Gregory Curtis by Disarmed: The Story of the Venus De Milo

the Convention appointed a committee to make a new translation of Winckelmann that could be used as a reference book. The committee reported that this work was “one of the best elementary and classic texts that it is possible to put in the hands of young people in order to introduce them to the knowledge of the beauty of Antiquity and to form the taste of those who hope to become artists.” This new edition of Winckelmann was to be placed in each museum and each important library in the republic.
    The Revolution’s taste for antiquity spread across all society. The Convention had set the example when it ordered all its official furniture made from Greek or Roman models. Soon furniture everywhere copied classical Greek forms, especially in the cafés. Stores sold medallions and cameos in the antique style. After the Terror, when life became easier, women began dressing themselves coquettishly as Athenians in robes of linen. The government tried unsuccessfully to replace the usual religiousand civil holidays with Greek festivals. There were classical decorations, high priests, and Greek temples made of cardboard. One official wanted to reinstate the Olympic games. Another wanted gymnastic exercises during the festivals in imitation of the Greeks. Public buildings, scientific discoveries, and the units in the new metric system of weights and measures were all given Greek names. That inspired this verse from a song in a music hall revue declaring that nowadays, in order to understand French well, one should learn Greek:
                   
Myriagramme, Panthéon
,
                   
Mètre, kilomètre, oxygène
,
                   
Litre, centilitre, Odéon
,
                   
Prytanée, hectare, hydrogène
,
                   
Les Grecs ont pour nous tant d’attraits
                   
Que, de nos jours, pour bien entendre
                   
Et bien comprendre le français
,
                   
C’est le grec qu’il faudrait apprendre
.
    When Napoleon, only twenty-seven, assumed command of the French army in Italy in 1796, he knew that removing art from any lands he conquered was simply part of his mission, a part he zealously discharged. He sent the works back in large convoys whose arrival in Paris was celebrated with a holiday of parades and celebrations. The first such shipment, which was welcomed to Paris by a huge procession around the Champs de Mars, included the famous four horses of Venice (which Napoleon later installed atop theArc de Triomphe du Carrousel); paintings byRaphael,Titian, and Veronese; and ancient statues including theCapitoline Venus and theApollo Belvedere. The latter, which Winckelmann had described so passionately, was considered the single greatest work of art to have survived from the antique world.
    While Napoleon was in power, he continued this wholesale pillage. But he did not depend on groups of “educated citizens” to find the masterpieces. Instead he appointed an official connoisseur,Dominique-Vivant Denon, who not only directed the Louvre and other state museums but also rushed into each newly conquered territory, sometimes while the battle was still in the balance, in order to choose which of the available masterpieces to send back to Paris.
    Today the Louvre is divided into three wings, one of which is named after Denon. Born Dominique-Vivant de Non, he changed his name during the Revolution to disguise his noble lineage. He was a sensualist, known for his taste for actresses, who really did participate in the sort of group debauches in remote country châteaux that have become a cliché of pornography. He was a dilettante who painted prolifically if forgettably; staged a moderately successful comic play; wrote a sexy little novel, set in a remote château, titled
Point de Lendemain (No Tomorrow)
, which most recently resurfaced as a motif inMilan Kundera’s novel
Slowness
and