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Present

LOUVRE MUSEUMThe other story

A 90-minute documentary Written and directed by Frédéric Wilner

In coproduction with

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Ten million visitors per year; 35,000 works of art on display: today, the Louvre Museum is the largest and most popular museum in the world. How was it created? How were the permanent collections, with such a wealth of variety, assembled? Through ten iconic works of art, whose extraordinary destiny and fundamental nature epitomize the museum, we recount the Louvre Museum’s adventure, as well as several chapters of our own history – the history of France and of the European continent.

The Mona Lisa and the Battle of Marignano (3-D model recreation)

Summary

In the beginning there was the Mona Lisa. Francis 1st emerged victorious from the battle of Marignano while at the same time the old master, in the dusk of his life and career, lost his protector, Giuliano de Medici. However, the stars were aligned: Leonardo left Italy and his final three masterpieces ended up in Amboise, France. The question was: would Francis 1st simply take them or would they be purchased? Vincent Delieuvin, curator at the Louvre Museum reveals two documents from the time period leading us to believe that the King of France did indeed acquire them, for a considerable sum of money. This marked the beginning of an extensive royal collection, which would in the end be seized by the French Revolution centuries later.

The Louvre Museum originated with the French Revolution, initially as the Muséum Central des Arts (Central Museum of Arts). The ransacking of the Saint-Denis basilica in 1793 brought to the museum some of its greatest artefacts: Charlemagne’s scepter and sword. It also led to the rediscovery of the gothic statuary. In fact, Saint-Denis’ recumbent effigies, as well as the statues of Charles V and Joanna of Bourbon, had been regarded with great contempt by the intellectual elite of the 18th century. The French Revolution, on the other hand, declared them seminal works of French sculpture. This was followed by an episode in which works of art were seized by the Republic’s armies and then by the Empire’s armies: Veronese’s Wedding Feast at Cana, requisitioned in Italy, is the very embodiment of this European tragedy. We relate the story thereof, as well as that of Giotto’s Saint Francis, a masterpiece taken by Vivant-Denon, as were numerous other works by primitive painters, most of which remained in Paris after Napoleon’s downfall. The Borghese Gladiator also came from Italy during the time of the French Empire;

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however, the extraordinary Borghese collection encompassing 330 ancient marble statues was not seized but purchased. It was a family affair (matters of the heart and money matters between Napoleon’s sister, Pauline Bonaparte, and her husband Prince Borghese) and a major chapter in the history of the museum. In 1815, Napoleon’s abdication led to the return of most of the seized works of art to their country of origin; the Louvre’s galleries hence needed replenishing. The new curator, the Count de Forbin, thus invented the concept of the contemporary museum: Eugène Delacroix’s Massacre at Chios and Liberty Leading the People are the fruit of this visionary idea. By 1830, the Louvre museum had fallen far behind its competitors in the area of Greek statuary. The Venus de Milo came to fill this gap… That is, until German experts, as the 1870 war was raging, proved that it wasn’t a classic marble but a Hellenistic copy. Little did it matter, however, as the statue had already become no less than an icon! Other grounds for rivalry between European countries: Egypt and the Near-East. The consuls of France and of Great Britain, both ancient art connoisseurs with freebooters’ methods, helped themselves to the Naos of Amasis and the Great Sphinx of Tanis. Today, such practices would simply be seen as plundering. Yet, thanks to these numerous antiquities, Champollion invented a new science: Egyptology. The winged bulls of Khorsabad, for their part, show us how Paris, in its continual rivalry with London, was the first to exhibit archeological remains from Assyria.

The Great Gallery in the Louvre, today and in the past…

Director’s statement

This film originated with a profound wish to decipher the invisible link between the works of art exhibited at the Louvre and the collective history of France. The twelve emblematic works selected re-set the museum’s collections within the bigger picture – the history of France and Europe, with its wars, peace treaties, strategic rivalries, and revolutions. Each work of art marks a decisive step in the construction of the museum’s collections as well as a key chapter in the history of the continent. This is the reason why the list of works determining the structure of the film is not a catalog but a continuum. It outlines a chronological progression narrating the construction of the museum – not exhaustively (for it would simply be impossible) but highlighting a few essential milestones.

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Francis I’s armies’ most famous victory? The Mona Lisa. The Reign of Terror? Charlemagne’s sword and scepter, as well as the rediscovery of gothic sculpture, epitomized by the effigies of Charles V and Joanna of Bourbon. Bonaparte’s lightning strike in the conquest of Italy? Veronese’s Wedding Feast at Cana. The wildly extravagant project of the French Empire and the wish to turn Paris into a modern version of ancient Rome? The seizure of Giotto’s Saint Francis and dozens of paintings by Italian primitive artists, never returned to their owners. The battle of Waterloo and the victory of the Anglo-allies? The Borghese Gladiator and the namesake collection – when the museum’s galleries were suddenly emptied by the victors and the most beautiful antiquities returned to Rome and Cassel, the Borghese collection (330 extraordinary marbles) providentially filled the glaring gap. Once again, a chapter mixing politics, military conquest, a family saga, and art history… The occupation of Paris by the allied armies and the departure of the dozens of paintings being returned? To replenish the painting galleries, the Count de Forbin, newly appointed curator of the museum, used the institution that the Salon was to promote a renewal of French painting. The result? Liberty Leading the People and all the romantic masterpieces held by the Louvre Museum. The Venus de Milo? A response to the British Museum’s Parthenon marbles and a bone of contention in Franco-German rivalries… The Naos of Amasis and the Sphinx of Tanis? They are the outcome of the fierce Franco-British competition that played out in Egypt through each country’s respective representative in Alexandria: Henry Salt and Bernardino Drovetti. As for the European countries’ power game in the East, it led to the discovery of the ancient city of Khorsabad and the arrival in Paris of the early remains found there. The winged bulls that once guarded the gates of the Sargon II’s capital today adorn the entrances to the Department of Near Eastern antiquities in the Louvre Museum. Logically, we considered that the curators were the right persons to narrate each of the chapters covered in the film. However, they are not the only speakers: historians and art historians also take part in the narrative. Each is interviewed facing the camera, in exhibition rooms. We also meet them outdoors, in the field, as the documentary embarks us on a great journey through France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Egypt and Iraq, picking up the trails leading us back to the places where the works of art were taken: the Saint-Denis basilica, the Campo Santo in Pisa, the Vatican museums, San Giorgio Maggiore island in Venice, the island of Milos in Greece, the city of Alexandria, the ancient sites of Tanis and Luxor in Egypt, and also the ancient city of Khorsabad, in Iraq. The narrative is enriched by 3-D images as well as animation, the purpose of the former being to bring to life several exhibition rooms to present them as they were at various moments of their existence (Lenoir’s Museum of French Monuments, the Napoleon Museum and its countless masterpieces, the museum in 1815 after the seized works of art were returned, the tremendous event that the Salon was, jam-packed with paintings displayed from floor to ceiling), while the latter’s goal will be to bring to life the historical figures who played a key role in the arrival of the works of art at the museum – among others: Alexandre Lenoir, who saved the gothic sculptures from the ravages of the Revolution; Dominique Vivant-Denon, the man from the Napoleon Museum, who scoured Germany and Italy for the works missing in its collection; Bernardino Drovetti, French consul in Alexandria, who brought to Paris the first collection of Egyptian artefacts through the doings of his henchman, the sculptor Jean-Jacques Rifaud; Champollion, who put an end to this scavenger hunt; and Émile Botta, a doctor and French consul in Iraq, who discovered Sargon II’s capital and had the colossal sculptures of the Assyrian King’s palace transported to Paris.

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Synopsis A teaser introduces the subject: How were the core collections of the greatest museum in the world constituted? How and where were the objects now reposing in them sourced?

- We open with The Mona Lisa, given its highly symbolic nature, iconic power but also the primary reason of its presence in Paris: Francis I’s campaign in Italy. Indeed, the Mona Lisa arrived in France in the wake of the deadliest battle of the time period. Didier Le Fur, historian, reminds us that 15,000 soldiers died on the battlefield of Marignano, a place which we film today and a battle which we re-create using 3-D in order to evoke the “providential” nature of the French King’s victory. Second decisive factor in the arrival of the painting in France: Leonardo was old, Vincent Delieuvin, curator in charge of 16th-century Italian painting at the Louvre Museum, explains. Now eclipsed by Raphael and Michelangelo, the master needed a new patron and protector. We film the Raphael rooms (in which, in fact, Leonardo is represented as Plato, more of a philosopher than artist and painter), which Leonardo would have been far from capable of executing, if judging by his inability to finish the Battle of Anghiari and by the state of the Last Supper, slowly turning to dust. This set of circumstances, to which can be added young Francis I’s propensity to spend his money lavishly, brought the old master’s final three masterpieces to Amboise. Vincent Delieuvin takes us to the National Archives, where are kept two documents attesting to the fortune invested by the king to acquire them. These are the cornerstones upon which were founded the royal collections, which then never ceased to be expanded until the French Revolution.

Charlemagne’s sword and the pillaging of the Saint-Denis necropolis. Charlemagne’s Sword

- The French Revolution marked the creation of the Central Museum of Arts, the ancestor of the Louvre Museum. To recount this episode, we film the Saint-Denis Basilica, where Charlemagne’s scepter and sword were taken. A throng of “fanatics” (which we depict through animation based on engravings from the time period) appeared in front of the newly renamed “Franciade” Basilica. The goal of these radical revolutionaries was to “dechristianize” France and they had gathered, as explain Patrice Gueniffey, historian of the Revolution and the Empire, and Élisabeth Antoine, curator at the Louvre, to take hold of the “gilded junk” kept in the sanctuary since the 11th century. Dozens of objects made of gold and silver, often adorned with precious stones, were at the time stored in the famed treasury chests (which we will recreate in 3-D based on engravings from the time period). Among these objects were various pieces of regalia, or emblems of royalty, including Charlemagne’s scepter and sword. They were all brought in a solemn convoy to the National Convention: two thirds of the objects were sent to a foundry to support the war effort (France, as

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explains Patrice Gueniffey, was attacked on its northern and eastern borders; a 3-D map shows us the progression of the enemies’ offensives) at a time when the state was on the verge of bankruptcy. Charlemagne’s scepter and sword were saved because of their supposed link to the first French emperor, and were among the first artefacts to be deposited with the Central Museum of Arts.

- From the Louvre’s exhibition rooms we move on to the neighboring restoration workshop

located in the premises of the Museums of France’s research laboratory. The statues of Charles V and Joanna of Bourbon, soiled by having remained outside too long, are being cleaned under the supervision of Pierre-Yves Le Pogam, curator in charge of medieval sculpture. These two statues are considered as the first portraits made in France with the ambition of being “realistic”, and consequently as icons of gothic art. Their story placed them in the Saint-Denis basilica, where they still were when the revolutionaries attacked the kings’ tombs in the summer of 1793. A commission was dispatched to the site to decide what could be sacrificed and what had to be preserved: Alexandre Lenoir, a mediocre painter but visionary art historian, was among them. We use engravings and watercolors of the time period to evoke the figure that Lenoir was, as well as his brave intervention. Profoundly convinced of the importance of works of art from the past, he shielded them with his body from the partisans of the French Terror. Pierre-Yves Le Pogam tells us how Lenoir collected the Saint-Denis statuary and had it transferred to a depository, which he subsequently transformed into a museum, adding various sculptures, among which the statues of Charles V and Joanna of Bourbon. Two superb paintings by Hubert Robert depict this ephemeral place, set up in the chapel of the Petits Augustins convent, emptied during the Restoration and integrated into the Paris School of Fine Arts. The statues of Charles V and Joanna of Bourbon were then deposited in the Louvre. In the meantime, the revolution, through the actions and decisions of Alexandre Lenoir, gave medieval sculpture its rightful place in French art history.

The Wedding Feast at Cana

The San Giorgio Maggiore monastery

Veronese’s Wedding Feast at Cana

- From the restoration workshop in the Museums of France’s laboratory and the chapel of the School of Fine Arts, we travel to the Venice laguna towards the island of San Giorgio Maggiore. As Bénédicte Savoy, art history professor in Berlin and at the Collège de France, explains, in 1796, the Benedictine convent established on the small islet housed Veronese’s masterpiece, the Wedding Feast at Cana, which now faces the Mona Lisa in the Salle des États of the Louvre Museum. This work epitomizes the seizing of art done by the Republic –

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hundreds of artworks requisitioned by the French armies and brought back to the Central Museum of Arts in Paris. The Republic had discovered a new vocation for itself, observes Sébastien Allard, head of the Department of Paintings at the Louvre: to become the guardian of the artistic heritage of all of Europe. We film the landscapes that witnessed the lightning-fast advance of Bonaparte through the Alps and northern Italy. In 1796, Patrice Gueniffey tells us, the French state desperately needed money; soaring inflation (1000% per month) and the depreciation of the assignat banknotes issued during the French Revolution (no French currency had any actual value anymore) forced the armies to help themselves to whatever they could find abroad. Upon signature of the Treaty of Tolentino (we film the palace where the general met with the papal emissaries), Bonaparte demanded of the Papal States one hundred of their masterpieces, which were immediately dispatched to Paris in a monumental convoy (we illustrate this through a 3-D image based on a Sèvres porcelain piece showing its arrival in Paris). Marching towards Austria, Bonaparte took Venetia on his way: he grabbed the Wedding Feast at Cana and a large number of other masterpieces, among which the Lion and Horses of St Mark. Veronese’s masterpiece is immense: the canvass was detached from the wall and rolled (in 3-D, we create a model of this handling implying a great risk for the painting).

Primitives seized by Vivant-Denon 3D of the Vatican’s ancient sculptures in the Louvre - 1806

- The next sequence opens with The Coronation of Napoleon by David: Bonaparte became Napoleon I and the Central Museum of Arts was then renamed after the Emperor of France. Its galleries, recreated through 3-D images, were already packed with masterpieces coming from all corners of Europe. Dominique Vivant-Denon was its director, following in the wake of the Empire’s armies wherever they went, using the loot from each conquest to fill gaps in the museum’s collections: on several engravings, which we turn into animation, he is seen selecting works of art in the museums of Cassel, surrounded by Napoleon’s soldiers. In 1811, Sébastien Allard explains, Vivant-Denon embarked on a great journey through Italy, on a quest for paintings by primitive artists. We follow his trail to the Campo Santo in Pisa, where he discovered Giotto’s Saint Francis, still one of the Louvre’s masterpieces today, as well as several churches of Parma and Piacenza, where he laid his hands on works by Cimabue, Fra Angelico, Ghirlandaio, and other masters of the Italian primitive school. Dozens of works of art thus were sent to Paris, and no one at the time paid the slightest attention to them. In fact, works by the so-called primitive painters were considered as “old things” much surpassed and overshadowed by Renaissance artists. Vivant-Denon exhibited them in the Louvre in 1814, precisely as the allied armies, having defeated the Empire for the first time, entered Paris.

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Vivant-Denon and the Battle of Waterloo - Paris, 1814. We show the portrait of Vivant-Denon, standing at his desk, a little smile on his

lips and a smart spark in his eye… and another painting, representing the pomp of the coronation of Louis XVIII. The two men formed a rather improbable – yet very efficient – team to stand up to the allied armies. Louis XVIII, in a speech to the Senate, refused to return the confiscated paintings. Vivant-Denon, as Sébastien Allard explains, let every restitution request drag on, playing against the clock: the emissaries of the victorious countries became discouraged and Napoleon returned from the island of Elba. It was the episode of his one hundred days, finding its end in the defeat at Waterloo. Napoleon had led the country into an adventure in which he didn’t stand a chance. This time, it was the last straw: when they came back to Paris, the emissaries had changed, Bénédicte Savoy comments. They no longer were old diplomats, but young nationalist partisans. The allies regained possession of the confiscated works of art. Well, most of them, but not all.

- The next sequence asks one specific question: how can one explain that numerous paintings – among which several masterpieces – stayed at the Louvre and have remained there to this day? We go through the collections, in which we can admire works by van Dyck, Rubens, Cimabue, Fra Angelico, Masaccio, or Ghirlandaio, paintings seized in 1796 or 1797 in Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy… The investigation concerning Giotto’s Saint Francis and Veronese’s Wedding Feast at Cana continues in the National Archives: Stéphane Loire, curator in the Department of Paintings, studies the provenance of the works of art and the reasons why they weren’t returned. The reason why Giotto’s Saint Francis and the rest of the other Italian primitive masterpieces weren’t returned, he explains, is that the emissaries coming from Tuscany regarded these works with disdain and didn’t pay them the attention they deserved. However, as far as the Wedding Feast at Cana was concerned, there was no doubt: its masterpiece status reached a consensus. But Venice, as we show through a 3-D map summarizing the territorial changes resulting from the Treaty of Vienna (March 1815), had become a simple province of the Austrian empire and its envoy in Paris had other priorities. An animated sequence relates the envoy’s encounter with Vivant-Denon, who proposed to exchange the Wedding Feast at Cana for a painting by Mansart, far less esteemed. The Austrian envoy nevertheless found the proposal quite satisfactory.

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The Borghese Gladiator and the Sleeping Hermaphrodite

- Before moving forward in time, we’ll back up a little. 1815. The museum’s ancient sculpture rooms were filled with hundreds of masterpieces, most of which had been confiscated from Germany and Italy and were about to be returned. So, where do the ancient pieces displayed in the Louvre today come from? Off to Rome and the palace of Prince Camillo Borghese, who sided with Bonaparte as early as 1797 and married his sister Pauline. The latter, known to be extravagant and fickle, put her husband in great difficulty. Camillo’s collection, as explains Jean-Luc Martinez, chairman of the Louvre and a specialist in Greek and Roman sculptures, was at the time the finest in Europe. In particular, it included the Borghese Gladiator, the gem of the set gathered by the prince’s ancestors. Napoleon and Vivant-Denon purchased the collection for a fortune, and saved Camillo from bankruptcy. In an animated sequence, we show the 330 ancient marbles, whose weight is considerable, being crated and towed by oxen to Paris. Upon their arrival, most were placed in storage, as the Pope’s collections already occupied most of the available space (a 3-D image leads our imagination to envision the Borghese marble collection in the museum’s cellar). Though consigned to storage, the Borghese collection was purchased for an absolute fortune; Ludovic Laugier, curator in charge of antiquities at the Louvre, tells us how we went from an initial valuation of 5 million French gold francs to the staggering price of 14 million! By itself, the Gladiator was acquired for 1 million – a fortune! It was only in 1815, when the museum’s galleries were emptied by the victorious parties, that all the Borghese marbles were taken out: they have henceforth occupied the space left by the returned pieces.

Eugène Delacroix – Liberty Leading the People; filming at night in the Louvre Museum

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- Unfortunately, the Louvre did not have the same “reserves” as far as paintings were concerned; a 3-D recreation shows us the museum in 1815, once most of the confiscated paintings had been returned. The overflowing collections had been replaced by a glaring void: the deserted galleries needed to be replenished. The portrait of the Count de Forbin, the museum’s new director, depicts a man whose nature is the opposite of Vivant-Denon’s: he was an artist, a bit of a dreamer, who doesn’t look us straight in the eye, as his predecessor did, but slightly sideways. He was a romantic, which was perfect for the new generation. Côme Fabre, curator in charge of 19th-century paintings, describes the unprecedented system established by Forbin in 1818: at the Salon, which took place every other year at the Louvre (we re-create one of them in 3-D, based on period paintings), artists exhibited their latest creations. The director of the Louvre acquired the most beautiful paintings, among which Massacre at Chios and Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix. They were first displayed at the Musée du Luxembourg, which was the first contemporary art museum in French art history. Upon the artist’s death, they were moved to the Louvre’s exhibition rooms. We are referring to Delacroix, Vernet, Ingres and Gericault! This was how the painting galleries were once again filled with gripping works by fascinating artists, fifty years after their being emptied by the countries that had defeated Napoleon. We film the 19th-century painting rooms of the museum: the Louvre covers all of French painting up until 1850, without any notable exception, Côme Fabre rejoicingly comments as we go through the rooms showcasing the French works from the first half of the 19th century.

The Venus de Milo and the Island of Milos

- The next image is a drastic departure: we are on a small island in the Mediterranean sea, Milos, where the Louvre curators believed they had found a piece that would allow them to keep up with their competitors. A farmer had unearthed two parts of a Venus statue. Through animation, we bring to life the “inventor” of the statue as well as Olivier Voutier, the naval officer who witnessed the discovery. To understand how important this was, we show the fantastic sculpture galleries of the Napoleon Museum before the statues were returned in 1815, recreated in 3-D: when the scientists were confronted with such a wealth of marble statues side by side, Jean-Luc Martinez explains, they observed a large number of similarities, and they understood that the Roman sculptures that they had up until then considered as originals were in fact copies. Unfortunately, at the same time, the British gained possession of the Parthenon marbles, and the Germans instantly purchased the marbles of Aegina (we film them in the Glyptothek in Munich). When the Venus arrived at the Louvre (a painting shows the event, with Charles X himself triumphantly receiving the statue), it was welcomed with great enthusiasm. It was instantly qualified as a “classic Greek marble,” an attribution

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which German scientists promptly questioned. Soon, the Venus de Milo became a bone of contention in the Franco-German rivalry! The story’s denouement took place in 1870: the Prussian troops started shelling Paris and the Louvre’s masterpieces were moved to the basements of the police headquarters to be sheltered. In the worst of it all, Adolf Furtwängler, the greatest specialist in the matter, proved that the marble that was no less than the utmost pride of the Louvre was in fact only a late copy. This was the coup de grâce for the Louvre Museum and for Paris, defeated. What were they to do with the Venus, then? Place it in storage? Swallow their pride but keep it out of the sight of the connoisseurs? No, that wasn’t necessary, as its scientific value mattered very little by then. Paris, in the 19th century, was the capital of fine arts. All the great painters and sculptors (Rodin, Delacroix, etc.) had admired the statue and reproduced her figure in their own work. The very existence of the Venus de Milo and her reputation had completely eclipsed the controversy between German and French archaeologists, Ludovic Laugier, the curator in charge of the statue, explains. At that point, she was already an icon.

- Alexandria, today, no longer has the charm of the town it was in the 19th century. On the coastal road, we follow the Egyptologist Paolo Gallo. He points towards the location of two caravansaries – today replaced by buildings constructed in the 1970s. The first was where Bernardino Drovetti stayed, the other Henry Salt. The two consuls, one French and the other British, were neighbors. At the Louvre, we film the enormous Naos of Amasis as well as the equally colossal Sphinx of Tanis. We chose not to highlight just one work of art, here, but a pair: the first comes from Drovetti’s collection, the second from Salt’s. The two men cannot be dissociated, neither can their contribution to the collections. At the time the two consuls were in Egypt, the country had entered a period of accelerated modernization and its viceroy, Mehmet Ali, needed the Europeans’ support. In return, he granted Salt and Drovetti the monopoly of the export of antiquities.

Henry Salt, Jean-François Champollion, and Bernardino Drovetti

To conduct field exploration, Drovetti chose a sculptor from Marseilles, Jean-Jacques Rifaud, while Salt opted for an Italian character, the excavator known as the Great Belzoni. Whenever their competition led to head to head confrontation, their disputes were settled with firearms: several episodes of their rivalry are recounted using animation. From Luxor, we travel to the Museum of Turin: Drovetti tried to convince Louis XVIII to buy his first collection, in vain. The artefacts collected by the French consul slipped right out of the Louvre’s reach and were purchased by the King of Piedmont-Sardinia. Three years later, Drovetti had gathered another collection: to bait King Charles X, he gave him the Naos of Amasis as a present. This time, the Louvre Museum didn’t miss out on the opportunity. Once acquired, the collection was placed in the hands of Champollion, who had just deciphered the hieroglyphs, and was determined to negotiate for another set of antiquities, assembled by Henry Salt, and whose purchase kept being put off by the British Museum. Through animation, we recount the discovery of these extraordinary objects, stored in Livorno, which he ended up acquiring on behalf of the Louvre: among them was the Sphinx of Tanis.

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Champollion inaugurated the Egyptian museum (which later became a department by the same name within the Louvre Museum) in 1826, before setting out for Egypt. He travelled throughout the country for two years and observed that the pharaonic monuments (which the drawings by the scientists of the French Campaign in Egypt show us in all their majesty) had in the meantime been wrecked both by ruthless treasure hunters and by Egyptian workers using them as quarries. The viceroy was convinced that ancient remains had to be protected: Drovetti left the country for good. As for Champollion, he nevertheless took 80 objects to Paris, including a magnificent and considerable relief taken from Seti I’s tomb and displayed in the Louvre today. Nothing akin to Salt or Drovetti’s immense collections (41,000 objects in total), however: the era of the consuls had come to an end.

The winged bulls of Khorsabad – Night filming at the Louvre.

- The next sequence starts in an armored vehicle. From the Iraqi territories held by the Kurdsto Mosul, approximately thirty kilometers into the Tigris plain, curator Ariane Thomas, ayoung woman in her thirties, travels under the protection of the French armed forces. Thenwe accompany her to the archaeological museum, whose curators and restorers arereceiving support from the Louvre: they’re trying to piece together the reliefs and statues ofthe Assyrian sites destroyed by the henchmen of the Islamic State. Ariane Thomas is quitefamiliar with the Assyrian vestiges in question: the famous Winged bulls of Khorsabad, ofwhich the Museum of Mosul owned several specimens, were discovered in 1848 by EmileBotta. Brought to the Louvre a few years later, they inaugurated the Assyrian museum –which was the starting point for the future Department of Near Eastern Antiquities. Thesequence that follows is a cut editing of images filmed respectively at the Louvre Museumand Mosul Museum. In Paris, we meet Emile Botta, a doctor and French consul in Iraq in1848, as well as Etienne Flandrin, a painter who joined him as soon as the discovery of theKhorsabad ruins was revealed. Their adventure is well-known: they documented everythingthat was unearthed, aware that in this rainy region, the ruins would be destroyed and meltaway with the next winter. Thus ensued seven years of archaeological excavation, which wediscuss with Ariane Thomas while on location at the Khorsabad site, a few kilometers awayfrom Mosul, and with Marielle Pic, head of the department of near eastern antiquities, whoshows us Flandrin’s extraordinary publications, today kept in the department’s archives.Through animation, we narrate the transportation of the antiquities: Khorsabad’s enormousremains were placed in carts drafted by oxen then transferred to rafts travelling downstreamon the Tigris. Several of the monumental bulls were abandoned on the way or fell into theriver when a raft capsized… Finally, we return to their arrival in Paris, covered by the press,which we illustrate once again using animation. A civilization that had been unknown up untilthen, a new form of esthetic, and the sheer size of the vestiges: The Parisian public reactedenthusiastically to Khorsabad. Today, for the curators in Mosul, the presence in Paris of thebulls taken by Botta is a great resource: intact, these sculptures serve as references in theirown reconstruction work. Soon, Ariane Thomas hopes, excavation work will be resumed inKhorsabad. Although the Islamic State has scoured the area in order to feed its antiquitytrafficking, Ariane is convinced there is still much to be discovered…

The bulls from the palace of Sargon II

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