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 of _objets d’art_ of 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 strong _donjon_ or 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 of _la
maison du Roi_ were laid by François I. (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. François I. 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 François
I. 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), the _St. Margaret_ (No. 1501), the
large _St. Michael_ (No. 1504), and the _Portrait of Joan of Arragon_
(No. 1507)—does not here concern us. François I. also possessed at this
date, among other notable pictures, Raphael’s _La Belle Jardinière_
(No. 1496, Plate VII.), Leonardo da Vinci’s _Virgin of the Rocks_ (No.
1599), and the same artist’s _Mona Lisa_ or _La 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] “François I. voulant avoir dans Paris un palais digne de sa
magnificence et dédaignant le vieux Louvre et l’hôtel des Tournelles,
amas irrégulier de _tournelles_ (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 François I. was followed by his successor, Henri II.
(reigned 1547-59), for whom Niccolò dell’ Abbate (1515-71), an artist
of secondary importance, was working from 1552 onwards. Henri II.’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, François II. (reigned
1559-60), the husband of Mary Queen of Scots, first converted the new
buildings of the Louvre into a royal residence. Henry IV. (reigned
1589-1610) enlarged the Tuileries, and almost completed the Long
Gallery, which now contains such a large proportion of the pictures.
Louis XIII. (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 François I. 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 Louis XIV. (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. Charles I. 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 Philip
IV. with Titian’s _Venus 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 Charles I.’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 278,718 _livres_ he offered his collection to Louis XIV., 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 220,000 _livres_
for the 5542 drawings and 101 pictures which it contained. The price
originally asked by Jabach was 463,425 _livres_. Among the masterpieces
thus acquired by the king were Titian’s _Entombment_ (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’s _Pastoral 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’s _Parnassus_ (No. 1375,
Plate XIV.), the same painter’s _Wisdom victorious over the Vices_ (No.
1376), Lorenzo Costa’s _The Court of Isabella d’Este in the Garden of
the Muses_ (No. 1261), and the same painter’s _Mythological Scene_ (No.
1262), together with Perugino’s _Combat of Love and Chastity_ (No.
1567).
Another important buyer at the sale of Charles I.’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 small _St. Michael_ (No. 1502) and
a _Holy 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 Louis XIV. 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’s _Diana 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 Louis XIV.’s reign. Nor were
the great French painters neglected. The four pictures (Nos. 736-39)
of _The Seasons_, by Nicolas Poussin, which had been commissioned in
1660 by the Duc de Richelieu for the decoration of the Château de
Meudon, together with 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, Louis XIV. 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, the _Interior 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 his
_cabinet 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 Louis XIV. greatly enlarged the
Louvre Palace and planted the Tuileries Gardens. At the death of _le
Roi Soleil_ the Crown pictures numbered 1500.
The energy of Louis XIV. was followed by the apathy of his degenerate
successor, Louis XV. (reigned 1715-74), who, however, added 300
pictures to the royal collection. The _Virgin with the Blue Diadem_
or _Virgin 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 a _centre 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 Louis XIV.’s well-known grudge against Holland probably
accounted for the almost entire absence of Dutch pictures from the
Crown possessions, Louis XVI. 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 illustrating _Scenes from the Life of St. Bruno_ by
Eustache Le Sueur were also purchased by Louis XVI.
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 through _les 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 the Museum 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 the
_spolia opima_ which 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’s _St. Cecilia_,
now in the Bologna Gallery; Correggio’s _St. Jerome_ and his _Madonna
della Scodella_, now in the Parma Gallery; Raphael’s _Transfiguration_,
now in the Vatican, and his _Madonna della Sedia_, now in the Pitti
Palace at Florence; Domenichino’s _Last Communion of St. Jerome_, now
in the Vatican; Titian’s _Martyrdom of St. Peter Martyr_, destroyed
by fire in 1867, and his _Assumption_, now in the Venice Gallery;
Van Eyck’s _Adoration of the Lamb_, now dismembered and distributed
between Ghent, Berlin, and Brussels; Paris Bordone’s _Fisherman of St.
Mark_, now in the Venice Gallery; and Paul Potter’s _Bull_, 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’s _Preaching of St. Stephen_ (No.
1211), Boltraffio’s _Madonna of the Casio Family_ (No. 1169), Marco
d’Oggiono’s _Holy Family_ (No. 1382), Moretto’s _St. Bernardino of
Siena and St. Louis of Toulouse_ (No. 1175), and the same artist’s _St.
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’s _Coronation of
the Virgin_ (No. 1290); the _Madonna and Child and Two Saints_, (No.
1114), now officially ascribed to Albertinelli; Bronzino’s _Christ and
the Magdalene_ (No. 1183); the _Madonna and Angels_ (No. 1260), which
passes under the name of Cimabue; Gentile da Fabriano’s _Presentation
in the Temple_ (No. 1278); the _Coronation 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’s _Triumph of St. Thomas Aquinas_ (No.
1319); Fra Filippo Lippi’s _Madonna and Child between Two Saints_ (No.
1344); Pesellino’s two small predella pictures (No. 1414); Piero di
Cosimo’s _Coronation 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’s _Madonna and Child with
St. Julian and St. Nicholas_ (No. 1263); Cima’s _Madonna and Child_
(No. 1259); Vasari’s _Annunciation_ (No. 1575), which is now in one of
the storerooms of the Louvre; the Ferrarese _Madonna and Child with
St. Quentin and St. Benedict_ (No. 1167), which is still assigned to
Bianchi; Andrea Mantegna’s _Calvary_ (No. 1373) and _Virgin of Victory_
(No. 1374); Domenico Ghirlandaio’s _Visitation_ (No. 1321); and
Perugino’s _St. 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 Louis XVIII. (died 1824) 111 pictures were purchased for the
national collection at a cost of £26,730, but during the reign of
Charles X. (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’s
_Immaculate 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, a
_Caisse des Musées_ was organised, and the annual income devoted to
the purchase of pictures notably increased. A year later the _Société
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 the _Madonna and Child_ (No.
1300A or 1300B) which passes under the name of Piero dei Franceschi was
acquired by the Louvre.
In May 1900, on the inauguration of the _Exposition 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’s _Child with a Top_ (No. 90A),
which was acquired together with the same artist’s _Young Man with a
Violin_ (No. 90B) for £14,000, and Hans Memlinc’s _Portrait 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.