INTRODUCTION
TO form a just appreciation of the magnificent collection of paintings which the Louvre to-day contains would require an exhaustive study which might be spread over a term of years spent in the famous French capital itself. In the limited space at our disposal we can only touch lightly upon the historical events, the sociological causes, the grandeur of royalty, and the taste of the people, all of which contributed towards bringing about the formation of the great Musée National du Louvre as we now know it. It has been our endeavour to throw into prominent relief the outstanding features in the history of the Gallery and to sketch them in chronological order. The architectural claims of the building, its priceless collections of statuary and ofobjets d’artof every age do not here immediately concern us; it is to the formation of the superb collection of paintings that we primarily desire to call our readers’ attention.
A small part of the building which is to-day known as the Louvre was first occupied as a royal residence by Philippe-Auguste (reigned 1180–1223), who converted a hunting-seat of the early French kings on this site into a feudal fortress with a strongdonjonor keep, the exact plan of which may still be traced by the white line marked since 1868 on the pavement in the southwest corner of the old courtyard. Charles v. (reigned 1364–80), who may be regarded as the first royal collector of art treasures in France, greatly enlarged the building of the Old Louvre as a residential palace; he is also said to have decorated the building with statues and paintings which have long since disappeared.The real foundations of the collection ofla maison du Roiwere laid by Françoisi.(reigned 1515–47), who during his Italian campaigns acquired a respect for art that proved to be an honour to his taste and a dowry for his country. The æsthetic movement had developed rapidly by 1541, when he laid the foundations of the present palace[2]and had already begun to form a collection of easel pictures. Françoisi.invited to his court the master-painter Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), who in 1516 left his native land for France, where he did the king little more than the compliment of dying in his realm, although not, as an unveracious tradition recounts, in his arms. Andrea del Sarto (1486–1531) was also employed at the French court, at which he arrived in 1518. Giovanni Battista Rosso (1494–1541), a painter of little genius but great ability, was summoned by Françoisi.in 1530 to decorate the Château at Fontainebleau. Benvenuto Cellini (1500–71), the Florentine goldsmith, having “determined to seek another country and better luck,” was yet one more artist who set out for France, where, between 1540 and 1544, he adorned the royal tables with objects precious in workmanship and material. Primaticcio (1504–70), who is known to have cleaned at Fontainebleau in 1530 four of the large reputed Raphaels now in the Louvre, remained at the French court until his death. The strict authenticity of these four pictures—The Holy Family of Francis I.(No. 1498), theSt. Margaret(No. 1501), the largeSt. Michael(No. 1504), and thePortrait of Joan of Arragon(No. 1507)—does not here concern us. Françoisi.also possessed at this date, among other notable pictures, Raphael’sLa Belle Jardinière(No. 1496,Plate VII.), Leonardoda Vinci’sVirgin of the Rocks(No. 1599), and the same artist’sMona LisaorLa Joconde(No. 1601,Plate IV.), while the art of Sebastiano del Piombo, Andrea del Sarto, and other painters, Flemish as well as Italian, was well represented in the royal collection during his reign.
[2]“Françoisi.voulant avoir dans Paris un palais digne de sa magnificence et dédaignant le vieux Louvre et l’hôtel des Tournelles, amas irrégulier detournelles(tourelles) et de pavillons gothiques, avait fait démolir, dès 1528, la grosse tour du Louvre, ce donjon de Philippe-Auguste duquel relevaient tous les fiefs du royaume. C’était démolir l’histoire elle-même; c’était la monarchie de la renaissance abattant la vieille royauté féodale.”—Martin,Hist. de France.
The example set by Françoisi.was followed by his successor, Henriii.(reigned 1547–59), for whom Niccolò dell’ Abbate (1515–71), an artist of secondary importance, was working from 1552 onwards. Henriii.’s queen, Catherine de Médicis, was also a patron of art, being herself a collector of coins and medals. To her influence was due the decoration of the Château of Fontainebleau and the erection of the Palace of the Tuileries,[3]which was subsequently connected with the Louvre by means of the Long Gallery, now Room VI. Her eldest son, Françoisii.(reigned 1559–60), the husband of Mary Queen of Scots, first converted the new buildings of the Louvre into a royal residence. Henryiv.(reigned 1589–1610) enlarged the Tuileries, and almost completed the Long Gallery, which now contains such a large proportion of the pictures. Louisxiii.(reigned 1589–1610), his eldest son, seems to have taken little interest in the royal collection; but his mother, Marie de Médicis, invited Rubens (1577–1640) to Paris to decorate the Palace of the Luxembourg with that series of imposing canvases representing her own life-history which are to-day seen to their best advantage in the Salle Rubens (Room XVIII.) of the Louvre.
[3]An inscription on a tablet placed high up on the left of the Pavillon Sully records that Françoisi.began the Louvre in 1541, and Catherine de Médicis the Tuileries in 1564.
No complete record has been found of the pictures which formed the royal collection previous to the year 1642. To that date belongs a meagre Catalogue of the objects of art which then remained at Fontainebleau, but it is supposed that when Louisxiv.(reigned 1643–1715) succeeded to the throne he inherited about one hundred pictures, the property of the Crown. With his accession a new era in the history of art in France began.
Meanwhile, across the water, a superb royal collection had been formed. Charlesi.of England (reigned 1625–49) had begun his career as a patron of art before his accession, with the acquisition of the paintings and statues collected by his deceased brother, Henry. During his matrimonial visit to Madrid in 1623 he was presented by Philipiv.with Titian’sVenus del Pardo, now in the Louvre (No. 1587). Soon after his accession he began to collect systematically, employing trusty agents to buy for him in different parts of Europe. His most notable purchase was that of the collection of the Duke of Mantua, for which he paid £18,280 between 1629 and 1632. He is said to have possessed in all 1760 pictures by the date of his execution. Most of them were disposed of at auction by order of Cromwell between 1649 and 1652.
One of the most persistent bidders at the sale of Charlesi.’s pictures was Eberhard Jabach, a native of Cologne, who settled in Paris and became a naturalised Frenchman in 1647. He was an enthusiastic buyer of pictures, and his collection soon surpassed that of the French king. It was known to all French connoisseurs, and was visited by all travellers of note. In time, however, Jabach’s energies as a buyer exceeded his financial resources, and when his debts amounted to 278,718livreshe offered his collection to Louisxiv., who was most anxious to distinguish his reign by the formation of a gallery of pictures which should be in all respects worthy of it. To this end he purchased Eberhard Jabach’s collection, paying 220,000livresfor the 5542 drawings and 101 pictures which it contained. The price originally asked by Jabach was 463,425livres. Among the masterpieces thus acquired by the king were Titian’sEntombment(No. 1584,Plate XIII.), which Jabach had had the good fortune to purchase from the English royal collection for the absurdly small sum of £128, and Giorgione’sPastoral Symphony(No. 1136,Plate X.), which had also been among the treasures of the English Crown.
To Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642), who founded the French Academy in 1635, at one time belonged Andrea Mantegna’sParnassus(No. 1375,Plate XIV.), the same painter’sWisdom victorious over the Vices(No. 1376), Lorenzo Costa’sThe Court of Isabella d’Este in the Garden of the Muses(No. 1261), and the same painter’sMythological Scene(No. 1262), together with Perugino’sCombat of Love and Chastity(No. 1567).
Another important buyer at the sale of Charlesi.’s collection was Cardinal Mazarin (1602–61), who acquired several valuable pictures, besides statuary, tapestries, and other fabrics. Of Mazarin’s pictures the Louvre now possesses Raphael’s smallSt. Michael(No. 1502) and aHoly Family(No. 1135), which is catalogued under the name of Giorgione, but it is more probably from the hand of Cariani.
It is said that Louisxiv.preferred the pictures of his own court-painter, Charles Le Brun, to those of the Venetian master, Paolo Veronese, whose large canvas,The Supper at Emmaus(No. 1196), was nevertheless acquired during his reign. Eight pictures by Annibale Carracci, all of which are not now publicly exhibited in the Louvre (Nos. 1218, 1220, 1222, 1226, 1231–34), Albani’sDiana and Actæon(No. 1111), nine compositions by Guido Reni (Nos. 1439–55 and 1457), and ten paintings by Domenichino (Nos. 1609–10 and 1612–19), also enriched the royal collection during Louisxiv.’s reign. Nor were the great French painters neglected. The four pictures (Nos. 736–39) ofThe Seasons, by Nicolas Poussin, which had been commissioned in 1660 by the Duc de Richelieu for the decoration of the Château de Meudon, togetherwith four of the largest Claudes now in the Louvre (Nos. 312, 314, 316, 317), were obtained for the royal galleries by the ever-watchful Colbert (1619–83), who had been appointed Minister of Finance on the death of Mazarin (1602–61). Flemish art, as seen in the stately pictures of Van Dyck, was represented by seven examples (Nos. 1961–63, 1970, 1973–75). On the other hand, Louisxiv.is said to have failed altogether to appreciate the work of Teniers and to have exclaimed, when some of that artist’s pictures were brought to his notice, “Ôtez-moi ces magots-là!” Only one of the thirty-nine pictures by Teniers now in the Louvre, theInterior of a Cottage(No. 2162), passed into the Gallery at that date. The almost entire absence of Dutch pictures is also to be noticed.
An event of extreme importance in this pompous reign was the institution of the French Academy of Arts, in 1648, with Charles Le Brun (1619–90) as Director, the despotic power which he exercised in art matters bringing about his further appointment as Director of the Gobelins tapestry works in 1660.
In 1681 the Crown pictures and other royal art treasures were brought to the Louvre from Versailles and were temporarily exhibited there, the king paying a state visit to the capital on December 5 to see hiscabinet de tableaux. We read that the walls of eleven rooms were covered up to the cornices. The collection, putting on one side all doubts as to strict authenticity, included six paintings by Correggio, ten by Leonardo da Vinci, eight by Giorgione, twenty-three by Titian, nineteen by A. Carracci, twelve by Guido Reno, and eighteen by Paolo Veronese. These treasures, however, did not remain long at the Louvre, but were “packed up, loaded on rough carts, and taken back over the paved roads to Versailles,” which had now taken precedence over Fontainebleau as a royal residence; and at Versailles the Court mainly resided until the Revolution, although Louisxiv.greatly enlarged the Louvre Palace and planted the Tuileries Gardens. At the death ofle Roi Soleilthe Crown pictures numbered 1500.
The energy of Louisxiv.was followed by the apathy of his degenerate successor, Louisxv.(reigned 1715–74), who, however, added 300 pictures to the royal collection. TheVirgin with the Blue DiademorVirgin with the Veil(No. 1497), which still passes under the name of Raphael, was among the pictures which then passed out of the collection of the Prince de Carignan into the possession of the Crown. It was now a sorry moment for the pictures which, “scattered through the interminable and then ill-kept country palaces of the French Crown, exposed to every injury of time, ignorance, and weather, regarded at best in the light of old furniture and too often in that of old lumber, pleaded in vain for respect and care. No public Catalogue told of their existence; the generation that had talked of them had passed away; it was nobody’s business to ask for them, and few actually knew where they were. Even the new-comers passed into the same void which had swallowed their predecessors.” Some of the pictures previously recorded now disappeared completely, without leaving a clue to their fate. Eventually, in 1746, M. de la Fonte de Saint-Yenne in a pamphlet directed public opinion to the fact that these Crown pictures had for fifty years been hidden and neglected in “une obscure prison de Versailles.” As a result of this, in 1750, by the king’s permission, 110 pictures selected from the different schools of painting were brought from Versailles to the Palais de Luxembourg, where the large canvases by Rubens (now in the Salle Rubens at the Louvre) were regarded as forming acentre d’études. Here for the first time, and for two days only in the week, they were shown under certain restrictions to a limited public. In 1785 they were again removed to Versailles.
Although Louisxiv.’s well-known grudge against Holland probably accounted for the almost entire absence of Dutch pictures from the Crown possessions, Louisxvi.had the good taste to acquire works by Aelbert Cuyp (No. 2341,Landscape); Jan van Goyen (No. 2375,Banks of a Dutch River, and No. 2377,A River in Holland); B. van der Helst (No. 2394,The Officers of the Arquebusiers of St. Sebastian); G. Metsu (No. 2461,The Alchemist); Adriaen van Ostade (No. 2495,The Painter’s Family[?], and No. 2496,The Schoolmaster); Isaac van Ostade (No. 2510,A Frozen Canal in Holland); Rembrandt (No. 2539,The Pilgrims at Emmaus, No. 2540, and No. 2541,The Philosopher in Meditation, No. 2555,Portrait of Rembrandt aged); Jacob van Ruisdael (No. 2559,Landscape, and No. 2560,Sunny Landscape); Terborgh (No. 2587,The Military Gallant); and Philips Wouverman (No. 2621,The Prize Ox, and No. 2625,The Stag Hunt). Five of the less important of Murillo’s pictures now in the Louvre (Nos. 1712–15 and No. 1717) were also acquired at this period, and the series of twenty-two large canvases illustratingScenes from the Life of St. Brunoby Eustache Le Sueur were also purchased by Louisxvi.
From 1725 onwards the Salon held its Exhibitions in the Salon Carré (Room IV.), but after 1848 this room was used only for Paintings by the Old Masters.
In 1790 a Commission was appointed by the National Assembly “to register and watch over all that was most valuable,” and on May 26, 1791 a decree was made that the Louvre should be thenceforward dedicated to the conservation of objects of science and of art. On August 26 of the same year a further Commission was appointed by the National Convention to inspect and gather together the treasures of art scattered throughles maisons royales. The Convention decided that the “Museum of the Republic” should be officially opened in the Long Gallery of the Louvre on August 10, 1793, and from November 8 of the same year theMuseum was open to the inspection of the public three days in every ten. This, the first public exhibition of art treasures in the Louvre, was the foundation of the present institution. The Catalogue of this date contains reference to only 537 pictures, the greater number of which came from Paris churches and national buildings. The inhabitants of Versailles now petitioned that their town should not be despoiled of its pictures, “and so be deprived of its last attraction in the eyes of the world”!
The Louvre was now destined to become for a few years the temple of thespolia opimawhich the victorious French army brought home. “This system of levying pictures, statues, and other objects by means of treaties, so called, in which the conqueror dictated terms to those incapable of refusing them, was a dishonourable novelty in the annals of modern warfare. Disdaining the usages of Christian nations and overleaping especially the traditions of French courtesy and chivalry, Buonaparte turned back to the ages of pagan history for a precedent for his measures of spoliation.” By the Treaty of Bologna of June 23, 1796, and the Treaty of Tolentino of February 19, 1797, he became possessed of twenty pictures from Modena, twenty from Parma, forty from Bologna, ten from Ferrara, while Rome, Piacenza, Cento, Ravenna, Rimini, Pesaro, Ancona, Loreto, and Perugia also had to yield up a portion of their treasures.
The first exhibition of this booty was held in the Louvre in January 1798. Here, during the next few years, were gathered together many of the world’s most famous pictures, including Raphael’sSt. Cecilia, now in the Bologna Gallery; Correggio’sSt. Jeromeand hisMadonna della Scodella, now in the Parma Gallery; Raphael’sTransfiguration, now in the Vatican, and hisMadonna della Sedia, now in the Pitti Palace at Florence; Domenichino’sLast Communion of St. Jerome, now in the Vatican; Titian’sMartyrdom of St. Peter Martyr, destroyed by fire in 1867,and hisAssumption, now in the Venice Gallery; Van Eyck’sAdoration of the Lamb, now dismembered and distributed between Ghent, Berlin, and Brussels; Paris Bordone’sFisherman of St. Mark, now in the Venice Gallery; and Paul Potter’sBull, now at The Hague. “Here was seen the unexampled sight of twenty-five Raphaels ranked together, the great master complete in every period and walk of his art. Here twenty-three Titians glowed in burning row. Here Rubens revelled in no less than fifty-three pictures and in almost as many classes of subject. Van Dyck followed his illustrious master with thirty-three works, while thirty-one specimens of Rembrandt’s brush shed a golden atmosphere upon the walls. The later Italians especially were magnificently represented—thirty-six pictures by Annibale Carracci, sixteen by Domenichino; twenty-three by Guido; including the largest altarpieces by each; and twenty-six by Guercino, were perhaps the most popular part of the wondrous show.”
However, in September 1815, the pictures and other valuable works of art which France had plundered from her foes had to be given back, and the spoliation of the Louvre began. In all, 5233 objects, of which 2065 were pictures, were taken away from the Royal Museum by the Allied Powers.
An event rare in the history of public galleries took place in 1813, when the Louvre received Carpaccio’sPreaching of St. Stephen(No. 1211), Boltraffio’sMadonna of the Casio Family(No. 1169), Marco d’Oggiono’sHoly Family(No. 1382), Moretto’sSt. Bernardino of Siena and St. Louis of Toulouse(No. 1175), and the same artist’sSt. Bonaventura and St. Anthony of Padua(No. 1176), in exchange for five pictures by Rubens, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, and Jordaens.
It is curious to notice that at this period very little importance was attached to Italian primitives, which were, indeed,deemed “barbarous.” Many beautiful works of the very early Italian schools were actually not considered worth the trouble and expense of transport, and were therefore left for the lasting glory of the Louvre. Among them may be mentioned Fra Angelico’sCoronation of the Virgin(No. 1290); theMadonna and Child and Two Saints, (No. 1114), now officially ascribed to Albertinelli; Bronzino’sChrist and the Magdalene(No. 1183); theMadonna and Angels(No. 1260), which passes under the name of Cimabue; Gentile da Fabriano’sPresentation in the Temple(No. 1278); theCoronation of the Virgin(No. 1303), still officially ascribed to Raffaellino del Garbo;St. Francis of Assisi receiving the Stigmata(No. 1312), which still passes under the name of Giotto; Benozzo Gozzoli’sTriumph of St. Thomas Aquinas(No. 1319); Fra Filippo Lippi’sMadonna and Child between Two Saints(No. 1344); Pesellino’s two small predella pictures (No. 1414); Piero di Cosimo’sCoronation of the Virgin(No. 1416);The Madonna in Glory between St. Bernard and St. Mary Magdalene(No. 1482), which is still assigned to Cosimo Rosselli; Lorenzo di Credi’sMadonna and Child with St. Julian and St. Nicholas(No. 1263); Cima’sMadonna and Child(No. 1259); Vasari’sAnnunciation(No. 1575), which is now in one of the storerooms of the Louvre; the FerrareseMadonna and Child with St. Quentin and St. Benedict(No. 1167), which is still assigned to Bianchi; Andrea Mantegna’sCalvary(No. 1373) andVirgin of Victory(No. 1374); Domenico Ghirlandaio’sVisitation(No. 1321); and Perugino’sSt. Paul(No. 1566). Further proof of the slight regard in which certain pictures that we cherish to-day were then held is afforded by the readiness with which the authorities sent two panels of Mantegna’s altarpiece, the centre-part of which is now in the Church of San Zeno at Verona, to the Museum at Tours, and parted with Perugino’s altarpieces to the public galleries of Lyons and Marseilles.
Under Louisxviii. (died 1824) 111 pictures werepurchased for the national collection at a cost of £26,730, but during the reign of Charlesx.(1824–30) only 30 were acquired, £2511 being expended on them. An outlay of £2965 by Louis Philippe (reigned 1830–48) enriched the Louvre with 33 more pictures, but that king concentrated his efforts on the restoration and decoration of the Château of Versailles, on which he spent £440,000.
In the early years of the Second Republic a large number of improvements were effected in the Louvre, and in 1848 £8000 was spent on restoring several of the rooms now hung with pictures, which were first systematically arranged three years later. Although the Museum had at that period an annual grant of £2000 for the purchase of pictures, special grants in aid were made from time to time, notably on the occasion of the sale of Marshal Soult, pictures from whose collection were acquired in 1852 for £24,612. In this way Murillo’sImmaculate Conception(No. 1709,Plate XXVI.) passed to the Louvre from the “Plunder-master-General” of the Spanish campaign.
During the Second Empire the Musée du Louvre acquired about 200 Italian primitives from the Campana collection, while seven years later it was further enriched by the important bequest by Dr. La Caze of 275 paintings of different schools. Since 1870, when the Palace of the Tuileries was destroyed, the permanent collection has been increased by the purchase in 1883 for £8000 of the Morris Moore “Raphael” (No. 1509), which has since come to be universally regarded as a work by Perugino; while about 300 other paintings of varying importance have also been acquired from time to time with Government funds. In recent years the national collection has benefited largely by the generosity of private donors, among whom we may mention MM. Duchâtel, Gatteaux, His de la Salle,Lallemant, Maciet, Rodolphe Kann, Sedelmeyer, Grandidier, Vandeul, and several members of the Rothschild family.
In 1896, by the sale of a large proportion of the Crown jewels, aCaisse des Muséeswas organised, and the annual income devoted to the purchase of pictures notably increased. A year later theSociété des Amis du Louvre, which corresponds to the National Art-Collections Fund in England, was founded to assist in securing pictures and other works of art for the nation; by that means theMadonna and Child(No. 1300aor 1300b) which passes under the name of Piero dei Franceschi was acquired by the Louvre.
In May 1900, on the inauguration of theExposition Universelle, the opportunity was taken to rehang a large part of the collection, and the Galerie de Médicis (Room XVIII.) and the eighteen small cabinets built round it were first used for the better exhibition of a large proportion of the Flemish and Dutch pictures. Shortly afterwards, by the death of M. Thomy Thiéry, an Englishman who had become a naturalised Frenchman, over 100 paintings, mostly of the school of Barbizon, became an exceedingly valuable addition to the Louvre, and filled a void in the history of French painting in the nineteenth century. During the last two years the most memorable purchases by the Government have been that of Chardin’sChild with a Top(No. 90a), which was acquired together with the same artist’sYoung Man with a Violin(No. 90b) for £14,000, and Hans Memlinc’sPortrait of an Old Lady(Plate XVII.) for £8000.
The national collection of the Musée du Louvre now includes in its Catalogue nearly two thousand eight hundred oil and tempera paintings, about four hundred of which have not been exhibited for many years.