TWO GREAT HISTORICAL LEADERS
AND THEIR LEGACIES IN ART
Catherine the Great & Napoleon Bonaparte
BY MIGUEL BERMUDEZ
TWO GREAT HISTORICAL LEADERS AND THEIR LEGACIES IN ART. Catherine the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte
AN INTERVIEW WITH SUSAN JAQUES BY MIGUEL BERMUDEZ
Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia and Napoleon I, Emperor of the French were both unique, powerful, influential and fascinating individuals that through their force and ambition, created empires with long-lasting world impacts. One of the key aspects for both historians and art scholars is the profound involvement of both leaders in the importance of art as a symbol of knowledge, power, success, and enrichment both materially and spiritually. The plundering of art objects, particularly those of great value was not new to the history of the conquerors. It was demonstrated by Alexander the Great and during the Roman, Spanish and Portuguese empires during their conquests. However, the plunder of art by Napoleon Bonaparte and acquisition of art by Catherine the Great was used stragetically to achieve both national and personal goals that would transcend each of these leaders’ reigns.
Susan Jaques
AN INTERVIEW WITH SUSAN JAQUES
BY MIGUEL BERMUDEZ
Susan Jaques, a distinguished author has produced two fascinating books on these great historical leaders and their approach to art. For each of us seeking a connection between life and art, we highly recommend Susan’s books. Susan was able to join us for a brief interview, which is highlighted below.
The Hermitage version of the Raphael Loggia. Photography by Meb3 © All Rights Reserved.
MEB: What motivated each of these extraordinary figures to pursue art?
Did they have exhibited curiosity in their youth?
S.J: Interestingly, both Catherine the Great and Napoleon’s interest in art developed as adults in parallel with their soaring political ambitions. Both were foreigners who seized power in coup d’états and used art to legitimize their reigns. After deposing her husband, Catherine found herself on shaky ground because she was German.
She began amassing a world-class art collection for St. Petersburg (the foundation of today’s Hermitage Museum) both to legitimize herself as tsarina and help transform Russia’s image.
Napoleon, a Corsican-born military hero who replaced the Directory regime with the Consulate and later established the First Empire, stole great masterpieces of art for the Louvre with each of his victories. It was part of his strategy to turn Paris into the new Rome, Europe’s cultural capital. From the start, both rulers carefully controlled their iconography. Catherine had herself depicted as Russia’s enlightened, cultured ruler. Before seizing power, Napoleon enhanced his heroic reputation by minting medals of himself and his victories. Later, he has himself portrayed as Caesar in a Roman toga and laurel wreath.
MEB: Fascinating. Once each of these leaders started noticing art in the early stages of their political careers, did they consciously plan future acquisitions?
S.J: Both Catherine the Great and Napoleon’s use of art evolved with changing political circumstances. Catherine was a bibliophile with a large personal library and she especially prized books on art and architecture. Early in her reign, after Russia defeated the Ottomans, she ordered statues and paintings to glorify her victories. The self-taught tsarina became a passionate, hands-on collector and patroness of neoclassical art and architecture.
Unlike Catherine, Napoleon was not a connoisseur. But he recognized the powerful propaganda value of great art and architecture. As a young general leading the Italy Campaign in 1796, Napoleon demanded specific artworks and quantities in his peace treaties. He was most interested in Rome’s antiquities – packing up masterpieces from the Vatican like the Laocoön and Apollo Belvedere. He spun his Egyptian Campaign into a cultural and intellectual victory, inspiring a craze of Egyptomania. By 1804 when Napoleon proclaimed France an empire and himself emperor, his taste shifted from Republican Rome to imperial Rome. “Men are only as great as the monuments they leave behind,” he said. Channeling the Caesars, he commissioned two triumphal arches and the Vendôme Column after famous surviving monuments of ancient Rome.
MEB: How do they differ in their initial art collecting? What were their prime interests in the field of art?
The Hermitage version of the Raphael Loggia. Photography by Meb3 © All Rights Reserved.
S.J: While there are fascinating parallels in their motivations toward collecting, there was one very important difference. Catherine the Great bought art; Napoleon stole it. There are two exceptions worth mentioning. When her troops put down an uprising in Warsaw in 1794, Catherine ordered them to confiscate the renowned Zaluski Library. Napoleon did buy the storied antiquities collection of his Roman brother-in-law, Camillo Borghese.
That collection remains today at the Louvre.
MEB: There is both a personal and political dimension to both these leaders towards art and history. Did Catherine actually develop a passion for her pieces through learning? Did Napoleon have that passion and how was he educated on what to obtain?
S.J: Catherine developed a genuine passion for art and architecture. For example, a beautiful book of Volpato’s engravings of the Raphael Loggia at the Vatican inspired her to commission an exact replica for the Winter Palace. Unlike Catherine, who never left Russia as tsarina (save a trip to her newly annexed Crimea Peninsula), Napoleon was seldom in France. From the battlefields of Europe, he micromanaged numerous projects for Paris with the help of a loyal group of advisers. He entrusted his art plunder to his talented museum director Dominique Vivant Denon, known as “the packer.” Fascinatingly, Napoleon did commission tables from the Sevres porcelain factory. One featured Alexander the Great surrounded by antiquity’s most famous commanders; the other starred Napoleon and his generals.
MEB: Once all these art treasures began to arrive in St. Petersburg and Paris, were these acquisitions admired or observed privately by both Catherine and Napoleon? Were they intended to be private or publicly displayed?
Table of the Great Commanders, 1806-12 (hard-paste porcelain & gilt bronze over wood), French School, (19th century) / Royal Collection Trust © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, 2018 / Bridgeman Images
S.J: Catherine’s art trove was originally intended for private display. For propaganda purposes, she shared her impressive acquisitions with members of the diplomatic corps and aristocratic guests at the Winter Palace, Chesme Palace, and Catherine Palace at Tsarskoe Selo. The most famous pieces of Napoleon’s art loot were installed for public display at the Louvre, renamed the Musee Napoleon. With its treasures, the museum quickly became a tourist mecca. Some art was diverted to decorate Napoleon’s residences – Josephine’s Malmaison and many of the former royal palaces.
Designers Percier and Fontaine also redecorated these residences in the new Empire Style, their militaristic spin on neoclassicism.
Gonzaga Cameo, 3rd century BC sardonyx, gift from Josephine to Alexander I in 1814, State Hermitage Museum, photo by Ruth Cousineau
MEB: Was Catherine objective in her art collecting intended for internal or external displays of power and sophistication?
S.J: Not surprisingly, Catherine the Great developed very strong opinions about art and architecture. Among her favorite artists was Rembrandt, who uniquely enjoyed his own gallery at the Winter Palace. As a proponent of the Enlightenment, she disapproved of nudity in art unless the subject was mythological. She so disliked the sentimental style of the popular French portraitist Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun that she had her to redo a double portrait of her granddaughters. Catherine thought that Vigée had depicted them looking like French pug dogs! A strong proponent of neoclassicism, Catherine redid Rastrelli’s baroque interiors at the Winter Palace and Catherine Palace.
MEB: Did Napoleon consciously accumulates art for a national audience rather than a demonstration of power with the rest of Europe as his audience?
S.J: Napoleon’s accumulation of art was intended as a show of power, French cultural superiority, and patriotism. On his way to invade Egypt in spring 1798, the young general said, “If I were master of France, I would make Paris not only the most beautiful city which has ever existed, but the most beautiful that could exist… to combine all the admirable aspects of Athens, Rome, Babylon and Memphis.” A year and a half later, he is master of France.
MEB: Did they also utilize the architecture and statuary to reinforce their legacies? If so, what has been the impact?
S.J: Catherine was a passionate builder. Unfortunately, a number of her neoclassical palaces were damaged during the Nazi Siege of Leningrad. Pavlovsk and Alexander Palace in Tsarskoe Selo, gifts to her son and grandson, have been restored and are now museums. Catherine’s greatest commission, the equestrian statue of Peter the Great known as the Bronze Horseman, survived the Siege of Leningrad and has become a national icon. Catherine’s posthumous statue in St. Petersburg stands near the Russian National Library, originally built by Catherine as the Imperial Public Library.
Susan Jaques- The Caesar of Paris-Cover
Napoleon’s Arc de Triomphe at the top of the Champs Elysees, recently in the news as the focus of the Yellow Vest protests, is a national icon. For its design, architect Chalgrin supersized the Arch of Titus in Rome. Based on Trajan’s Column, the Vendôme Column commemorates Napoleon’s 1805 victory at Austerlitz. Topped during the Paris Commune of 1871, the column was rebuilt with a new statue of Napoleon in military garb instead of a toga. A fundraising campaign is currently underway to restore Napoleon’s Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel by the Louvre, created as a grand entrance to the Tuileries Palace (burned during the Commune). It was originally topped with a figure of Napoleon driving a quadriga, with the famous bronze horses from St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice. The Madeleine, modeled after the ancient Roman Maison-Carrée in Nîmes, was turned into a church during the Bourbon restoration.
MEB: What was the lasting impression that each of their approaches to art collecting had on the rest of Europe?
S.J: Catherine the Great’s stealthy approach to art collecting stunned Europe, which had long considered Russia a cultural backwater. Her acquisitions of the collections of Pierre Crozat and Sir Robert Walpole resulted in laws in France and England to protect cultural patrimony. Napoleon’s institutionalized art plunder was both admired and condemned across Europe.
MEB: Are most of these art pieces still in the possession of Russia and France?
S.J: Catherine’s grandson, Nicholas, who built the New Hermitage and opened the museum to the public, sold off some of her paintings. Later, Stalin secretly sold some 15 of her paintings to Andrew Mellon, who donated them to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Susan Jaques – The empress of art
After Napoleon’s defeat, the Duke of Wellington led the art restitution effort in Paris, pledging to teach France “a great moral lesson.” It’s estimated that about half of the art stolen from Italy was returned through the efforts of Italian sculptor Antonio Canova. Canova went head to head with Louvre director Denon, who did his best to obstruct the effort. Veronese’s Wedding Feast at Cana from San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice is one famous work that stayed at the Louvre. Many works dispersed by Denon to France’s provincial museums were never returned.
To conclude this adventure of art through Catherine and Napoleon, we always try to find a fascinating turn of events on our art journeys. In her own words, Susan Jaques gifts us a great finale for this journey.
“One of Catherine the Great’s last actions before her death in November 1796 was to send the Russian army after a young French general who was stunning all of Europe with victories across Northern Italy. Catherine’s beloved grandson, Alexander I, was tsar during Napoleon’s reign and disastrous invasion of Russia in 1811. Two years earlier, when Napoleon decided to divorce Josephine, he tried unsuccessfully to marry Alexander’s younger sister. In 1814, Alexander befriended Josephine and bought her art collection from her heirs for the Hermitage, including her personal collection of Canova sculptures. Before she died, Josephine gave Alexander the Gonzaga cameo. The extraordinary antique gem, a gift from Napoleon, was taken from the Vatican.”
Meb3
