What Came Back in 1815, and What Did Not

Four Napoleonic takings in this archive had four different endings

The records in this archive that pass through the Napoleonic wars do not end the same way. A Netherlandish triptych went home in 1816 or 1817, a giant Venetian canvas never did, a stele found by French engineers hangs in London, and a Norman embroidery was returned to its town by the man who borrowed it.

Treating these as one story called 'Napoleonic looting' hides the point. Each object moved on a different instrument, and the instrument is what a later claim had to answer. The table sets the four side by side.

The Wedding Feast at Cana stayed because the Louvre offered a substitute

Veronese's Wedding Feast at Cana has hung in the Louvre since 1798 and was not returned in 1815, because a substitute was sent to Venice in its place. The Louvre record lists it as number 7 on a list drawn up under a treaty clause requiring twenty paintings and five hundred manuscripts, and the canvas was cut and rolled for the journey to Paris.

Accounts of 1815 differ on who sat across the table from the Louvre. This archive's record, following the sources it cites, names the Austrian commissioner and says Vivant Denon persuaded him not to take the painting because it was hard to move. The English Wikipedia article instead says the Pope's agent, the sculptor Antonio Canova, excluded it. Both agree on the result: Charles Le Brun's Le Repas chez Simon went to Venice instead.

The record adds that whether the exchange is legally sound has been argued since, and notes that a full-size facsimile has hung in the original refectory since 11 September 2007, the 210th anniversary of the taking.

Memling's triptych returned because Danzig would not accept a substitute

Memling's Last Judgment triptych went back to Danzig because the city's council and preachers refused every substitute offered for it. The National Museum in Gdansk says Danzig was occupied by Napoleon's army in 1807 and that the triptych left the city for the first time in 330 years, to be taken to Paris. This archive's record has the French commandant asking the church wardens to hand it over on 3 June 1807, and it was inventoried in the Musee Napoleon as no. 563 under the name of Jan van Eyck.

After Napoleon's fall it was, according to the museum, the first work taken out of the Louvre. It was held in Berlin on Prussian authority while Berlin artists argued for keeping it. The museum states that it was displayed again in St Mary's in January 1817. Other sources give the date of arrival as 17 December 1816, so this archive records the return date as disputed.

That the same painting then had a second war is the sharper point. The museum says the Red Army found it in 1946 and sent it to the Hermitage, and that it came back to Poland about ten years later. Sources disagree on 1945 against 1946 and on 1956 against 1958, and no source consulted gives the legal basis for the Soviet custody.

The Rosetta Stone never entered the 1815 argument because a capitulation had already moved it

The Rosetta Stone is in the British Museum because of a military capitulation in 1801, not because of a seizure that a later peace could reverse. French engineers uncovered it in July 1799, and when General Menou surrendered Alexandria on 30 August 1801 the antiquities assembled by the French scientific commission were declared public property under the capitulation, subject to the allied generals.

Colonel Tomkyns Hilgrove Turner brought it to England aboard the captured French frigate HMS Egyptienne, landing at Portsmouth in February 1802, and it has been on display in London almost continuously since June 1802. Apart from wartime storage it left once, for one month in October 1972, to be shown at the Louvre.

Of the four objects here it is the only one whose transfer was agreed in writing between armies, and it is also the only one whose present holder has never had to answer an 1815 argument.

The Bayeux Tapestry went to Paris as a loan that Napoleon himself ended

The Bayeux Tapestry was taken to Paris in 1803 for a display, not for the Louvre's collection, and Napoleon ordered it returned on 23 February 1804. This archive's record has it shown in the Apollo Gallery from 6 December 1803 to 18 February 1804, as propaganda linking his planned invasion of England to William the Conqueror's. It was sent back to Bayeux, on what he called a loan for a thousand years.

The tapestry was already state property by then, seized for the French nation in 1794, so the move was an internal transfer and no foreign claim was ever involved. Its record shows a later and longer absence: the embroidery is on loan to the British Museum from September 2026 to July 2027, the first time it has travelled to Britain.

What the four endings say about restitution after a war

The four endings show that restitution after the Napoleonic wars was settled object by object, by whoever was in the room. A city that would not accept a substitute got its painting. A treaty partner that accepted one lost its painting for good, and the Louvre still catalogues the Veronese with the acquisition mode 'military conquest'.

This is a different problem from the 1933 to 1945 gap, which has its own principles and its own claimants. For the Napoleonic cases the records here contain no live claim, which is why the argument stays in the history of each object and not in a court.