Volume 22, Issue 2 | Autumn 2023

The Dessins Denon: Reframing Art Spoliation and the Spoliator in Napoleonic France
Appendix: Complete List of Dessins Denon Images Portraying Looting

by Nancy Caron Karrels
Between 1805 and 1813, the Musée du Louvre’s director, Dominique-Vivant Denon, crisscrossed Europe in the company of draftsmen to pursue a print project designed to glorify Napoleon’s military conquests. The planned recueil (edited series of original prints) was never engraved, and it exists today as a dispersed collection of drawings of battlefields, triumphal entries, and landscapes. Curiously, the so-called Dessins Denon also contain a number of little-known images that recount the French confiscation of European art treasures and Denon’s active involvement in it. This study suggests that by anchoring his highly mediated vision of art theft in the broader context of the Napoleonic victories, Denon sought to memorialize his role as chief of “cultural conquests” and to burnish this legacy by transforming the traditional image of wartime art looting into a respectable and professional post-Enlightenment pursuit, as worthy of remembrance as France’s storied Italian campaigns and the victory at Austerlitz.

Nancy Caron Karrels is a specialist in nineteenth-century French art and cultural property. Her publications and exhibitions include “Commemorating Spolia in Napoleonic France” for the edited volume Nouveaux regards sur les saisies patrimoniales en Europe à l’époque de la Révolution française (2021); and Provenance: A Forensic History of Art at Krannert Art Museum (2017). Her PhD dissertation (2022) on paintings, works on paper, and objets d’art created to celebrate and memorialize art confiscations during the Napoleonic era was supported with funding from the Fulbright Program (France) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She holds JD and BCL degrees.

Email the author: nancy[at]nancykarrels.com

Citation: Nancy Karrels, “The Dessins Denon: Reframing Art Spoliation and the Spoliator in Napoleonic France. Appendix: Complete List of Dessins Denon Images Portraying Looting,” Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 22, no. 2 (Autumn 2023), https://doi.org/10.29411/ncaw.2023.22.2.4.

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Scholarly Article|Appendix

1. Charles Meynier (attributed), À Parme, la Madone de saint Jérôme est livrée aux commissaires français (The Madonna with Saint Jerome Is Delivered to French Commissioners in Parma), ca. 1807. Black ink with gray wash and lead pencil on paper; 32.4 x 17.8 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris, Inv. RF 2949.

2. Charles Meynier (attributed), Étude pour “la Madone de saint Jérôme livrée aux commissaires français” (Study for “The Madonna of Saint Jerome Delivered to French Commissioners”), ca. 1805. Lead pencil on paper; 32.0 x 23.5 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris, Inv. RF 2950.

3. Benjamin Zix, Monsieur Denon Visiting the Cabinet of Antiquities, Berlin, ca. 1806–7. Pen with ink wash on paper; 42.3 x 34.3 cm. The British Museum, London, Inv. 2001,0519.32.

4. Benjamin Zix, Vivant Denon au Cabinet des Médailles du château de Berlin, début novembre 1806 (Vivant Denon in the Cabinet of Medals at Berlin Castle, Early November 1806), ca. 1806–7. Pen and brown ink with ink wash on paper; 16.6 x 12.8 cm. Private collection. Reproduced in Marie-Anne Dupuy, ed., Dominique-Vivant Denon: L’Oeil de Napoléon (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1999), 150, fig. 142.

5. Benjamin Zix, M. Denon examinant des tableaux à Cassel (Mr. Denon Examining Paintings in Kassel), ca. 1806–7. Pen with ink wash on paper; 16.3 x 13.2 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris, Inv. RF 6889.

6. Benjamin Zix, Denon visitant une galerie d’antiques (Denon Visiting a Gallery of Antiquities), ca. 1807. Pen with ink wash on paper; 31.0 x 23.5 cm. Private collection. Reproduced in Marie-Anne Dupuy, ed., Dominique-Vivant Denon: L’Oeil de Napoléon (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1999), 151, fig. 146.

7. Benjamin Zix, Enlèvement de la galerie de Cassel (Seizure from the Kassel Gallery), 1807. Pen with ink wash on paper; 25.6 x 21.4 cm. Collection Michel Hennin, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, RESERVE FOL-QB-201 (150).

8. Benjamin Zix, Le Musée de Cassel (The Kassel Museum), ca. 1806–7. Black pencil on paper; 29.5 x 18.5 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris, Inv. RFML.AG.2019.33.28.3.

9. Benjamin Zix, Le Musée de Cassel (The Kassel Museum), ca. 1806–7. Black pencil on paper; 29.5 x 18.5 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris, Inv. RFML.AG.2019.33.28.4.

10. Benjamin Zix, Enlèvement des sculptures du musée de Cassel, avec au centre Dominique-Vivant Denon (Seizure of Sculptures from the Museum in Kassel, with Dominique-Vivant Denon at Center), ca. 1806. Pen with black ink and brown wash on paper; 29.5 x 18.5 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris, Inv. RFML.AG.2019.33.7.

11. Constant Bourgeois and Benjamin Zix, L’Emballage des tableaux sur la terrasse du Belvédère à Vienne (The Packaging of Paintings on the Terrace of the Belvedere in Vienna), 1810. Pen and brown ink with black pencil on paper; 61.1 x 24.2 cm. Private collection. Reproduced in Marie-Anne Dupuy, ed., Dominique-Vivant Denon: L’Oeil de Napoléon (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1999), 152, fig. 149.

12. Benjamin Zix, Arrivée au Louvre des trésors d’art de la Grande Armée (Arrival at the Louvre of the Grande Armée’s Art Treasures), 1808. Pen with ink wash on paper; 44.6 x 26.3 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris, Inv. RF 6061.

13. Benjamin Zix, L’Arrivée au Musée Napoléon des oeuvres saisies à Berlin (The Arrival at the Musée Napoléon of Artworks Seized in Berlin), 1808. Pen and brown ink with brown wash on paper; 46.5 x 29.2 cm. Private collection. Reproduced in Marie-Anne Dupuy, ed., Dominique-Vivant Denon: L’Oeil de Napoléon (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1999), 152, fig. 147.