Transcript

NARRATION

How was the Louvre adapted to meet the needs of a mass audience?

After the final defeat of Napoleon, the monarchy was restored in France and Louis XVIII, Charles X and Louis Philippe all contributed to the decoration and the completion of the buildings, and the enlargement of the collection.

Now this was a time when most nation states were founding national art museums in imitation of the Louvre, and it quickly became a matter of fierce rivalry to secure the best works. In the Louvre the priority was to replace those crowd pulling masterpieces which had had to be returned after 1815.

An early success was the so-called Venus de Milo, obtained by a mixture of diplomacy and force in 1820. This statue immediate becomes a symbol of beauty, and takes a prominent place in all future organisatons of the Louvre.

After an undignified scramble between French British and German agents, a magnificent collection of Egyptian antiquities was assembled by the French Consul Champmollion, and donated in 1827.

The French developed an ambitious policy of funding expensive archaeological expeditions, substituting by peaceful means for Napoleon’s conquering armies.

In 1847, after a high profile archaeological expedition in Khorsabad, the first two bulls from the Palace of Sargon were installed. By the mid century these discoveries were no chance finds, but the products of systematic competitive endeavour.

And in 1863, the Nyke of Samothrace was discovered, and sent to Paris by Consul Champmollion.

The Louvre quickly established itself as a site for a number of different audiences. This is how Hubert Robert imagined the new art public when the museum was first opened. Art lovers and middle class cognoscenti rub shoulders with foreign or provincial visitors, copyists, and art students.

(Quote from letter by Prince Mirza Aboul Taleb Khan)

“ This museum is paid for at public expense, and the public is freely admitted. It’s purpose is to disseminate a taste for the arts, and to establish their sanctuary in the French capital, also to make the government popular.”

TIM BENTON. (Quote from writer Jules Fleury)

“ The visitors, a turbulent and unseemly mob, can best be described by the words of the psalm, they have eyes but see not. This ignorant public has the special talent of stopping before the very worst paintings. They’re either provincials or foreigners. It’s rare that fashionable Parisians visit the Louvre on open days.”

But this is how the realist novelist, Emile Zola, describes a visit by a working class wedding party from Montmartre.

“ Their guide called a halt in the middle of the Salon Carré. ‘You will only find masterpieces here’ he whispered quietly, as if in a church. Gervaise asked for the Feast of Cana to be explained. ‘It’s stupid not to put the story on the labels’ he said. Coupau stopped in front of the Mona Lisa, which he declared looked like one of his aunts. Boche and Bibi la Grillade sniggered, stealing glances at the nude women. The thighs of Antiope, more than anything, sent them into paroxysms”

TIM BENTON.

All our great contemporary painters have nourished their talent in this one gallery, and if they’ve not all been able to equal their masters, they have at least been encouraged to follow them, by studying their masterpieces.