How the Louvre’s dashing director saved his museum from the Nazis

Source: New York Post

May 9 2020

By Raquel Laneri

On March 13, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim, MoMA and the Whitney all announced temporary closures to help curb the spread of the coronavirus. Two months later, more than 19,000 New York City residents have died from COVID-19 and the idea of ever going to a museum again — of jostling with tourists to get a look at Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” at MoMA, or waiting in line to see the Met Costume Institute’s next fashion exhibition — seems like a distant, dangerous dream.

But a new book about another museum currently closed due to COVID-19 offers some hope.

“The Louvre: The Many Lives of the World’s Most Famous Museum,” out now, chronicles the Parisian icon’s 800-year evolution from workaday fortress to beloved art institution. And if history is any indication, the Louvre will not only survive the pandemic but emerge from it as strong as ever.

The Louvre has seen revolutions, uprisings, fires and neglect. Most remarkably, it survived the Nazi occupation of Paris, during which time its most precious pieces had to go into hiding. Its persistent, fierce resilience — in addition to the “Mona Lisa,” its crown jewel — has made the Louvre not just an extraordinary museum, but something greater.

“It occupies a symbolic stature which probably no other museum in the world does,” James Gardner, author of “The Louvre,” told The Post.Enlarge ImageThe Louvre has seen revolutions, uprisings, fires, neglect, a Nazi invasion and now a global pandemic — but it soldiers on.

As war broke out, Louvre director Jacques Jaujard ordered all of the most precious works to be moved out, including The Mona Lisa, which left in an ambulance 10 days before the Germans arrived in Paris. 

The Louvre started its life in 1191 not as a magnificent museum, but as a stolid fortress in what was then considered the outskirts of Paris. In 1546 — after many renovations — the Renaissance king Francois I decided to make it his main home, and it remained the primary residence of the monarchy until 1682, when the ostentatious Louis XIV ditched it for the more luxurious Versailles.

Louis XV decided to turn the Louvre into a kind of public museum. Artists were living there anyway — subsidized by the government — and holding annual showcases, or salons, which proved very popular. But it took years to get the museum off the ground — apparently the artists there had left it in a rat-infested, sorry state — and it finally opened during the French Revolution in 1793. That was after the rebels had executed Louis XV’s successor, Louis XVI, along with his much-maligned wife, Marie Antoinette, and in the middle of the notoriously bloody Reign of Terror, which saw 2,639 deaths in Paris alone.

Still, the opening was a success — with Parisians braving the violence to see the 538 paintings and 48 sculptures on display at the new museum.

“Apparently, a lot of people went,” said Gardner, adding that a little bloodshed had never stopped Parisians from seeking out art before. “As a matter of fact, a few weeks after the storming of the Bastille, in 1789, people went to the annual salon, and it was a big hit.”Enlarge ImageAs war broke out, Louvre director Jacques Jaujard ordered all of the most precious works to be moved out, including The Mona Lisa, which left in an ambulance 10 days before the Germans arrived in Paris. 

The Louvre’s tumult didn’t end there. When the Prussians invaded Paris in 1870, parts of the museum were turned into a makeshift hospital, while its famed Grande Galerie — stripped of all its paintings — was used to manufacture firearms. Then, in 1871, it narrowly escaped destruction by the Paris Communards, who in one night set fire to the Tuileries Palace, the Palais-Royal and the Louvre Library. The Louvre Museum survived thanks to an army of devoted curators and guards, who fought the flames until the fire department arrived.

Yet in the late 1930s, the Louvre’s staff saw a threat that would overshadow these earlier instances: World War II. While the Louvre had closed during part of the First World War, the French knew that advancements in modern warfare — in addition to the Germans’ notoriously sticky fingers when it came to art — made the collection highly vulnerable. By 1938, Louvre curators were already being given gas masks, and by 1939, staffers — led by director of French museums Jacques Jaujard — were “moving art out to the remoter parts of France,” a full nine months before the Nazis would arrive in Paris, said Gardner.

Nothing on such a grand scale had ever been attempted before. - James Gardner on Jacques Jaujard’s hiding of the Louvre’s artworks

It was quite the undertaking.

“They had to improvise, because nothing on such a grand scale had ever been attempted before — and the Louvre was, and remains really, probably the biggest museum in the world,” Gardner said.

Museum staffers enlisted the help of nearby department store workers to help wrap and ship such masterworks as Eugène Delacroix’s epic “Liberty Leading the People” and the Greek statue “Venus de Milo” off to farmhouses, factories and even smaller museums out in the countryside.

Engineers devised an intricate series of hoists and planks to move the monumental 18-foot marble statue “Winged Victory of Samothrace” to Central France. The Paris Opera House loaned their trucks used to transport their painted sets to haul away some of the Louvre’s larger canvases, such as Veronese’s massive “Wedding Feast at Cana.”

And then there was the “Mona Lisa,” the da Vinci portrait that was the museum’s prized possession.

“Winged Victory of Samothrace” was secreted out of the French capital before the Nazis could get their hands on it.

“By that point the ‘Mona Lisa’ was the most famous painting in the world,” said Gardner. “And there was every reason to fear that the Germans would especially want to get their hands on that.”

As a result, the “Mona Lisa” — cushioned in lush velvet — would move six times during the course of the war, zig-zagging the countryside and staying in various abbeys, chateaux and even a small museum in the south. She left the Louvre in an ambulance 10 days before the Germans arrived. Her subsequent escapes would be in a temperature-controlled armored van.Enlarge Image“Winged Victory of Samothrace” was secreted out of the French capital before the Nazis could get their hands on it.Roger Viollet via Getty Images

“The ‘Mona Lisa’ was like a resistance fighter who’s always trying to stay one step ahead from the approaching German army,” Gardner said.

By the time the Germans seized Paris, the Louvre had dispersed all of its 3,600 paintings, along with thousands of sculptures and objets d’art, throughout France. Several staff members went into exile too, accompanying these works and restoring them while in hiding. Amazingly, the Louvre stayed open, despite its hallowed halls and paltry displays.

“There wasn’t much to see, but the Germans wanted to cultivate the impression of business as usual,” said Gardner. And they did manage to swipe a few things, including Bartolomé Esteban Murillo’s “Immaculate Conception,” which they sent to Spain as a gift to dictator Francisco Franco, who they were hoping would help them with the war.

At first, the Germans seemed happy enough to plunder the private collections of Jews who had either fled France or were sent to concentration camps. But toward the end of the war, they ordered Jaujard to have the Louvre’s collection sent back to Paris (presumably so they could then transport it to Germany).

“Jaujard managed to forestall that threat by saying that they needed to keep the art hidden because those big, bad British are coming with their airplanes,” said Gardner.

The Brits did come with those airplanes in 1944, but Louvre curator Germain Bazin frantically had 20-foot-tall wooden letters spelling out “THE LOUVRE” erected on the site, to alert the Allies that they were flying over sacred ground.

Increasingly desperate, Hitler ordered Paris to be burned to the ground.

“It was out of pure spite,” said Gardner. “It served absolutely no strategic purpose for Hitler to do it — he was just a lunatic.”

Fortunately, his general, Dietrich von Choltitz, refused to do it. If he hadn’t disobeyed Hitler, Paris — and the Louvre — would have been destroyed.

Germany finally surrendered in May 1945, and the “Mona Lisa” landed in Paris that August. By 1947, the Louvre would have all its dispersed paintings back again — and maintain its place as the biggest, most-visited and most iconic museum in the world.

The Louvre typically sees 10 million visitors a year, yet the coronavirus shutdown will drastically reduce that number in the months or even years to come. It will lose revenue. It will struggle.

Yet, said Gardner, “it wouldn’t be devastating.” Because the Louvre is more than a place to go see art.

“There’s not really an equivalent anywhere else in the world,” he said. “It’s an icon like the Eiffel Tower that defines the city. The Louvre is Paris.”