Le musée français: guerras napoleônicas, coleções artísticas e o longínquo destino de um livro

Abstract

This paper is about Le Musée Français [The French Museum], a book found in the collection of the library of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro. As a catalog of the Napoleon Museum, it bears witness to the reorganization of the arts in Europe as a result of the Napoleonic wars and the project of making Paris a true successor to Athens and Rome, as the center of a new republic of the arts. This process was the object of a dispute where Quatremère de Quincy and Joachim Lebreton played an important role. It was also one of the causes leading to the exile of a group of artists who then helped to lay the foundations for an academic environment in Rio de Janeiro.