The Louvre in Paris is set to return more than 250 objects from the bequest of the late arts patron and socialist Baroness Adèle de Rothschild after they landed in the museum’s collection by error.
The mistake was uncovered five years ago after a cross-inventory of the Louvre’s collection. The items will be returned to the Fondation des Artistes, a private cultural organization which funds artists and art schools. It is headquartered in the Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild, which the baroness built on 11 rue Berryer in Paris and used as her private residence.
Rothschild, who died in 1922, bequeathed the building and its contents to the French state on the condition that it be turned into a museum called the Fondation Salomon de Rothschild. Another stipulation was that her cabinet of curiosities remain untouched.
The small museum opened to the public in 2017 and sees around 2,000 to 2,500 visitors each year.
However, in 2020 after the Fondation des Artistes asked the Louvre to participate in a joint inventory, it was discovered that the museum’s collection of decorative works and Islamic art objects included 258 objects from the cabinet. “Some objects from the cabinet of curiosities had joined the Louvre as early as 1923, others had been deposited there at the turn of the 2000s, to protect them during work on the Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild,” Laurence Maynier, the director of the Fondation des Artistes, told Le Monde. He said the inclusion of the works into the museum’s collection was “unjustified.”
After years of negotiations, in April the Louvre finally agreed to hand back the objects to the foundation. “This is neither a victory nor revenge, but the culmination of something legitimate and necessary,” Maynier said. “If we are not able to respect the conditions of a legacy, we sabotage any possibility of creating others.”
Around 30 other objects from Rothschild’s cabinet of curiosities currently on display in the Louvre will remain there for five years “to give the curators time to find replacements,” Maynier added. In return, the Louvre will recover 104 pieces that had been included in its inventory but deposited with the Fondation des Artistes.
The Louvre recently returned the first batch of objects, with second batch expected to arrive at the foundation next week. “We will integrate them using the iconographic documents we have to reconstruct the cabinet as closely as possible to its original state,” Maynier said.
According to the Rothschild archive, after the sudden death of baroness’ husband, Salomon James, Adèle became a recluse and rarely left the Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild. Before she died, she was embroiled in a dispute with her daughter because she married outside the Jewish faith.
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“The rift between Adèle and her daughter was never healed and much of her collection of Jewish art was bequeathed to the Musée de Cluny; other collections were bequeathed to the Louvre Museum, the Museum of Decorative Art in Paris and the National Library of France,” the archive said in a statement.