New restitution claim - from the French Revolution?
February 4 2013
Picture: Musee des Beaux-Arts, Nantes
ArtInfo has news of another impossible long-sighted restitution claim:
During the French Revolution, the French army took a Rubens painting from the cathedral in Tournai. The work, titled “The Triumph of Judas Maccabeus,” [above] ended up in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Nantes. Now the Belgian town is demanding the work’s return.
Rudy Demotte, president of the French Community of Belgium, has written to French president François Hollande and culture minister Aurélie Filippetti to ask that the painting be returned, Le Journal des Arts reports. He made the same request to the French government last year but received no reply.
Ludicrous though the claim is, it's a bit rich of the French to ignore this one, after they recently seized a painting they said was stolen in the French Revolution. That said, I still think that we need to think about a time limit for restitution cases. Otherwise minor politicians like Rudy Demotte will continue to seek media coverage by making silly claims like this.
Update - a reader writes:
I agree that some sort of time limit should be in force but, frankly, the seizure of the Tournier by the French state last year was - to say the least - a bit rich.
Anyone visting the Louvre will notice that many major works in its collections were accessioned during the Revolutionary Wars: ie they were brought there from all over Europe by Napoleon's forces. Altarpieces by Cimabue, Giotto, Fra Angelico - all the way to Carracci and Barrocci - were "acquired" from Italian churches: indeed all sorts of objects, like the Rubens, found their way into French museums never to be returned.
While I think it is too late for restitution in most cases there are one or two instances where this should happen, for reasons of artistic inegrity as it were - though this might in itself provide a dangerous precedent.
If one visits the Doges Palace yawning gaps will be seen in the coffered ceilings in two rooms - these were filled by paintings by Veronese removed by Napoleonic forces and still in the Louvre. And then there's also the blank wall the end of the refectory in S Giorgio Maggiore which contained Veronese's Marriage at Cana in the Louvre. I seem to remember that the Treaty of Vienna specified the return of the latter but the French did a deal with Austria - who were given control of the Veneto - and exchanged it for a LeBrun for Vienna instead.
Perhaps the most heinous example of not returning an object concerns Mantegna's altarpiece from S Zeno in Verona. Again, the restitution was specified in the Treaty of Vienna and the French complied, in part. The main panels sent back to the church but the French kept the three predella panels: the Crucifixion is in the Louvre and the two others are in Tours.
It's worth pointing out that French institutions, as well as individuals, were also targetted during this time: the Louvre's van Eyck of the Virgin and Child with Chancellor Rolin came from Autun Cathedral.
