Kingdom of Sardinia

With the Armistice of Cherasco in May 1796, more than 67 Italian and Flemish artworks fell to France. Turin was made a part of French territory, and the negotiations were particularly cordial.^[21]: 133 Fewer works were taken from Sardinia (which was ruled by the House of Savoy from Turin at the time), although French attention turned to the documents, the codices of the Regal Archive, and Flemish paintings in the Galleria Sabauda.^[3]: 93

Austrian Lombardy

The exterior of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, 2010

The French entered Milan in 1796, as part of the first Italian campaign of Napoleon in Lombardy. In May 1796, while there was still fighting at Castello Sforzesco, Tinet traveled to the Biblioteca Ambrosiana as a member of the French commission. There, Tinet took Raphael's preparatory drawings for the School of Athens fresco at the Vatican; 12 drawings and the Codex Atlanticus of Leonardo da Vinci; the precious manuscripts of the Bucolics of the Virgin, with illuminations by Simone Martini; and five landscapes of Jan Brueghel for Carlo Borromeo that had been placed in the Ambrosiana of Milan in 1673.^[22] The Coronation of Thorns, by a follower of Titian between 1542 and 1543, commissioned by the monks of the Church of Santa Maria delle Graces, was sent to the Louvre. Many works were also taken from the Pinacoteca di Brera and the cathedral of Mantua. From the Mantuan church of Santa Trinità, three Rubens works, The Baptism of Christ, The Gonzaga Trinity, and the Transfiguration were taken to Paris.^{[3]: 73–74}

The Codex Atlanticus was eventually returned,^[23] in pieces, to the Biblioteca Ambrosiana. In fact, many folios of the Codex are stored in Nantes and Basilea, while all the other notebooks and writings of Leonardo are at the national library of France, in Paris.^[24]

Modena

The armistice between Napoleon and the Duke of Modena was signed in May 1796, in Milan by San Romano Federico d'Este, representative of Duke Ercole III. France demanded 20 paintings from the Este Collection and a monetary sum triple that of the Parma armistice.^[16]: 440 The first shipment was sent by Giuseppe Maria Soli, director of the Accademia Atestina di Belle Arti.^[25]

On 14 October 1796, Napoleon entered Modena with two new commissioners, Pierre-Anselme Garrau and Antoine Christophe Saliceti, to sift through Modena's galleries of medals, and the ducal palace for collections of cameos and engraved semi-precious stones.^[26] On 17 October, after taking many manuscripts and antique books from the ducal library, they shipped 1213 items: 900 bronze imperial Roman coins, 124 coins from Roman colonies, 10 silver coins, 31 shaped medals, 44 coins from the Greek cities, and 103 Papal coins. All were sent to the Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris, where they still reside.^[27]

In February 1797, Napoleon's wife Josephine took up residence at the Ducal Palace of Modena and wished to see the collection of cameos and precious stones. She took around 200 of them, in addition to those taken by her husband. French officials also sent 1300 drawings found in the Este collections to the Louvre,^[28] as well as 16 agate cameos, 51 precious stones, and many crystal vases.^[29]

Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla

Exterior of the Palazzo Farnese, which is currently a French embassy

With the armistice of 9 May 1796, the duke of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla was forced to send 20 paintings,^[16]: 440 later reduced to 16, selected by French officials. In Piacenza, the officials chose two canvases from the Cathedral of Parma—The Funeral of the Virgin and The Apostles at the Tomb of the Virgin, by Ludovico Carracci—to be sent to the Louvre. In 1803, by order of the administrator Moreau de Saint Mery, the carvings and decorations of the Palazzo Farnese, as well as the painting The Spanish Coronation, were removed. Two paintings were taken from the Duomo, those by Giovanni Lanfranco of saints Alessio and Corrado. Ettore Rota published tables of all the art taken: 55 works from the Duke of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla, and 8 bronze objects of Veleja, of which 30 works and the 8 bronzes were eventually returned.^[30] Saint Corrado by Lanfranco and The Spanish Coronation remain in France, where they are on display. The remaining works are missing.^[30]

In Parma, after the 1803 orders and the creation of the French Taro department in 1808, more precious objects were stripped from the Ducal archaeological museum, such as Tabula Alimentaria Traianea and Lex Rubria de Gallia Cisalpina . One department prefect complained, after the departure of Vivant Denon, that "there remains nothing to serve as models for the schools of painting in Parma."^[1]: 134

Venetian Republic

The French search for Venetian artworks was led by Monge, Berthollet, the artist Berthélemy, and Tinet, who had previously been in Modena. After the defeat of the Venetian Republic, there were several revolts against the occupying French armies.^[3]: 78 The resulting reprisals and confiscations were particularly harsh. Gold and silver works from the Zecca of Venice and the Basilica di San Marco were melted down and sent to France or used to pay soldiers' salaries.^[31] Religious orders were abolished, and some 70 churches were demolished. Around 30,000 works of art were sold or went missing.^[32]

The Bucintoro, the Venetian state barge, was taken apart along with all its sculptures, much of which was then burned on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore to extract their gold leaf; the Arsenal of Venice was dismantled, and the most beautiful arms, armor, and firearms were sent to France, with the rest (including more than 5,000 cannons) being melted down.^[33][34] The weapons shipped to France were mostly placed in the collection of the Musée de l'Armée, including a bronze cannon made to celebrate an alliance between the Republic of Venice and the Kingdoms of Denmark and Norway.^[34]

The Wedding at Cana, taken from the Benedictine refectory on the island San Giorgio Maggiore, now in the Louvre

The Wedding at Cana, by Veronese, was cut in two and sent to the Louvre (where it remains). The San Zeno Altarpiece, by Mantegna, was cut apart and sent as well. Its platforms remain in the Louvre while the principal panel was returned to Verona, thus destroying the work's integrity. Giovanni Battista Gazola's renowned collection of fossils from Mount Bolca was confiscated in May 1797 and deposited in the Museum of Natural History in Paris that September. Gazola was retrospectively compensated with an annuity from 1797 and a pension from 1803.^[35] He created a second collection of fossils, which were also confiscated and brought to Paris in 1806.^[36]

In April 1797, the French removed the Lion of Saint Mark and famous bronze Horses of Saint Mark. When Napoleon decided to commemorate his victories of 1805 and 1807, he ordered the construction of the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel and that the horses be placed on top as its only ornamentation.^[16]: 441

Rome and the Papal States

After the Armistice of Bologna, the Papal States sent over 500 manuscripts and 100 artworks to France on the condition that the French army would not occupy Rome.^[11] The Pope had to pay the costs of transporting the manuscripts and artworks to Paris. Commission member Jacques-Pierre Tinet took the Raphael altarpieces ceded by the armistice of Bologna, but also an additional 31 paintings, a number of which were by Raphael and Pietro Perugino.^[11]

Tensions ran high between the French and the Romans. In August 1796, Roman rioters attacked French commissioners to protest the appropriations,^[16]: 441 and a French legate was assassinated.^[3]: 83 The Pope himself worked to undermine the clauses of the peace treaty and to delay the actual shipment of the works. When the French government sent him an ultimatum on September 8, 1797, the Pope declared the treaty and Armistice of Bologna null and void.^[3]: 74 When the Papal armies were defeated, Roman emissaries agreed to the harsher conditions of the Treaty of Tolentino. French officials seized art collections in Ravenna, Rimini, Pesaro, Ancona, and Perugia.^{[3]: 76 [16]: 441}

The French Army arriving in Rome in 1798

After the French general Mathurin-Léonard Duphot was accidentally shot and killed outside the French embassy in December 1797, French armies occupied Rome, exiled Pope Pius VI, and establishing the short-lived Roman Republic.^{[3]: 83–84} Although the public was assured that their monuments wouldn't be taken, Napoleonic officials began systematically sacking the city after compiling an inventory of the Vatican's treasures.^[3]: 84

Officials opened the Pope's rooms and fused Vatican medals of gold and silver for easier transportation. They tried to devise a way to remove the frescoes in the Vatican's Raphael Rooms. The artworks were chosen by Joseph de la Porte du Theil, a French intellectual who knew the Vatican library well. He took, among other things, the Fons Regina, the library of Queen Cristina of Sweden. Seizures also took place in the Vatican Library, the Biblioteca Estense of Modena, the libraries of Bologna, Monza, Pavia, and Brera. The private library of Pope Pius VI was seized by Pierre Daunou after it was put up for sale.^[16]: 445

General Pommereul planned to remove Trajan's Column from Rome and send it to France, probably in pieces.^[10] This proposal was not acted on, however, due to the cost of transportation and the administrative obstacles created by the Church to slow the process.^[10]

For their anti-French advocacy, the cardinals Albani and Braschi had their collections seized, from the Villa Albani and the Palazzo Braschi, respectively.^[8]: 87 In May, Daunou wrote that the classical sculptures from Villa Albani filled over 280 crates, all to be sent to Paris.^[8]: 180 The Swiss sculptor Heinrich Keller described the chaotic scene in Rome:

The destruction here is awful; the most beautiful pictures are sold for a song [...] The holier the subject, the lower the price. Yesterday I went to the Capitol, where the situation is dire. Marc Antony stands in a kitchen dressed with a heavy wooden neckpiece and straw gloves; the Dying Gaul is packed in straw and sack cloth to his toes; the beautiful Venus de' Medici is buried to her bosom in hay; while Flora waits buried in a wooden crate.^[8]: 180

In 1809, collections of marbles were sold to Napoleon by Prince Camillo Borghese, who was under significant financial strain due to the heavy taxation imposed by the French. The prince didn't receive the promised sum, but was paid in land requisitioned from the Church and with mineral rights in Lazio. (Following the Congress of Vienna, the prince had to return all such compensation to their legitimate owners.)^[37]

Tuscany

Saint Francis of Assisi Receiving the Stigmata by Giotto from Pisa, now at the Louvre

From March 1799, after Florence was occupied by the Napoleonic armies, Jean-Baptiste Wicar chose which paintings would be taken from the Palazzo Pitti and sent to Paris.^[19]: 120 In total, 63 paintings and 25 pieces of pietre dure were taken from Florence.^[3]: 96 In 1803, the Venus de' Medici was exported to France at the express order of Napoleon.^[38]

The later looting of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany was led out by the director of the Louvre himself, Vivant Denon. Through the summer and winter of 1811, after the Kingdom of Etruria had been annexed by the French empire, Denon took artworks from dissolved churches and convents in Genoa, Massa, Carrara, Pisa, Volterra, and Florence.^[8]: 185 In Arezzo, Denon took The Annunciation of the Virgin, by Giorgio Vasari, from the Church of Santa Maria Novella d'Arezzo. His choice of these "primitive" Italian artworks was odd for the time: the work of the "primitive", or Gothic Italian, artists of c. 1180–1400 was widely disliked.^{[3]: 152 [39]}

In Florence, Denon searched the convent of Saint Catherine, the churches of Santa Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi and Santo Spirito, and the Accademia delle Belle Arti di Firenze, and sent back works to the Louvre, such as the Fra Filippo Lippi's Barbadori Altarpiece from Santo Spirito,^[40] Cimabue's Maestà,^[3]: 151 and Michelangelo's unfinished sculptures for the tomb of Pope Julius II were sent to the Louvre.^[8]: 185.

Naples

Allegory of the Repubblica Napoletana created by Napoleon as a client state

In January 1799 and after the occupation of Naples, General Jean-Étienne Championnet began seizing and shipping artwork in the Kingdom of Naples. In a missive he sent on February 25, he said:

I announce to you with pleasure that we have found the riches we had thought lost. In addition to the Gessi of Ercolano that are at Portici, there are two equestrian statues of Nonius, father and son, in marble for you; the Venus Callipyge will not go alone to Paris, because we have found in the porcelain manufactory, the superb Agrippina that awaits death; the life-size marble statues of Caligula, of Marcus Aurelius, and a beautiful Mercury in bronze and ancient marble busts of great merit, among which one of Homer. The convoy will leave in a few days.^[41]

Paintings, sculpture, books, and gold were all taken by the French during the rule of the short-lived Repubblica Napoletana. The previous year, fearing the worst, Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies had transferred 14 masterpieces to Palermo, but the French soldiers plundered many works from nearby collections like the Gallerie di Capodimonte and the Palace of Capodimonte.^[3]: 96

The catalog of Canova

As a papal diplomat, the sculptor Antonio Canova made a list of Italian paintings that were sent to France.^[42] Below is the list, as reported by French sources, which also notes how many works were subsequently repatriated or lost. Canova was primarily concerned with figurative works and sculptures, omitting minor or merely decorative artworks.^[43]

Initial negotiations

During the First Restoration of the Bourbon dynasty in France under Louis XVIII (1814–15), the nations of the Sixth Coalition did not initially stipulate the return of artworks from France. They were to be treated as "inalienable property of the Crown."^[50] On 8 May 1814, however, Louis declared that works not yet hung in French museums would be returned, which led to the return of many of the Spanish works.^[16]: 446 Manuscripts were returned to Austria and Prussia by the end of 1814, and Prussia recovered all its statues, as well as 10 paintings by Cranach, and 3 by Correggio. The Duke of Brunswick recovered 85 paintings, 174 Limoges porcelains, and 980 majolica vases.^[16]: 449 But most of the works remained in France.

After Napoleon's second abdication in June 1815, followed by another restoration of Louis XVIII, the return of art became a part of negotiations, although the lack of historical precedent made it a messy affair.^{[49][1]: 137 [52]}

Some nations did not wait for agreements from the Congress of Vienna, in order to act. In July 1815, the Prussians began to force restitutions. Frederick William III of Prussia ordered the diplomat von Ribbentropp, art expert Jacobi, and reserve officer Eberhardt de Groote to deal with the returns.^[16]: 450 On 8 July, they demanded Denon return all the Prussian treasures; but he refused, claiming that the returns weren't authorized by Louis XVIII.^[3]: 162 Von Ribbentropp then threatened to have Prussian soldiers seize the works and imprison and extradite Denon to Prussia. By 13 July, all the key Prussian works were out of the Louvre and packed up for travel.^[53]

When the Dutch consul arrived at the Louvre to make similar requests, Denon denied him access and wrote to Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord and the Congress of Vienna:

If we give up all the requests of the Netherlands and Belgium, we deny to the museum one of the most important assets, the Flemings ... Russia is not against, Austria has just received everything, and practically also Prussia. There is only England, that has nothing to ask from the museum, but that has since stolen the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon, and now thinks to make competition with the Louvre, and wishes to loot this museum to collect the crumbs.^[54]

The Gonzaga Cameo, depicting Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II, now in the Hermitage Museum

French museum officials tried to hold onto any objects they had seized, arguing that keeping the artworks in France was a gesture of generosity towards their countries of origin and a tribute to their cultural or scientific importance. In 1815, for example, the French National Museum of Natural History refused the return of artifacts to the Netherlands, claiming that such would necessarily break up the museum's complete collections. The natural historians offered to select and send an "equivalent" collection instead.^{[6]: 28–29} In the end, with the aid of the Prussians, the delegates from the Low Countries grew so impatient that they took their works back by force.^[8]: 186

On 20 September 1815, Austria, the United Kingdom, and Prussia agreed that the remaining artworks should be returned, and affirmed that there was no principle of conquest that would permit France to retain its spoils. Exceptionally, Napoleon's Egyptian spoils which had been ceded to the United Kingdom a few years earlier were not part of the negotiations.^[55] The Russian tsar Alexander I of Russia was not part of this agreement, and preferred to compromise with the French government,^[16]: 451 having just acquired for the Hermitage Museum 38 artworks sold by descendants of Josephine Bonaparte to discharge her debts. The tsar had also received a gift from her shortly before her death in 1814—the Gonzaga Cameo from the Vatican.^[56] After the Vienna agreement was completed, the occupying forces of Paris continued to remove and send artworks to Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, and some Italian cities.^[16]: 452

French representatives protested the returns and argued that they were illegal, as they lacked the force of treaty. Writing about a shipment of paintings to Milan, Stendhal said, "The allies took 150 paintings. I hope to be authorized to observe that we have taken them through the Treaty of Tolentino. The allies took our paintings without a treaty."^[57] On the repatriation of Giulio Romano's The Stoning of Saint Stephen to Genoa, Denon maintained that the work "was offered as tribute to the French government from the city council of Genoa" and that transportation would endanger the work, due to its fragility.^[58]

Self-portrait of Antonio Canova, c. 1792

In comparison to the other nations, the Italian cities were disorganized and without the support of a national army or diplomatic corps to make official requests. The sculptor Antonio Canova was sent by the Vatican on a diplomatic mission to the peace conference for the second Treaty of Paris in August 1815.^[16]: 455 Canova sent letters asking Wilhelm von Humboldt and Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh to support the return of Italian artworks and annul the conditions of the Treaty of Tolentino. In September, Canova also met with Louis XVIII, and that audience lessened French resistance to the repatriations.^[49] By October, Austria, Prussia, and England had agreed to support Canova's efforts, which led to the return of many statues and other sculptures. The Vatican manuscripts were restored by Marino Marini, the nephew of a Vatican librarian, as well as lead type that had been seized from the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.^[16]: 455

English public opinion was generally against the French,^{[16]: 446–447} and the Duke of Wellington wrote to Robert Stewart to intervene on behalf of the Low Countries. Not satisfied, he sent his troops to join the Prussians in the Louvre to remove the Flemish and Dutch paintings from the walls.^[3]: 167 As the Courier described it in October 1815:

The Duke of Wellington came to the diplomatic conferences with a note in his hand, by which he expressly required all works of Art should be restored to their respective owners. This excited great attention, and the Belgians, who have immense claims to make, had been hitherto obstinately refused, did not wait to be told that they could begin to take back what was theirs. ... The brave Belgians are even now on the way to returning their Potters and their Rubens.^[16]: 448

Treaty agreements and shipments

The conditions of the 1815 Treaty of Paris, signed in November required that any artworks to be returned had to be properly identified and returned to the nations they originated from. These conditions made it difficult to determine where some of the paintings should be sent. For example, some Flemish paintings were mistakenly returned to the Netherlands, rather than Belgium.^[5]: 681 The treaty also required effort on the part of the conquered nations for their art to be returned. The situation was only partially resolved when the British offered to finance the costs of repatriating some artworks to Italy,^[49] with the offer of 200,000 lire to Pope Pius VII.^[8]: 186

For various reasons, including lack of money, knowledge of the theft, or appreciation for the value of the works taken,^[8]: 186 the restored allied governments did not always pursue the return of the appropriated paintings. The Austrian governor of Lombardy did not request the Lombardic artworks taken from churches, such as The Crowning with Thorns by Titian. Ferdinand VII of Spain refused the return of several old master paintings when they were offered by the Duke of Wellington. They were taken to London instead.^[59] The Tuscan government, under the Hapsburg-Lorraines, did not request works such as the Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata by Giotto, Maestà by Cimabue, or the Coronation of the Virgin by Beato Angelico. The ceiling paintings of the ducal palace in Venice were never requested, although Titian's Martyrdom of Saint Peter was.^[3]: 170 Canova never asked for 23 paintings dispersed throughout the French provincial museums, as a gesture of good will.^[3]: 171

The Horses of Saint Mark were returned to Venice (not Constantinople, from where they were originally taken by the Venetians) in 1815, after it took workers over a week to remove them from the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel; the streets around the Arc were blocked by Austrian dragoons to prevent any interference with the removal.^[49] The Lion of Saint Mark was dropped and broke while it was being removed from the Esplanade des Invalides before being returned to its original piazza.^{[16]: 452,456}

On 24 October 1815, during negotiations of the treaty, a convoy of 41 carriages was organized that, escorted by Prussian soldiers, traveled to Milan. From there, the artworks were distributed to their legitimate owners throughout Europe.^[50] In November, French general Athenase Lavallée reported that Spain had received 248 paintings, Austria 325, and Berlin 258 bronzes.^[3]: 173