LLEI D'ART 11

The Triumph of Excellence In 1815 the war with France was brought to an end by the defeat of Napoleon’s army at Waterloo. No time was lost by the allies in ensuring the dismantling of the Museé Napoleon and the restitution of its artworks. W. R. Hamilton, who as secretary to Lord Elgin had played a leading role in the acquisition of the Elgin Marbles, now attended Castlereagh’s mission to Paris in the capacity of Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. He was very active in assisting the Pope’s agents to claim back what had been taken from the Italian museums nearly twenty years before. Denon, who was now Director of the Louvre, recognised Hamilton as his natural enemy and complained of the unusual enthusiasm with which he pursued the act of dismantlement. The Italian marbles reached Rome in January 1816, the year in which it was decided to purchase the Elgin Marbles for the British Museum. France’s loss was matched by England’s gain, and the dawning of Pax Britannica was heralded as a new age of cultural prosperity. Thus an anonymous contributor to the popular Gentleman’s Magazine submitted the following plea for the ‘Building of a Temple or Palace of the Arts’: At this proud era, when the steady valour and preserving energies of Great Britain have sustained the tottering foundations of States and Empires, and in restoring peace, order, and confidence of the civilised world, has stamped her fame in arms, wisdom, and diplomatic skill; no longer let it be said the Muses have no abode with us; no longer let us hear we have no establishment suitable for their reception –but let the public munificence now completely establish our triumph of excellence, both in the possession and execution of the Fine Arts; and prove to the surrounding nations that our native talent need not blush when placed in competition with the finest performances of the Old School, and make the magnanimous display of the celebrated works which we now possess. In this manner were sown the seeds from which would grow the great Temple of the Muses built to a neo- classical design by the architect Robert Smirke. The response was by no means immediate; fourteen years passed before the Elgin Marbles, which the author clearly had prominently in mind, were displayed in a new Grecian hall. The priority given to manuscripts and books was traditional. As its inception the Museum had been established not as a show-place for works of art but rather as a public reference collection of books and manuscripts, as well as natural history specimens and other ‘rarities’. Its foundation in 1753 was not announced with any grand declaration of museological doctrine but as a matter of expediency to provide a repository for the collection of Sir Hans Sloane, bequeathed to the nation on his death on 11 january 1753, and also for the valuable manuscript collection built up by the Earls of Oxford, Robert and Edward Harley. Having been inherited by the Duchess of Portland, the Harleian manuscripts were purchased from her by the same Act that founded the British Museum on 1753. The Sloane collection was the largest and most important of the three founding collections, containing, in addition to drawings, manuscripts and books, a full range of natural history specimens. To these was added an important collection of antiquities including a few sculptures and stone inscriptions, which together made up a cabinet of curiosities in the old seventeenth –and eighteenth– century tradition. Sloane was a physician, and like others of that profession had built up a reference collection of natural and artificial rarities, the essential apparatus of a learned gentleman. Only in 1807 was the Department of Antiquities formed. The rise of this Department must be related directly to development across the Channel. On 18 Brumaire, Year IX (9 November 1800), the Galérie des Antiquités, gorged on the booty seized from the capitulation of the Italian states, was opened to the public. Hre in close proximity were to be found the three most famous sculptures of the day: the Laocoon group and Apollo Belvedere from the Belvedere courtyard of the Vatican Museum and the Venus de Medici from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. In spite of the great wealth of antique sculpture that had been salted away in the private collections of the English country houses, there was no comparable public collections here. In 1803 plans were drawn up for a new gallery to house the Egyptian sculptures recently arrived from Alexandria. In 1805 the design of the new gallery was altered to accommodate Charles Townley’s collection, purchased for the nation upon his death. The Townley Gallery was opened in 1808 and in 1816-17, a temporary apartment was tacked onto its west side for the exhibition of the Phigaleian and Elgin Marbles. Thus were laid the foundation of the sculpture collections of the British Museum. The French boasted of transferring Rome to Paris, but with the Elgin Marbles in Bloomsbury some would deny the need for Rome at all. England Ian Jenkins Dr. Ian Jenkins joined the British Museum in 1978 from the University of Bristol and is responsible for the ancient Greek collections. His special interests include Greek architecture and sculpture, and ancient Greek social history. While working at the Museum he wrote his PhD thesis on the collection history of its Egyptian, Assyrian and Classical sculptures. This thesis was published in 1992 as Archaeologists and Aesthetes in the Sculpture Galleries of the British Museum 1800-1939 . 77