Abstract
Intertemporality affects not only borders, regimes, the map of Europe and host structures, but also the objects themselves. During their absence - and the phenomenon increases with the duration of this absence - objects are transformed, seen differently, sometimes modified or restored, and are both the same and different when they return.
The Musée Napoléon invests considerable sums in the restoration of pieces destined to be displayed in its galleries. But restoring a painting is not just a technical gesture, it also says something about it, its value and the way in which previous restorations are viewed. It also expresses the underlying idea that those who are best able technically and technologically to conserve works are also the only ones who deserve to own them.
Beyond the materiality of the pieces, the changes affecting them are immaterial and intellectual mutations. Some of the works that arrived in Paris had hardly been studied in their original context. Placed in a scientific context, if we consider museums as art-historical factories that contextualize them within the history of a painter or a school, they participate in the elaboration, from Paris, of a scientific discourse that irrigates the whole of Europe and feeds the work of art historians, antiquarians and archaeologists for several decades. Even if only a few of the works exhibited at the Musée Napoléon are the subject of scientific publications, and not all those that disappear into the deposits are treated, the pieces on view are recoded, re-evaluated and enhanced by the scientific gaze brought to bear on them.
Finally, the act of repossession, often experienced as a patriotic event, can alter the image of annexed heritage. Certain works that previously had no particular political dimension, or at least none that was ostensible, will become the subject of strong identity projections once they are returned to their territory of origin.
