Stealing the Mystic Lamb

by Noah Charney

  The Austro-Hungarian and Prussian factions began to plot the reinstatement of the French monarchy, in what is known as the Brunswick Manifesto. Had they succeeded, the grateful French king would have made France subservient to them. Learning of this plan, the French Republican leaders quickly executed the royal family. The execution of Louis XVI by guillotine took place in Place de la Concorde in Paris on 17 January 1793. This sparked the Reign of Terror, spearheaded by the director of the Committee for Public Safety, Maximilien Robespierre, who led a hunt for perceived and actual enemies of the French Republic, executing all he could find. Archives record the deaths of 16,594 people, most by guillotine, though some historians place the total number of deaths in this two-year period at nearer 40,000.

  During the Reign of Terror, the Austrians, Prussians, Spanish, and British attempted to gain control of France, but the Republican army resisted them all. Successful battles led the Republic to take offensive measures. The French army invaded the Austrian Netherlands in 1794, not just seeking a pitched battle with the Austrian and Prussian forces, as had been fought two years prior, but intent on territorial conquest and pillage, as a means to increase revenue to repair damages and fund further campaigns. In 1793 and 1794 they instituted the Vendôme Decrees, which permitted the confiscation of the belongings of exiles and opponents of the Republic, ostensibly for redistribution to the needy.

  Just as Emperor Joseph II had disapproved of the “irrational” veneration of Catholic art, the revolutionaries hated the idea that art was the sheen and plumage of the elite aristocracy. Emperor Joseph II had divested churches of their artwork, their instruments of awe, in order to encourage rationality and the power of individual human beings. The revolutionaries’ goal was less to empower individuals than to empower the people as a collective.

  In an effort to transfer power from the elite to the common people, as well as for the more practical motivation of gathering valuable artworks for sale, the revolutionaries confiscated the art of the executed and the soon-to-be-headless. Without concern for ownership or historical context, the revolutionaries stripped France of those art treasures owned by the former oppressors, the church and the aristocracy, and brought the plunder back to Paris for display to the people.

  Although the principle of revolutionary art theft was to overturn the concept of elitist personal property, much of the art was sold to the wealthy, flooding the market with freshly gathered aristocratic possessions. Many works considered of a secondary importance by nonconnoisseur citizens and officers were sold to finance the war effort. This was rationalized by the need to raise funds for the war and the fact that the buyers were not French aristocrats but foreigners. The most famous of these sales, that of the collection of the Duke of Orleans in 1792, resulted in the enrichment of British collections above all, as a consortium of English nobles purchased the majority of the works for sale. The core of the Orleans collection consisted of plunder: 123 paintings that had once belonged to Queen Christina of Sweden, having been stolen by Swedish troops during the Thirty Years’ War, from Munich in 1632 and from Prague in 1648.

  Along with the rolling heads of the Revolution came an art-looting spree the scale and breadth of which had never before been seen and would not be seen again until the Second World War. The finest pieces taken from deposed aristocrats were not sold but brought to Paris. The art seized by revolutionaries from French aristocrats was greatly augmented by the later military looting under the French Republican and imperial armies. By the time Napoleon achieved control over the army, Paris’s galleries had become a citywide display case for the trophies of war. Public museums were established to respond to this new state of affairs, displaying art to anyone who cared to see it. The new National Museum was established on 26 May 1791 and housed in the recently converted Louvre, once the royal palace. The Louvre opened on August 10, 1793, during the Reign of Terror, and was popular from its inception.

  The motivations for art looting followed closely those of the French Revolution: to transfer power from the elite to the common people. Seized art symbolized the impotence of those from whom it had been taken. In addition to the severed, guillotined heads on display on the Bastille walls, the art collections, severed now from their decapitated owners, were proudly displayed. What had once been the realm of the wealthy elite only, a private delectation, was now shown in the recently converted Louvre, formerly the royal palace and now a public museum. Paintings were hung along with the names of the aristocratic families to which they once belonged. In theory, through the revolutionaries, art received a new audience. Art collections were no longer for the select few who could afford and “understand” them.

  In practice, however, art remained remote from the masses. Seven days out of ten, the Louvre was open only to artists and scholars. The other three days it was open to the general public. There was a contradiction in the theories and practice of revolutionary France. Governmental control was billed as popular, a democracy for the people, but while rights by birth were no longer the criterion to hold office, the state was in actuality controlled by an intellectual elite. The “masses,” once abominably oppressed, were to be liberated and helped, but they were considered in no way fit to run a country. This new Republican politics was mirrored in the availability of the Louvre’s collection to the public: three-tenths for everyone, with seven-tenths reserved for the educated elite.

  Whether the looted art was appreciated by the masses on those three days out of ten is another question. During the throes of the Revolution, visiting a gallery to see the possessions of those deposed would have brought a satisfaction altogether distinct from enjoying the art itself. The galleries of Paris could easily have displayed the rich clothing of the fallen aristocracy, their furniture, or even, as was arrayed on the city battlements, their lifeless bloody heads. Art served as a trophy of success. What was once the prized possession of the fallen, of inconceivable monetary value to the common people, was now captured in the glass cage of the gallery, to be enjoyed for what it symbolized as a looted object, not for its intrinsic beauty.

  Looting within France lasted from the Revolution until around 1794, at which point the French armies spread their conquests north into the Austrian Netherlands and south into Italy, the rest of Europe receiving the brunt of the pillage. Behind the victorious armies followed a new breed of military unit, one with the sole purpose of seeking out, stealing, and shipping back to France works of art from the defeated nations.

  In June 1794 the French established the Committee for the Education of the People and proposed sending “knowledgeable civilians with our armies, with confidential instructions to seek out and obtain the works of art in the countries invaded by us.” It is not clear whether this directive came from the government in Paris or the army itself, but on 18 July 1794 the following order was issued to the army:The People’s commissioners with the Armies of the North and Sambre-et-Meuse have learned that in the territories invaded by the victorious armies of the French Republic in order to expel the hirelings of the tyrants there are works of painting and sculpture and other products of genius. They are of the opinion that the proper place for them, in the interests and for the honor of art, is in the home of free men.

  The declaration, which referred specifically to the newly conquered territory of the Austrian Netherlands, went on to order the confiscation of these “works of painting and sculpture and other products of genius.” Two officers in particular, Citizen Barbier and Citizen Leger, were told to search out artworks. The army was to give them every assistance.

  Citizen Barbier had some training in forced art redistribution—barely distinguishable from art theft. Antoine Alexandre Barbier began his career as a priest but was officially dismissed by the pope in 1801 for his antipapal activity, helping Napoleon to loot the Vatican of nearly everything that wasn’t nailed into place (and much that was). Barbier was a bibliographer and librarian, an accountant of objects, whose first official role was to redistribute to the libraries
of Paris books and manuscripts that had been seized during the French Revolution, ostensibly from enemies of the state, but in practice from anyone whose collection looked promising. Barbier was the official librarian to the French Directory and, from 1807, worked as a special agent for Napoleon. He was a key figure in the establishment of the libraries of the Louvre, Fontainebleau, Compiegne, and Saint Cloud, whose collections were in large part acquired through forced seizure, first from revolutionaries in France and then from Napoleon’s victims abroad. Fascinated with words and their origins, Barbier produced two books during his career: the massive, four-volume Dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes et pseudonymes (Dictionary of Anonymous and Pseudonymous Works, 1806-1809) and the Examen critique des dictionnaires historiques (Critical Examination of Historical Dictionaries, 1820).

  Though Barbier knew books, the revolutionary art hunters under the direction of Barbier and Leger were not particularly knowledgeable about fine art, and their looting lacked follow-through. Much of the looted art was moved to a collection point but never carried on to Paris. For example, although the forty-six columns looted from Aix-en-Provence that formerly stood in front of Charlemagne’s palace were seized in October 1794, they were still sitting in the courtyard of a palace in Liège, awaiting transport to Paris, in January 1800. It was not until the better-organized looting spree under Napoleon’s imperial army that the museums filled in earnest with the plunder of fallen nations.

  The French revolutionary army had first arrived in the Austrian Netherlands in 1792 to liberate the area from the Austrian and Prussian forces. The second coming of the army, in 1794, brought the Revolution along with it—and resulted in the mass displacement of the region’s art treasures. Religious institutions were abolished, and their possessions were confiscated, including those of Saint Bavo Cathedral.

  In the city of Ghent, the central panels of The Lamb fell into the hands of the French Republican army. The panels were removed from the cathedral by the army under General Charles Pichegru on 20 August 1794. The officer in charge of art confiscation in Holland and the Austrian Netherlands was Citizen Barbier. It is not known why the French took only the central panels of the altarpiece, and not the wings. The original Adam and Eve and the wing panels, stored in the chapter house of the cathedral, were all left behind. Though it is not recorded in extant documents, they might have been hidden in the chapter house, or perhaps the simple fact that they were in storage while the central panels remained in the Vijd Chapel on display meant that they were overlooked by the French soldiers. The central panels were taken directly to Paris, where they went on display immediately as one of the museum’s top attractions.

  Citizen Barbier addressed the National Convention in Paris mere weeks after capturing the central panels of The Mystic Lamb, only days after the first shipment of looted art arrived from Holland: “Too long have these masterpieces been sullied by the gaze of serfs. . . . These immortal works are no longer in a foreign land. . . . They rest today in the home of the arts and of genius, in the motherland of liberty and sacred equality, in the French Republic.” This was no doubt a crowd-pleasing speech, but it lays bare some of the hypocrisies inherent in the Republican expansion. Was it not the “serfs” who rose up to become the French revolutionaries? Why then have “these masterpieces been sullied by the gaze of serfs”? According to the revolutionary dogma, the commoners should now gaze upon the art that was once sullied by the aristocracy. And the art had just been taken from a country now liberated and indoctrinated by the Revolution—in effect stealing from the recently converted.

  Confused dogma aside, the point was clear. Paris, the home of the free, was to be the depository of the art of the world. The revolutionary publication La Decade Philosophique became the prime annunciator of the new trophies of the Republic. In October 1794 it announced the arrival in Paris of the first shipments of looted art, with more than one hundred of the world’s finest pictures still en route. Paris would become the home of world art and the cradle of future artistry.

  In July 1795, after orchestrating over a year of bloodshed, Maximilien Robespierre was executed, and the Reign of Terror came to an end. The running of the Republic was transferred to the Directory, formed by a new constitution on 27 September 1795.

  Meanwhile, there was a good deal of rationalizing in print over the looting that was taking place. As the army conquered and stripped the treasures of Italy, an art student named Antoine Chrysostome Quatremère de Quincy published a seventy-four-page pamphlet in opposition to the looting of Rome, arguing that art was only properly appreciated in situ, in its native surroundings. De Quincy bravely petitioned the Directory to desist, saying that Europe was one great nation where art was concerned, and that art should serve to unite. Forty-three artists and eight members of the Academy of Fine Arts signed the petition.

  The Directory responded on 3 October 1796 with a publication in the official government newspaper, Le Moniteur: “If we demand the assembly of masterpieces in Paris, it is for the honor and glory of France and for the love we feel for those very artworks.” In other words, we like them and want them for ourselves—end of discussion. To speak out against the looting was, according to the Directory, unpatriotic. Le Moniteur continued: “We form our taste precisely by long acquaintance with the true and the beautiful. The Romans, once uneducated, began to educate themselves by transplanting the works of conquered Greece to their own country. We follow their example when we exploit our conquests and carry off from Italy whatever serves to stimulate our imagination.”

  Thus “transplanting” became the preferred euphemism for stealing art. If Rome, the exemplar of empire, did it, then so could France. Only a few years later, Napoleon would declare himself emperor in his attempt to retake for France the extent of the former Roman Empire.

  If Napoleon’s road towards empire was paved with military success, it was signposted with looted art. On 27 March 1796 the bold young Corsican general became commander in chief of the French Republican army in Italy. He was charged with driving the Austrians and their allies out of the country and defeating the papal armies. The Republican army was in a dreadful state. It had relied on forced contributions from occupied territories to supply its upkeep and payment. At the time of Napoleon’s arrival, the soldiers had received no pay for months. In order to avoid a mutiny, Napoleon sanctioned looting as a method of payment for the upkeep of the army.

  Napoleon was calculating and precise. He did his best to control the looting of his soldiery. In an order on 22 April 1796, Napoleon stated: “The Commander-in-Chief commends the army for its bravery and for the victories it has wrested from the enemy day after day. He sees with horror, however, the dreadful looting committed by pathetic individuals who only join their units when the fighting is over, because they have been busy looting.” The soldiers paid little heed. Shortly thereafter, Napoleon issued another order: “The Commander in Chief is informed that in spite of repeated orders, looting in the army continues, and houses in the countryside are stripped,” that any soldier found looting would be shot, and that no objects could be confiscated without written permission of specified authorities. Napoleon, not his soldiers, would be permitted to loot.

  Napoleon managed to turn around a disastrous campaign in Italy and transform a disheveled, hungry, mutinous mass of soldiers into a disciplined, professional army. The Republican army became his diehard supporters. His phenomenal success in the Italy campaign featured a telling armistice with the defeated Duke of Modena. Among the conditions of the armistice, signed 17 May 1796, was written, “The Duke of Modena undertakes to hand over twenty pictures. They will be selected by commissioners sent for that purpose from among the pictures in his gallery and realm.” This set a precedent for payment and reparations in the form of artworks that would enrage and dismay surrendering peoples for centuries to come.

  Napoleon gave strict instructions on the proper removal of artworks. Special agents were ordered to use the army to commandeer art, arrange transp
ort to France, and make a precise inventory. This inventory was to be presented to the army commander and the government attaché to the army. Records of each confiscation were to be made in the presence of a French army-recognized official. Army transport was to be used to bring loot back to France, and the army was to cover the costs. In fact, these careful instructions served to veil the personal circumvention of them by Napoleon and his officers.

  The coyly named Commission of Arts and Sciences was led by an artist, Citizen Tinet, and consisted of a mathematician, Citizen Monge, a botanist called Citizen Thouin, and another painter, Citizen Wicar—the most notorious of the lot, who proved to be a thief for the ages.

  Jean-Baptiste Joseph Wicar was an artist and art collector in his private life. He studied under the leading painter of French Neoclassicism, Jacques-Louis David, a master whose importance to the history of painting is but one strata down from van Eyck’s and who managed his politics well enough to be the favorite of both the revolutionaries and Napoleon. Wicar accompanied the great David on a Grand Tour to Rome in 1784 and returned to reside there from 1787 to 1793. This proved a good opportunity to identify works throughout the city that would look nice in the Louvre—and in his bedroom, should the opportunity arise.

  In 1794 Wicar was appointed keeper of antiquities at the Louvre, a powerful position, second only to the new museum’s director. That same year, Wicar was called on to lead the Commission of Arts and Sciences during the Italian campaign, in charge of art confiscation in the wake of Napoleonic victories. Wicar would retire from official service in 1800 and move to Rome permanently, where he set up shop as a highly successful portraitist, sought out by Grand Tourists, and as a dealer in stolen drawings. There he was at leisure to admire the city that he had helped Napoleon to pillage—and a good portion of the plunder remained in his apartment, gathered for private delectation but also for sale, if the price was right.