Napoleon's Plundering of Kassel's Art Treasures
and Their Return. 1806-1815

Pierre-Paul Prud'hon Dominique-Vivant Denon, 1812, Musée du Louvre, Paris

Dominique-Vivant Denon (1747 -- 1825), one of the most influential personalities in Napoleon's empire, left an enduring impression upon the culture of his time. Already before the revolution Denon was pursuing diplomatic business abroad while at the same time developing a connoisseurship of fine arts. In 1798 -- 99 Napoleon took him along on his Egyptian Expedition. One of his most important works appeared in 1802: Voyage dans la haute et basse Egypte pendant les campagnes du géneral Bonaparte. One year later Denon was named General Director of the Musée Napoléon (formerly the Louvre Museum). It was his responsibility to confiscate works of art from territories occupied by the French. In January of 1807 Denon came to Kassel for this purpose. In 1812 Napoleon made Denon a Baron, and endowed him with lands in the Kingdom of Westphalia. When in 1814 Ludwig XVIII took the throne, the King left Denon in his position. However in October of 1815 Denon himself asked to be relieved of office.

Benjamin Zix (Strasbourg 1772 - 1811 Perugia) Allegorical Portrait of Dominique-Vivant Denon 1811, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

The illustrator Benjamin Zix uses this allegorical representation to celebrate Denon as the gatekeeper of the Musée Napoléon, of which Denon was the director. Denon sits at a writing desk before the entrance to the Diana Gallery of the Museum (see upper right of this page). In the middle of the back wall stands the Kassel Athena. Additional boxes of stolen booty, inscribed "Statues" and "Tableux" (Pictures) await inspection by Denon. In the front of the picture various written works lay about - among them Denon's Voyage dans la haute et basse Egypte pendant les campagnes du géneral Bonaparte - plans, medals, and artworks, in sum total a scholar's universe, which in the end serves to glorify Napoleon. This is indicated the Obelisk for the Pont Neuf in the center of the picture, as well as the Vendome Pillar, which when erected in 1810, bore the only public statue of Napoleon in all of France, and finally Bartolini's bust of Napoleon on the left. This bust supposedly stood in the Musée Napoleon beneath Rubens' Triumph of the Victor taken from Kassel. A reference to the geographic dimension of Napoleon's dominance plays out above Denon: here is Antoine Moutons sculpture Napoleon Reflecting upon the Map of Europe.

King Jérôme, Napoleon's Brother, and the Kingdom of Westphalia

The Ball House Built By King Jérôme

Benjamin Zix (1772-1811) Denon Inspecting Paintings in Kassel, 1807, Paris, Musée du Louvre.

Here Denon closely inspects a painting while at his side stands the artist Dix himself. Dix was from Alsace and grew up speaking both French and German. He served Denon not only by graphically documenting his activities but as a translator as well. Behind them both, the sad faced man in a three-cornered hat is presumed to be Tischbein, the gallery director.

Pierre Bouillon (1776-1831) Musée des antiques, Vol.1, Plate without Nr., Berlin,Universität der Künste, Universitätsbibliothek.

The painter and engraver Pierre Bouillon was known above all for his three volume Musée des antiques, in which he published pictures of statues from classical antiquity. His engravings were more careful and detailed than the outline drawings that Landon had published the previous year. The publication of all three volumes of Bouillon's work took ten years.

The Kassel Athena appeared in three publications during her sojourn in Paris, and was the most popular statue taken from German collections among the public. Taken as a whole the statues were more thoroughly documented than the stolen paintings. However, besides the attention getting large works of art that Denon had confiscated in Kassel, he also took many items, which were never displayed or published, but disappeared immediately into the museum's storage rooms.

Benjamin Zix The Confiscation of the Kassel Art Treasures, (Detail),
Bibliothéque nationale de France, Paris

An Overview

The reorganization of German territories by Napoleon was preceded by a systematic sacking of the conquered German rulers' palaces and collections. The director of the Musée Napoléon in the Louvre, Dominique-Vivant Denon (1747 -- 1825), was given the responsibility for selecting appropriate works for Paris. After he had plundered the Prussian collections, Denon found yet another great cache of art treasures in Kassel in January 1807, and then continued his mission in Braunschweig, Hanover (Hannover) and Schwerin. These thefts was rationalized by the belief born in the French Revolution, that art too must be freed from the yoke of tyranny. The artworks should be taken from the semi-private collections of the German rulers and made accessible to the public in Paris. In fact this displacement to Paris was a good thing for at least a few objects. In the Musée Napoléon they became the objects of sustained interest and appreciation.

For the sculptures of classical antiquity taken from Elector (Kurfürst) Wilhelm I's collection -- less so for the paintings -- the Kassel art robbery represented one of Napoleon's typical modernizing reforms. The fate of the statue called the Athena Lemnia is an example of the far-reaching intentions of the Musée Napoléon. The classical statue was among those chosen by Denon from the Museum Fridericianum in Kassel. Together with many other items Damon had all of the classical statues packed up and brought to Paris. Napoleon's brother, Jérôme, chosen by the Emperor to be king of the Napoleonic puppet Kingdom of Westphalia, would arrive in Kassel in December of 1807 to find the Museum Fridericianum so glaringly empty that he finally decided to re-dedicate it as the Kingdom of Westphalia's new house of parliament.

The classical antiquities from Kassel were given prominent placement in the Musée Napoléon. Together with the objects taken from Berlin they dominated the rooms reserved for ancient Greece and Rome. In addition they frequently found their way into publications: in the exhibition catalogue with a short critique and in volumes of engravings where pictures of them appeared for the first time ever. These objects from Kassel, which until this time had remained as good as untouched by researchers, received not only great attention from the public, but also became known to the first time to international archaeological researchers.

Following the collapse of Napoleonic rule a delegation sent from Kassel succeeded in bringing back almost all of at least the classical antiquities. While in other areas of Kassel's art collections there were somewhat more painful gaps, the classical statues in the end benefited. Even the director of the Museum Fridericianum himself, Ludwig Völkel in the end praised the Musée Napoléon as a modern institution serving to aid the research and appreciation of fine art.

Let the Plundering Begin...

The foundation of the Kingdom of Westphalia in July 1807 -- which was hailed by many as the dawning of a new epoch -- was preceded in Kassel by two great ransackings of art treasures. The French troops had scarcely occupied the city in October of 1806, when Napoleon sent an order commanding that suitable artworks from Elector Wilhelm I's art collection be transported to Paris. This task was given to the general director of the Musée Napoléon, as the Louvre museum had been newly baptized in 1803, Dominique-Vivant Denon (1747 -- 1825), who followed upon the heels of the troops. Referred to as the "Eye of Napoleon" he made his selection with equal parts connoisseurship and resoluteness. He had undertaken similar tasks previously in the Prussian collections, and would do so later in those of Braunschweig, Hanover (Hannover), and Schwerin. Denon brought to perfection what the French Revolutionary armies had begun: to systematically steal the best art treasures from the countries they occupied, instead of randomly plundering as in earlier wars. The thought behind this was to bring together these artworks, this evidence of human genius, in Paris -- the home of progress and freedom.

Admittedly rescue attempts were made in Kassel as they had been made in other cities. The Elector (Kurfürst) had chosen forty-eight of his best paintings shortly before his flight, and had them secretly walled up in Sababurg Castle. However the hiding place was soon betrayed, and so important works such as Rembrandt's Descent from the Cross, Rubens' Triumph of the Victor or Lorrain's cycle of paintings depicting the hours of the day, fell into the hands of the French occupiers. Governor General Joseph Lagrange declared that the paintings were war booty and sent them to Mainz to Empress Josephine, Napoleon's wife, who took the pictures with her to Malmaison Palace. There, in her painting gallery, the acquisitions from Kassel, which during transport had been reduced to thirty-six items, made up the core of the collection. Napoleon later confirmed that the paintings were to be regarded as Josephine's personal property. With that he rationalized away the stated goal of his own mission: to "free" these art treasures from the deposed sovereigns, and make them easily accessible to the public

Therefore to all intents and purposes, the cream of the Elector's collection had already been removed before Denon had been assigned his mission. Nonetheless when the general director of the Musée Napoléon made his choices in January of 1807, 299 paintings from the collection succeeded in capturing his interest. He was very well-informed about the collections holdings thanks to a printed catalog from 1783. The robbery struck not only the painting gallery (Gemäldegalerie) in Wilhelmshöhe Palace, but also the Museum Fridericianum. Here Denon ordered the director of the museum Ludwig Völkel (1762 -- 1829) to help him look through the abundant but as yet unorganized holdings of the museum. Völkel's remark, that there was nothing worth looking for that one could not find already in Paris and better, did not convince. In fact quite the opposite: Denon had all of the ancient statues and numerous ancient reliefs packed up, as well as small Egyptian figures and a series of small Roman bronzes, and then went on to choose curiosities from the erstwhile Kunstkammer and a collection of valuable weapons. In total 153 objects were taken from the museum. Damon described what he had found in Kassel as "pearls, true jewels". In order to give an appearance of legality to the confiscation, Denon arranged for both sides to sign a receipt for transfer of ownership.

The Kassel Treasures in the Musée Napoléon

In Paris the Exhibition of War Booty opened on the first anniversary of the Battle of Jena, October 14, 1807. Denon had once again made a careful selection: only 368 of the approximately 1000 confiscated paintings were presented to the public in a portion of the recently finished large gallery of the Louvre, while the items from ancient Greece and Rome were exhibited in additional rooms. The objects had been restored in part for the exhibition. A catalog presented them to the public -- without any information about their origin. Contemporaries such as Friedrich Schlegel heaped praise upon the Musée Napoléon, describing it as a stunning and modern institution. The artistic achievement of all of Europe had been brought together and was presented with the goal of educating the public. Individual artworks no longer enjoyed the comfy confines of their own aesthetic merits; instead the historical development of artistic styles now came to the forefront as the preferred manner of viewing art. In Paris the guidelines were established which are used to this day in many art galleries: grouping art work by national schools and chronologically.

The artworks taken from the Elector's collection were a part of this new artistic arrangement and even played a prominent role there. Paintings from Kassel formed the foundation for the Dutch school of painters at the Louvre. The Kassel Apollo was displayed next to a second Apollo of the same type: two Roman copies of the same lost Greek original; they schooled the observer in finding the qualitative differences, which showed the Kassel Apollo to be the better of the two. The Athena Lemnia, at that time still incorrectly displayed with the head of the Athena Giustiniani, contributed to a splendid display of ancient sculpture with additional pieces from Kassel and Berlin taking up the most important positions in the Diana Gallery. Seven curiosities originally from the Kunstkammer and taken from the Museum Fridericianum were the first seven items listed in the exhibition catalogue. The Musée Napoléon was meant to be a universal collection in the spirit of the Enlightenment, as the Museum Fridericianum before it had been. The innovation in Paris, apart from the sheer number of objects and the possibilities that thereby arose for comparison, lay in a far-reaching educational pretense and perhaps most importantly, the integration of paintings into the exhibition. These had been accommodated in their own gallery building in Kassel. Set up by the Landgraf (Landgrave) Wilhelm I. starting in 1751, almost all of the wall space in the gallery was covered by paintings, which were arranged in part aesthetically, and in part with regard to the subject matter. The new connoisseurship that now developed in Europe led to a complete rejection of these standard methods of presentation from the 18th century.

Of central importance to the influence exercised by the Musée Napoléon were the accompanying publications. In addition to the exhibition catalogue which listed the items on display, and by itself sold over 10,000 copies, it was the publication of volumes illustrated with engravings a short time later that led to a wider examination or discussion of selected works. Rembrandt's Jakob's Blessing from Kassel was reproduced for the first time, along with pictures of the Athena Lemnia and the Kassel Apollo. In addition a great number of plaster copies were made of these last two mentioned statues and distributed widely. For those objects from Kassel, which before this had remained as good as unexamined, these measures meant that they entered into the international archaeological awareness for the first time. For the first time a comparison and examination in a larger context was possible. And finally, some individual works inspired both artisans and industry. For example the porcelain manufacture Sèvres created a dinner service based upon the Athena from Kassel. The Musée Napoléon was the central clearing house for the arts. It created a cannon of European art history.

Charles Normand (1765-1840) after Benjamin Zix. View of the Diana Gallery in the Musée Napoléon, Paris, 1807. Copper Engraving, Göttingen, Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek.

In the 1807 exhibition of stolen war booty, the Diana Gallery displayed the most important works from Classical Antiquity taken from Germany. This is where most of the marble statues from Kassel were displayed. Against the back wall of the gallery stood the Athena, at the time a composite made of the body of Athena Lemnia and the head of Athena Giustiniani. Opposite Athena, against the wall not pictured here, stood the Kassel Apollo. In the middle of the room the viewer can recognize the Statue of a Praying Youth taken from Berlin. The statues were arranged according to aesthetic guidelines. Due regard was given to the symmetry of the individual figure's sizes and their gestures. In some cases the subject matter also played a role: on the left side wall three statues holding snakes stand next to one another. The engraving was based on a drawing by Benjamin Zix. In was included in a volume of copper engravings by Charles-Paul Landon, in which pictures of the Athena and the Kassel Apollo were published for the first time.