designed to commemorate the family’s heroic deeds permanently on the Capitoline.
* * *
Paris: 1798 AD
Napoleon Bonaparte found himself the undisputed ruler of Italy in 1797. Reversing the progress of Julius Cæsar, who had conquered Gaul for Rome, he had come south over the Alps and waged war in northern Italy for two years. The fiercest resistance had come from Pope Pius IX, who tried to defend the Papal States in the center of the peninsula, but capitulated after a series of decisive French victories. The seemingly immortal Venetian Republic would follow suit a few short months later. From his headquarters in Tolentino, the French general dictated his terms.
The resulting Treaty of Campo Formio shocked the civilized world. In addition to claiming territory in Italy and demanding an enormous sum of money, Napoleon required that the pope surrender the finest ancient and modern cultural treasures of Rome to be transferred to the Musée Napoléon. According to Article 8 of the treaty, a designated commission of experts would select the works and oversee their removal. That commission was given broad latitude to make its choices, as only two objects were specified: the bronze bust of Lucius Junius Brutus and the marble bust of Marcus Junius Brutus from the Capitoline Museum.
“When they arrive,” Napoleon remarked to his favorite painter, Jacques-Louis David, “we can create the greatest museum in the world here in Paris, at the Louvre.” It was still not entirely clear what was coming from Rome in the long convoy of carriages, but they knew the Apollo Belvedere was in the priceless cargo, as well as Raphael’s great last painting, The Transfiguration. And Napoleon wasn’t finished – he was working on a plan to detach Raphael’s frescoes from the walls of the Vatican and dismantle Trajan’s Column so that even these seemingly permanent denizens of Rome could be transported to Paris.
“You know your Brutus is coming?” Napoleon said to David. “I made them put that in the treaty.”
David nodded, wishing as always that the general would sit still for his portrait. The artist’s esteem for the founder of the Roman Republic was well known – he had been in Rome working on a painting of The Lictors Returning to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons for Louis XVI when the revolution broke out in France.1919 David brought it with him back to Paris, where it was a sensation at the 1789 Salon. Begun for a monarch, the picture became an icon of the revolution as Brutus’s willingness to sacrifice his own family in the service of Rome was invoked to justify the Reign of Terror. David’s painting was used as a backdrop for a revival of Voltaire’s play Brutus in 1791, the staging of which also included a copy of the Capitoline bust from David’s personal collection. Now it was on public display in the Louvre.
See image on page 149 below.
“When the bronze arrives,” continued Napoleon, “we will compare your painting to the original and see how well you captured the likeness. I expect you had an easier time with him than with me. And you will have to help me figure out where to put Brutus.”
The Brutus had an eventful visit to Paris. Besides being displayed with David’s painting, it was paraded through the streets on the anniversary of the fall of Robespierre. If David resented this celebration of the execution of his former friend and political mentor, he kept quiet about it. Shortly thereafter, at Napoleon’s request, the painter selected a prime spot for the bust at the Tuileries Palace, which had been home to the kings of France but would now house Napoleon and his wife, Josephine. Napoleon was savvy enough to realize that republican eyebrows would be raised when they made this move; but who could accuse the Bonapartes of imperial tyranny, he reasoned, if they had Lucius Junius Brutus watching over them?2020
Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne, Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, ed. R. W. Phipps (1891, 2008), vol. II, 7–8. The Brutus was returned to Rome after the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
Jean-Jérôme Baugean, The Departure from Rome of the Third Convoy of Statues and Works of Art, 1798.
The Basilica of St. Mark, Venice, 1084–1117.
1 Dio Cassius, Historia Romana 11.10.
2 Livy’s Ab urbe condita libri (History of Rome) records that Tarquin had been attracted to his predecessor’s daughter Tullia, who was inconveniently married to his brother, while Tarquin was married to her sister. Tarquin and Tullia murdered their spouses so they could marry each other, then plotted to overthrow Tullia’s father. When this was achieved, Tullia personally drove her chariot to the place where her father had fallen and ran over his body for good measure. Ab urbe condita 1.47.
3 Livy, Ab urbe condita 1.56.
4 Livy, Ab urbe condita 1.56; Dio Cassius, Historia Romana 11.11.
5 According to legend, as recounted by Livy, the Roman nation was founded on the abduction and rape of women from the neighboring Sabine clan, which was considered a heroic and patriotic act. Ab urbe condita 1.9.
6 Livy, Ab urbe condita 1.52–54.
7 Livy, Ab urbe condita 1.57.
8 Livy, Ab urbe condita 1.58; Dio Cassius, Historia Romana 11.12–19.
9 Livy, Ab urbe condita 1.59.
10 Livy, Ab urbe condita 2.3–4.
11 Livy, Ab urbe condita 2.4.
12 Livy, Ab urbe condita 2.5.
13 Plutarch, Brutus 1.
14 Plutarch, Brutus 14–18.
15 Livy, Periochæ (fragments of Aburbe condita, from Book 116, http://www.livius.org/li-in/livy/periochae116.html.
16 Ulisse Aldrovandi, Le antichità de la città di Roma (1556), 299.
17 Aldrovandi, Le antichità de la città di Roma, 205–6.
18 From this time on, the actual identification of the portrait ceased to matter until the twentieth century, when it was questioned—throwing the bust into a sudden eclipse from which it has yet to emerge. But for four hundred years it was firmly believed to be the great man celebrated by Livy, and the features were uniformly read as reflective of Brutus’s unyielding dedication to republican principles.
19 See image on page 149 below.
20 Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne, Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, ed. R. W. Phipps (1891, 2008), vol. II, 7–8. The Brutus was returned to Rome after the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
St. Mark’s Basilica and the Most Serene Republic of Venice
