Another Napoleon Story

The movie Napoleon is out and The Doc and I went to see it.  Interesting.  Lavish sets, good music, and gory battles all combined to make a rather lackluster movie about one of the most exciting personalities in history.   I can’t really put my finger on what went wrong, but somehow the movie just missed the Mark.  (Pun intended.)

I wasn’t overly upset by the numerous historical mistakes.  He was too old, she was too young, he didn’t witness the execution of Marie Antoinette, and there was no need to invent a story about Napoleon’s army shooting a cannon ball into the side of a pyramid.  Nor was there any need to invent a totally bogus version of the Battle of Austerlitz, turning a minor incident that killed at most a few men into a catastrophe that wiped out the Allied army.  The technical advisor for the film was probably a sociologist.  

Of more interest than the actual movie was the fact that the theater had only four people for the noon matinee, perhaps because the tickets were twice the normal price.  Even worse for the theater was that the screening room next door was showing a Beyoncé movie to a completely empty theater.  I’m studying economics, not marketing, but wouldn’t it make more sense to fill the theater with people who had purchased discounted tickets?  After all, people who aren’t in the theater can’t buy the overpriced popcorn.  Shouldn’t the people who run movie theaters being doing something different before their whole industry collapses?  According to the news, 3000 theaters have closed nationwide since the start of Covid.

Instead of wasting your time watching a three-hour movie in an empty theater, there is a far more interesting story about Napoleon out there, and it involves a painting by one of the best Spanish artists, Diego Velazquez.  If you are unfamiliar with his work, you can read about his most famous painting that is one of my favorites, here.

What art historians call spoliations napoléoniennes (and what everyone else calls “Napoleon stealing European art from every country he marched an army through”), started in 1794 and lasted for almost two decades.  Exactly how much art was looted is impossible to determine but it numbers in the thousands of pieces.  Most of it was sent to the newly established Musée du Louvre in Paris, with significant numbers ending up in the hands of various military officers, both French and British.  After Napoleon was finally defeated at Waterloo, the coalition of victors—calling themselves the Congress of Vienna—declared that all of the art had to be repatriated.  Surprisingly, some was.  Not very surprisingly at all, lots of it still hasn’t been.

The Spanish Royalty had amassed a fabulous collection of art, and when Napoleon invaded Spain and put his brother Joseph on the throne as a puppet king, Napoleon ordered his brother to send the best works north to Paris.  The Emperor intended to build a new museum, the Musée Napoléon that would outshine the Louvre.  Joseph loved the idea of a new museum so much that he decided he needed his own museum, a Museo Josefino.  As he looted the various royal residences of Madrid, Joseph kept what he thought were the best paintings for himself and sent 50 of the rest—still fabulous works of art by famous painters—across the Pyrenees to Paris.  

Most of the paintings that Joseph kept for his museum were eventually seized the British Army when Joseph was forced to flee.  Over sixty of those paintings are on display at Apsley House, the home of the Duke of Wellington, with various other paintings scattered in museums across England.

One of the paintings sent north was a full-length portrait (right) of Queen Isabel de Borbón, the wife of Spain’s King Philip IV.  Velazquez had done the painting in 1620, but after the Flemish artist Peter Rubens suggested that Velasquez study the work of the Italian masters, Velazquez decided to make some changes to the painting in 1631.  If you look closely, even a poor dumb ‘ol country boy like me can see where changes were made in the outline of the skirt.

The painting hung in the Buen Retiro palace, a royal residence in Madrid, next to another Velazquez masterpiece, a painting of her husband King Philip IV, one of the last good Spanish monarchs before the royal family took up the hobby of inbreeding.  Joseph wasn’t a great judge of art, so Philip’s painting remained in Spain, where it now hangs at the Prado Museum in Madrid while that of his wife was sent to France.  Since Napoleon’s private museum was never built, it was displayed in the Louvre and since it was already part of that museum’s collection before Napoleon was sent to St. Helena, it was never returned to Spain (in defiance of the Congress of Vienna).  Another reason it remained in France is that as soon as the exiled King Ferdinand of Spain finally regained his throne, he was too busy attacking his enemies to worry about art.

France went through a few political upheavals, too, and as the Bourbon family regained the throne, a French official did a little looting of his own and moved the painting from the museum to his own home.  When the monarchy fell and Napoleon III came to power, the family in possession of the painting sold it to a British art dealer.  In the next century, the painting was sold twice more, both times to private collectors.

Today, the anonymous private owner has decided to sell the painting through the Sotheby’s auction house.  Since the majority of works by Diego Velazquez are in large museums, it has been a few decades since a painting of this quality from one of the Spanish masters has changed hands.  While the auction is not until February, it is expected that the painting will go for at least $35 million.  It is certain to set a new record high price for a Velasquez painting.

If Enema U would cancel football for the next five years, it could add this painting to the university art museum.  

If I had to bet, I would guess that the painting will disappear, probably in the hands of a private collector in Dubai.  What I’m hoping for—besides the obscure chance that sanity will hit Enema U—is that the Spanish government will buy the painting and reunite Queen Isabel with King Philip.