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Plunder : Napoleon's theft of Veronese's Feast / Cynthia Saltzman.

by Saltzman, Cynthia, author.

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New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021.

Veronese, 1528-1588. Marriage at Cana.

Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821.

Musée du Louvre -- History.

Cultural property -- Destruction and pillage -- Italy -- Venice.

9780374219031 (hardcover) :

0374219036 (hardcover)

viii, 317 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm

Introduction: "One of the greatest [paintings] ever made with a brush" -- "Send me a list of the pictures, statues, cabinets and curiosities" -- Venice need not "fear that the French armies would not fully respect its neutrality" -- "Master Paolo will...not spare any expense for the finest ultramarine" -- "He is rich in plans" -- "This museum must demonstrate the nation's great riches" -- "Draw as much as you can from Venetian territory" -- "The Pope will deliver...one hundred paintings, busts, vases or statues" -- "I'm on a path a thousand times more glorious" -- "The Republic of Venice will surrender...twenty paintings" -- "In the Church of St. George...The Wedding Feast at Cana" -- "We...have received from Citizen Pietro Edwards" -- "The most secure way would be to send them on a frigate, with 32 cannons" -- "The seam...will be unstitched" -- "The revolution...is finished" -- "You enter a gallery -- such a gallery. But such a gallery!!!" -- "The transparency of air...places[s] Gros beside Tintoretto and Paul Veronese" -- "This beautiful work reminds us of the picture by Paul Veronese" -- "I succeeded...in packing most of the pieces of small size and great value" -- "The only thing to do is to burn them!" -- "This foreboding painting...seems to summon the eye...from all directions" -- "The masterpieces of the arts now belong to us" -- "We are at last beginning to drag forth from this great cavern of stolen goods the precious objects of art" -- Epilogue.

Painted in 1563, Paolo Veronese's Wedding Feast at Cana was immediately hailed as a masterpiece. Lavish color built the illusion that the viewers' space opened onto a biblical banquet taking place on a terrace in sixteenth-century Venice. In 1797, under the command of a young Napoleon Bonaparte, it was torn from the wall of a monastery in Venice and in 1801 went on exhibition at the Louvre. As Saltzman tells the larger story of Napoleon's looting of Italian art and its role in the creation of the Louvre, she reveals the contradictions of his character and his ruthlessness in getting whatever he sought. The Wedding Feast at Cana remains in Paris to this day, hanging directly across from the Mona Lisa. -- adapted from jacket

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