JEAN NAIGEON AT THE DEPOT DE NESLE: A collector and culture-broker in the First French Republic

Abstract

The French Revolution produced major changes in all areas of French life, including culture broadly conceived. Nowhere is this more evident than in the official world of art, specifically in the reorganization of cultural properties and the generation of the concept of national patrimony. From the private collections of a privileged élite would grow the home of a national store of artworks and other treasures, which would be displayed as proof of French greatness and as tools for the continuing mission of educating the French people. In Paris and throughout the French provinces museums were opened to the public as the process of nationalization and reorganization reached a high point under the republican regime of the mid 1790s. Many of these same museums still mark the cultural map of France in our own day. One of the cornerstones of the revolutionary drive to reorganize cultural properties was the Dépôt de Nesle, a central warehouse for incoming and outgoing artworks, one of several such Dépôts established and run by the republican government from 1793 to 1799. This particular Dépôt was administeredfor most of this period by Jean Naigeon, a diligent civil servant and a dedicated revolutionary. Naigeon's task, however modest it might appear, was fundamental to the success of the creation of national and provincial museums, and yet to this date he and his administration remain almost totally ignored. The purpose of the present essay is several-fold. First and foremost, it aims to rescue Naigeon and his Dépôt from their comparative oblivion. In this respect, attention will be given to the minutiae of Naigeon's administration, which will provide a fascinating picture of the daily, material base of republican policy in the fine arts. Second, an attempt will be made to assess the individual role which Natgeon played within the institutional context of the Dépôt de Nesle during the 1790s, in particular with respect to the development of national patrimony. In so doing this paper will also seek to place Naigeon within a spectrum of revolutionary actors, among whom he had a unique part to play.