Paris (France) -- Description and travel; Paris (France) -- History
books, precious manuscripts, captured flags, trophies of arms, gave
the scene all the pomp and circumstance of a veritable Roman triumph.
These spoils, which almost choked the Louvre during Napoleon's reign,
were reduced by the return, in 1815, of 5233 works of art to their
original owners under British supervision, and during the removal of
the statues and pictures, ostentatiously effected to the bitter
humiliation of the Parisians, British sentinels were stationed along
the galleries and British soldiers stood under arms in the quadrangle
and the Place du Carrousel to protect the workmen.
Before beginning our artistic pilgrimage let us pay grateful tribute
to the memory of Alexandre Lenoir, to whose tact and love for the arts
we owe the preservation of so many priceless objects here, at St.
Denis, and other museums of Paris. Appointed by the National Assembly,
Director of a _Commission pour les Monuments_ formed to collect all
objects of art worthy of preservation during the search for lead
coffins to be cast into bullets, he induced the authorities to grant
him the use of the monastery of the Petits Augustins (now part of the
Ecole des Beaux Arts) for their storage. There the admirable official
succeeded in rescuing some 500 historical and royal monuments from
Paris and St. Denis and some 2,600 pictures from the confiscated
monasteries and ecclesiastical establishments, although existing
receipts for about 600 pictures reclaimed from Lenoir by the
Revolutionary Tribunal and burned, prove that he was only partially
successful. In 1793 the National Convention assigned the Petits
Augustins to Lenoir as a Museum of French Monuments, and the
collection was pieced together, somewhat unskilfully it is true, and
arranged in six rooms: many of the objects were in due time destined
to find their way back to St. Denis, others to enrich the Louvre.
(_a_) ANCIENT SCULPTURE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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