Art Confiscation and Transferrals During the French Revolution
A new source of art treasures was provided by the confiscation of church property and by the decision to transfer objets d'art from several royal palaces to the Louvre. A valuable collection of paintings, including Leonardo da Vinci’s La Gioconda (Mona Lisa), was acquired from the royal palace at Versailles, but not without the resistance of the local municipality. Under the direction of a commission temporaire des arts, a collection of furniture, porcelain, and paintings of varying merit was assembled, thus converting the Louvre into a kind of warehouse. In the spring of 1796 the German visitor F. J. L. Meyer found one gallery of the Louvre open to the public. This was filled with a miscellaneous collection of objects ranging from scientific instruments to tables, and his impression was one of “indescribable chaos.” The gallery was closed later that year.
Under the Convention there began a systematic policy of confiscation of art treasures from territory conquered by the French armies. In 1794 the first convoy of paintings from Belgium arrived in Paris, providing a magnificent representation of the Flemish school. The Décade philosophique described this event as the arrival of the paintings in their “true country” where they would be displayed and appreciated. It was fitting that Paris should be the European metropolis of the arts.
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Source: Science in France in the Revolutionary Era, edited by Maurice P. Crosland, pp. 173-174