PARIS — The enduring appropriation of Ancient Roman art is one of the most intriguing aspects of Western culture. Going far beyond aesthetics, it was always linked with ideology, but never as crudely as under Napoleon.
A weighty two-volume book by Marie-Lou Fabréga-Dubert, “La Collection Borghese au Musée Napoléon,” just published under the joint imprint of the Musée du Louvre Editions and Beaux-Art de Paris, les éditions, is primarily an archival study intended to identify what really came from the Villa Borghese, following the acquisition of the collection ordered by Napoleon in 1806 and officially concluded a year later.
What the mammoth, often unreadable volumes tell us about the politics of art is actually gripping. The purchase of 695 sculptures from Antiquity in the collection of his brother-in-law Prince Camille Borghese was deemed so vital by the emperor that he personally entrusted the task to Dominique-Vivant Denon, the director of imperial museums, and to Ennio Quirino Visconti, the “overseer” of Roman Antiquities in what was then the Musée Napoléon and is now the Louvre Museum.
Visconti belonged to a dynasty of antiquarians looking after the Pope’s collections. It was he who estimated every piece in the collection and submitted a global valuation. Prince Borghese was reluctant to part with his beloved antiquities, but France eventually offered a huge 13 million francs, more than double Visconti’s 5 million franc estimation, and the prince caved in. Jean-Luc Martinez of the Louvre wrily notes in his foreword that 8.3 million francs can be proved to have been paid when Napoleon’s Empire was crushed in 1815.Continue reading the main story
For the recently created museum, which had first opened its doors in 1793, the catch was phenomenal. This was the most important private collection of Roman antiquities in the world. Several sculptures, like “The Gladiator,” had been greatly admired since Renaissance days. In the 1780s, the prince’s father, Marcantonio Borghese, had had the display space designed by Antonio Asprucci in the fashionable Neo-Classical taste, and the publication of two volumes illustrated with engravings by Luigi Lamberti further spread the fame of the antiquities among European cognoscenti.
Better still, the glamorous image of the collection was enhanced by the spice of recent discoveries. Excavations conducted on land owned by the Borgheses at Gabies, south of Rome, had yielded highly important works that filled the brand new “Gabies Museum” set up on the grounds of the Villa Borghese. Published by Visconti in 1797 in his book on the “Monumenti Gabini della Villa Pinciana” these were equally famous in the art world.
But negotiating the acquisition of the Borghese hoard was only a first step. Great Britain, at war with France, had called a continental blockade. Maritime routes to France were cut off, leaving only the overland road across the Alps.
The vast amount of correspondence between civil servants, published for the first time, details the daily technical and human problems that had to be tackled during three long years.
Some were unexpected. A letter written on Nov. 13, 1807 by the Interior Ministry official organizing the transportation of the antiquities from the Villa Borghese reveals discrepancies between the list of objects given by the ministry and the detailed inventory in the deal agreed to by the prince.
Other difficulties were more physically threatening. The transaction covered not only free-standing sculptures but also works that had been incorporated with the facade of the Villa Borghese. Removing these raised a whole raft of tricky problems. In a letter dated Nov. 16, 1807, the Interior Ministry official complains that Prince Borghese had given no instructions to his own superintendent concerning the structural damage that the removal was bound to cause — pulling off deeply carved bas reliefs could destabilize walls, and displacing pillars might result in the collapse of balconies if alternative supports were not substituted.
Packing was an ongoing nightmare. In January 1808, a highly regarded joiner, Signore Radice, was called in to check the quality of the wood planks used for building boxes by one “Carboni,” who in turn had been hired by an architect only identified as a Mr. V. In several cases, the wood had not properly dried. Nails had become rusty, planks had to be smashed to open the cases.
International tension complicated matters. On Nov. 17, 1808, a French official simply signing himself “Crétet” sent an anguished message for Napoleon’s attention via the French Interior Ministry. Rome was abuzz with rumors that the English fleet was preparing an imminent mass landing. What was left in Rome of the Villa Borghese sculptures was contained in more than 300 boxes. The official advised evacuating the whole lot to Bologna.
Enraged, Napoleon scribbled his answer in the margins of the note. “Tell this commissaire that he is a fool; that if the English land in Rome, they won’t get away with it.”
Some of the most severe problems were caused by the sheer weight and awkward format of the biggest sculptures. In a letter sent in October 1810, François Fortin, then in charge of transportation, worries that the “chariots” carrying three of the biggest boxes, which had left Rome on Aug. 11 and had been due in Bologna by Aug. 30, had not yet reached their destination more than a month later. It had taken 60 oxen to pull the chariots and many of them collapsed in the effort while crossing the Apennines. This had cost a fortune.
Worse, some of the 36 boxes still in Rome could not be loaded on the carriages used in Italy. French carriage builders were needed to design special ones, but they would not be able to cross the Mont Cenis pass (in the Alps) before the onset of winter.
In 1811, the Hall of the Caryatids finally opened in the Musée Napoléon with a temporary display of master works, leaving more than half the boxes unopened. Ironically, it was only after the final defeat of Napoleon in 1815 that the greater part of the collection would at last go on view.
The effort paid off for the museum, if not for the fallen emperor. Of the 695 pieces reputedly from the Borghese collection, 430 can be matched today with their descriptions in the late-18th-century publications or in the inventories drawn up during the period. Some may never really have been part of it, and others, of which descriptions alone survive, may be lost. The feverish search, initiated by Mr. Martinez in an earlier publication, goes on.
The works identified certainly include some of the most famous sculptures from Antiquity. What they say about the cultural history of the Western world outweighs even their intrinsic aesthetic value.
“The Gladiator,” a fighter dramatically bending, one arm raised to fend off a blow, was seen in the 19th century as the most precious of all. Carved around 100 B.C., it offers the rare distinction of retaining the signature of its maker, a Greek sculptor from Ephesus (on the Aegean shore of present-day Turkey) called Agasias, son of Dositheos. Found at Anzio, south of Rome, it is mentioned as early as 1610.
A monumental urn 172 centimeters, or nearly 69 inches, high with mythological scenes carved in low relief on its sides was dug up in Rome in 1583, in the gardens of Sallustus. This, too, is a Greek piece, now famous as “The Borghese Vase.”
To Napoleon, the portraits of historical figures that entered “his” museum mattered most. The bust of Emperor Marcus Aurelius discovered in 1674 at Acqua Traversa near Rome, the bust of Lucius Verus found there in 1720, or the likeness of Agrippa discovered in the course of the 1792 excavations at Gabies, built up a gallery of celebrities from the Ancient Roman past to which the former general of the First Republic saw himself as the heir.
To 21st-century viewers, some of the best known pieces are fascinating for what they tell us about past perceptions of Ancient sculpture. A barbarian captive of the second century A.D. bears a curious resemblance to early Baroque art, which may owe something to its zealous “restoration” at the hands of Pietro Bernini in the early 17th century. No Greek or Roman artist would have carved such gnarled hands.
The “Sleeping Hermaphrodite,” considered to be a Roman copy of a Greek original from the second century B.C., restored by D. Larique, was then set up on a mattress and cushion carved in 1620, again by Bernini. There is not much about it that suggests Antiquity to the modern eye.
Each period redefines the past to suit its vision. Dreamily or jocosely harmonious in the late Renaissance and the Baroque Age, ancient sculpture had to be severe or melodramatic at the time of the Revolution and the Empire, in tune with the sound of incessant war.Continue reading the main story