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  • From Royal to National: The Louvre Museum and the Bibliothèque Nationale
  • Mary Niles Maack
From Royal to National: The Louvre Museum and the Bibliothèque Nationale. By Bette W. Oliver . Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2006. ix, 110 pp. $45.00, $18.95 (paper). ISBN 0-7391-1422-0

By juxtaposing the historical trajectories of the Louvre and the Bibliothèque nationale (BN), Bette Oliver makes a unique contribution to the study of French culture from 1789 to 1815. (These two institutions changed names as governments rose and fell; however, in this review they will be referred to as the Louvre and the BN.) In this slim volume she offers a fascinating presentation of the events and individuals responsible for transforming two royal collections into public institutions that have become enduring symbols of France. Nationalized by the revolutionary government, both institutions were placed in 1792 under Minister of the Interior Jean Roland, who managed to protect their valuable collections from theft and vandalism. Believing that the art collections should serve as a symbol of France's rich patrimony, Roland declared that the new museum would "become one of the most powerful means of illustrating the French Republic" (22). However, fearing for his own safety, Roland resigned from his post and went into hiding several months prior to the grand opening of the museum, which occurred in August 1793—just weeks before the Reign of Terror began.

During the next two decades both the Louvre and the BN were enriched by books and art objects that came to the state from the confiscation of property belonging to émigrés as well as collections seized from monastic communities, academies, universities, and corporations that had been suppressed. Oliver vividly portrays this turbulent era when Jean-Louis Carra, one codirector of the BN, was guillotined and another, Nicolas Chamfort, attempted suicide to avoid prison. Despite his precarious position, Chamfort could never resist showing his wit, and when his guard told him that Parisian theaters lacked audiences, he replied, "Tragedy no longer has the same effect once it roams the streets" (37). By recounting incidents such as this, Oliver conveys the tenor of the times and the character of those who worked against terrible odds.

Throughout these dangerous years France was fortunate to have the erudite Joseph Van Praet on the staff of the BN, where he served from 1784 until his death in 1837. Oliver believes that Van Praet deserves to be acknowledged for his wisdom in selecting books from the diverse holdings of confiscated materials at the literary depots in Paris and Versailles and from books offered at public sales during the revolutionary period and the First Empire. Under his leadership the BN continued its rapid growth into the first decades of the nineteenth century; [End Page 460] an inventory that Van Praet conducted in 1807 listed 250,000 volumes, and fifteen years later he reported an additional 200,000 volumes.

The collections at the Louvre also increased dramatically, and innovations were introduced by the National Museum Commission, which was greatly influenced by art dealers like Jean-Baptiste Pierre LeBrun and artists such as Jacques-Louis David and Dominique-Vivant Denon. These men advocated a radically different approach to exhibition, with works being displayed according to historical periods and national school. Throughout the revolutionary period the collections at the Louvre continued to grow as its curators accessioned confiscated artworks and adapted to the ever-changing political scene.

Between 1795 and 1798, when the Louvre and the BN were under the Committee of Public Instruction, over one-fifth of that agency's total budget went to museums, libraries, and literary depots. In addition, both institutions at least temporarily benefited from collections brought to France following Napoleon's military conquests in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Egypt. However, Oliver observes: "Some confiscated treasures would be returned to their country of origin, but not as many as one might have expected" (63).

In this well-documented study Bette Oliver demonstrates her patient research at the BN and the Archives nationales as well as her extensive knowledge of published primary and secondary sources. Well written and engaging, her work also fills a gap...

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