On May 26, 1791, a year and a half into the French Revolution the National Assembly of France declared a museum would be created “bringing together monuments of all science and arts”. For the next year, things would move slowly although art from the churches and emigrant families that left France were amassed.
On August 9 the new government of Paris, the Paris Commune moved into the offices of the Hotel de Ville. During the night they met to come up with a plan to “save the state”. Meeting until 3 a.m. one side wanted to attack the king and the other fought against it. Louis XVI wasn’t playing along with the changes in the government and it was all about to end.
At 8 am on August 10, 1792 thousands of men, women, and even children armed with weapons charged the Tuileries. Louis XVI had the 950 Swiss Guards moved inside the palace to guard the family and left 930 gendarmes and 2000 national guards outside to keep the angry mob at bay. One little issue, they had very little ammunition. The royal family was able to escape and ran through the garden to the Assembly for safety.
Louis XVI was treated to wine and food, while Marie was tossed in a locked room with her children. It was the end of the monarchy as the Legislative Academy ended all rights of the king. On the same day, they voted on the destruction of all items and properties tied to the monarchy. The next day on August 11 a commission was created to halt the process and to search and care for these items of the national heritage.
It would go back and forth a few more times. On the 14th the cries for destruction outweighed all the others and then on the 22nd, it was declared again that the heritage must be saved. On October 1, 1792, a commission was made up of artists to create the layout of the National Museum that would be based on the collection of the king.
The date was chosen. On August 10, 1793, to honor the first anniversary of the fall of the monarchy the new Musée Central des Arts de la Republique was to open. You may know it as the Musée du Louvre. The original museum was much smaller and different from the stunning temple of art seen today. The Grande Galerie held 537 paintings and 184 objects that were mostly from the former rulers of France that began with Francois I.
Francois I was raised with an appreciation of art and culture by his mother Louis de Savoie who was obsessed with the Italian Renaissance. It was Francois who decided to remake the Monarchy and bring it out of Medieval times and began to collect paintings from the Italian masters and one of the masters himself. After meeting Leonardo da Vinci, he invited him to move to France where he would put him up in a chateau and take care of everything. Leonardo eventually gave in and made his way to France via a donkey and in tow were a few paintings.
In the short period of time before his death, Leonardo sold or gave a few of his paintings to Francois I including the Mona Lisa.
His son, Henri II came along and didn’t have the collecting bug like his father did but did appreciate what they did have. Eventually, Henri IV would add a sizeable amount, and then the Sun King, Louis XIV broke the bank by acquiring as much as he could. By the time Louis XVI was ousted and the decision was made to create a museum three-quarters of the over 720 pieces had been in the hands of the kings of France. The rest were confiscated from churches and the families that chose to flee France.
The long dark Grande Galerie saw the paintings hung frame to frame and floor to ceiling. Although it was opened as a gift to the citizens of France they were only allowed to visit one to three days a week. These were the Revolutionary years and the ten-day calendar was in place. For 2 days it was closed for cleaning, depending on the year the public only had one to three days a week to visit and the remaining six of the ten days were reserved only for the artists and copies.
When Louis XIV decided to flee to Versailles in 1678 he gave up the Palais du Louvre to the artists and academics. Many including Jaques Louis David moved their atelier and homes into the Louvre and the artists were allowed to remain until Napoleon kicked them out. Over time it was the artists that would shake up the 19th century that would visit the galleries and copying the masters. Manet, Fantin Latour, Monet, and Berthe Morisot were often found in the Italian section and you can still find artists to this day doing the same thing.
The museum had to close on November 8, 1793, when the building was falling in disrepair. It was one thing to have a public palace turning into a shrine to art it was another to dip into the purse of the government to keep it going. Over the next five years, it would open and close many times until July 14, 1801, it was once again fully open for everyone to visit.
The Palais du Louvre survived the anger of the Revolution and Terror unscathed. The supreme figure of the royal family of Paris was left without a mark because it was given back to the people of France in the middle of one of its darkest times.
As time went on more and more art was added to the museum. The Chateau de Versailles held all of the art and paintings of the French school while the Louvre focused those first few years on the International school mostly made up of Italian and Northern Europe artists.
In November 1800 the Musée des Antiques moved into the summer apartments of Anne of Austria below the Galerie d’Apollon and was inaugurated by Napoleon. He would of course rename it the Musée Napoleon during his rule and even bring the Mona Lisa to his bedroom in the Palais des Tuileries.
Today when you visit the Louvre, the Grande Galerie is still filled with the paintings that were picked and adored by the kings of France. However, on this date, August 10, 1793, 229 years ago today the birth of my beloved Musée du Louvre came to be and she continues to evolve and grow.
Want to explore the Louvre with me and uncover all its history and art when you are in Paris next? Reach out and schedule a tour with me. I love to share my favorite place and all the stories it holds.
