Conquest and Spoils of Plunder

While France is remembered for the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon at the end of the eighteenth century, we may overlook how Napoleon’s military plunder and wars of conquest included the collecting of art. Unlike the collecting practices of those behind the making of the wunderkammers and kunstkammers, the means were radically different. If one believed in the role of museums to conserve and educate the ‘people’, then one could disregard the violent means of collection building.