We love standing in a museum gazing at a painting by Titian or Caravaggio, but we rarely question where it was before it came to be in that museum, or who in earlier times stood in front of it and gazed, nor by what practical means it got there.
When Napoleon invaded Europe, he had the best of Europe’s works of art sent back to Paris for his new Musée Napoleon. But HOW did they get four life-size bronze horses of San Marco down from their place on the basilica in Venice, over the Alps and all the way to Paris? What practicalities did shipping a painting over 15 feet high, or a statue such as Michelangelo’s David, involve? In this lecture, Chantal Brotherton-Ratcliffe will delve into the astonishing history of the movement of art works.