Customer Reviews

From Royal to National: The Louvre Museum and the Bibliotheque Nationale

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Bette Oliver has written what to my knowledge is the first comprehensive look at the development of what we know today as the Louvre and the Biblioteque National (National Library). Both institutions were developed during times of turmoil. The good news was that during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods a number of items were, ahem, donated to the cause from various places in Europe. The bad news was that some of the more radical Revolutionaries during the Terror (1793-1794) would have destroyed much of what had been collected, and other people would have been quite happy to see much of the collection put elsewhere, especially in their own collections! In the end, though, both institutions accumulated major collections of priceless cultural artifacts that helped establish Paris as one of the major cultural centers of the western world.

This is a short book, less than one hundred pages. Yet Bette Oliver (who, I should admit I know through our mutual participation in historical conferences and who I consider a friend) tells the story in a compelling and complete way. I was especially interested in the fate of material after the second fall of Napoleon. Interestingly, a number of items were returned not to the place from where they were liberated by Napoleon, but to places from where they had previously been liberated! Bette Oliver's writing style is easy to read and always interesting. This book fills in a fascinating part of the story of this epoch and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the period.

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