested in art and for all libraries and museums.

360 pages —42 illustrations in color —44

black and white — index.
illustrations in

$60.00

UNIVERSE BOOKS, Inc.

381 Park Avenue South
New York, N.Y. 10016