Owning Art after Napoléon: Destiny or Destination at the Birth of the Museum

Abstract

A set of major old-master paintings looted from Spanish Royal Collections, including important canvases by Velázquez (fig. 1), Correggio, and others, was discovered in Joseph Bonaparte's baggage, abandoned along with the rest of his property as he fled from the Battle of Vitoria, which ended his tumultuous five-year reign as king of Spain in 1813. Years later the duke of Wellington offered to return the collection to the restored monarch. But Ferdinand VII—who owed his throne to the duke's victories—refused to take it. What in its day would have been called the return to legitimacy, the restoration of the Bourbon line after the defeat of Napoléon, did not result in the restitution of Napoleonic loot. The works remain at Apsley House, the duke's home in London, where they have been on display in the Waterloo Gallery since 1819, a usurper's booty transformed by its history into an emblem of royal generosity, gratitude, and military prowess (fig. 2). The collection is now part of the museum officially established at the duke's residence in 1947, following another European military cataclysm in which Britain prevailed.

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