“Paris-Athens”: an intercultural exhibition at the Musée du Louvre

If the good understanding between France and Greece is in the news through the booming Greek arms program, the exhibition Paris Athens, Birth of Modern Greece 1675-1919, at the Louvre Museum until until February 7, 2022, recalls that the links between the two countries are also long-term. Return to these human trajectories, in Greece and France, intimately linked to the constitution of the Louvre collections, with Anna, Akteos consultant.

A look back at two centuries of crossed trajectories

2021 seals the links between Greece and France in the calendars of the two countries. In addition to the order in January for 18 Rafale combat aircraft for 2.5 billion euros, Greece has decided to acquire six others, announced Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on September 12. To this important and unprecedented order (Greece being the first European country to choose to acquire the Rafale), was added that of three Belharra frigates on September 28 ¹. Quite naturally, these military agreements aim to deter Ankara's policy against which France has protested in recent months.

2021 also marks a double anniversary in the Parisian cultural agenda: that of the bicentenary of the start of the Greek War of Liberation (March 25) and the entry of the Venus de Milo into the Louvre collections (March 1). These two events are remembered in a monumental exhibition which opened at the Louvre Museum on September 28. If the ambition consists of retracing the cultural, diplomatic and artistic links woven between Greece and France from the 17th century to the beginning of the 19th century, this exhibition also shows their influence on the constitution of the collections of the Department of Antiquities. The objective is to cross these human trajectories and the transfer of ancient artifacts which took place over three centuries where the Hellenic space is an open field of circulation. Five sections punctuate the exhibition where Greece takes on the features of a woman through two sculptures, the Venus de Milo(3rd quarter of the 2nd century BC), theYoung Greek Womanby David d'Angers and Eugène Delacroix's painting, The Ruins of Missolonghi (1826). Three works illustrate the French reading of young Greece's quest to become a European nation-state.

The Venus de Milo: a Greek icon that became French

At the time this story begins, Athens is an Ottoman town of 5,000 inhabitants circumscribed on the northern flank of the Acropolis, then a fortress. Two French embassies stopped there – that of the Marquis de Nointel in 1675 and that of Count Choiseul Gouffier, French ambassador to the Sublime Porte between 1784 and 1792 – with their procession of scientists and artists. Then, as part of military expeditions to support the Greeks during the war of liberation (1821-1830), collections of ancient artifacts took place notably in Morea (Peloponnese) in 1826 or even in Milos, before their departure to France to be exhibited today at the Louvre Museum.

Among these fragments, a sculpture, the Venus de Milo, catches our attention. This sculpture of the goddess Aphrodite is a real prize of war. Discovered in the field of a Greek on the island of Milos, it was bought from the latter by a French naval officer then passing through this island located in the extreme southwest of the Cyclades archipelago. France obtains the firman of the Sultan to export this antiquity, but the great admiral of the Ottoman fleet, Prince Mourousi, seizes it. The French fleet manages to disembark the piece and transport it to France. She thus arrives in Paris whose eyes are fixed on the war of independence, encouraging the Greeks to emancipate themselves from the Ottomans. The Venus de Milothen becomes the ambassador of this Greece, an Ottoman province whose Orthodox communities are considered “gavûrs”, infidels, second-class citizens, heavily taxed, which will constitute the starting point of the revolts. Very quickly, in Paris, at the Louvre, the Venus de Milowill be cast, reproduced in several copies to disseminate her image throughout the world: she is therefore a woman who embodies the liberation, the emancipation of the Greek people. Very quickly, in all French museums, all universities, this casting was present ². This is how the making of an icon took place.

Philhellenism in France

Second key moment of this exhibition: the Greek Revolution here treated under the prism of Philhellenism, an intellectual movement supporting the Greeks, in their fight against the Ottoman Empire for independence (1821-1829).

The young teenagerby David d'Angers, whose original plaster cast was loaned for the exhibition, embodies young Greece. To honor General Marco Botzaris (1788-1823), the French sculptor, Prix de Rome in 1811, sent at his own expense, this commemorative marble sculpture (preserved at the National Museum of Athens) to be placed in the Garden of Heroes in Missolonghi on his grave. If the name of Botzaris is not unknown to Parisians ³, it must be remembered that he is one of the main protagonists in the beginnings of the war of independence.

He notably collaborated with François Pouqueville, then French consul in Ioannina and convinced philhellene. His heroic death at the Battle of Kefalovryso came at a critical moment when the revolution itself feared for its survival. Indeed, during the second siege of Missolonghi (summer 1823), he locked himself within the walls of the city which he tried to save: he entered the enemy camp at night with 350 men and caused carnage. Hit by a bullet in the head, the intrepid man died the next day in Carpenitza. The emotion aroused by this act of dedication (which recalls that of Leonidas finding his death at the Battle of Thermopylae) thus accelerated the awareness of Europeans of the need to come to the aid of the Greeks who were losing the war.

The announcement of the disappearance of Lord Byron ^4,who went on the battlefield to support the Greek insurrection, marks a turning point. The mobilization of French intellectuals, poets, composers, like Victor Hugo, Hector Berlioz, Chateaubriand, led to the organization of an exhibition held at the Lebrun gallery in Paris, in 1826 ⁵.

The revolutionary views of Delacroix

Among the works exhibited by artists, many of whom were the heirs of Jacques Louis David who had just died, that of Eugène Delacroix stood out: Greece on the ruins of Missolonghi(1826). In a landscape of fire, flames and blood ⁶, a woman ⁷, whose arms in an almost religious gesture of lamentation, emerges from the ruins and corpses. Icon of a proud but beaten people, it rises in a central position over the entire height of the canvas embodying Greece with a whiteness of skin fantasized by Delacroix and which aims to contrast with that of the Ottomans. Although Delacroix never went to Greece, he achieved an emotional synthesis here.

A few years later, Delacroix chose to represent, in the same vein, the Three Glorious Revolutions (July 27, 28 and 29, 1830) with his canvas kept at the Louvre Museum (Department of French Paintings) Liberty Leading the People. Stemming from his studies made for his philhellenist works, Delacroix brings together allegory and history. Enthusiastic about the return of the tricolor flag, he chose a woman – Marianne – to represent the popular insurrection, whose pose recalls that of the gladiator Borghese. Because far from being submissive, imploring the protection of the great powers, this Freedom is permanent here, in movement: head held high, it walks towards us until it is almost out of sight. Like a steamroller, this allegory will be used to illustrate events of the 20th century, like the posters of May 1968.

Interculturality is thus celebrated this year at the Louvre and more widely in Europe, whose collective memory is rooted in this very young country.

¹These agreements seek to dissuade Ankara from continuing its prospecting for gas deposits in territorial waters claimed by Greece and the Republic of Cyprus, carried out since 2018.

²A cast from the University of Montpellier is on display at the Paris-Athens exhibition.

³A street and a metro station bear his name in the Buttes Chaumont district.

⁴A figure of romanticism, this British poet died of a fever on April 19 in Missolonghi and not, on the battlefield as the legend likes to say.

⁵A true fundraiser, this exhibition was a great success since it welcomed 28,938 visitors in six months, having paid a ticket estimated between 1 and 5 francs, making a total of 49,193 francs in revenue.

⁶It was under the title “allegory” that Delacroix himself sold it in 1852 to the city of Bordeaux. The recent restoration carried out on the occasion of the Delacroix (1798-1863) exhibition at the Louvre Museum in 2018, shows in particular two naturalistic, if not sensationalist, details: severed heads and traces of blood which spurted at the young woman's feet. .

⁷The dimensions of this oil on canvas are 213 cm high and 209 cm wide.