This lecture covers the period prior to 1793, when the Musée Central des Arts was founded in Paris, in what is now the Louvre. Prior to 1793, "public" museums, open to everyone, existed widely throughout Europe. Indeed, it was from the 18th century onwards that princes and sovereigns decided to open their galleries to the public. In Italy, the first museum was opened in Rome in 1734, followed by Florence and Milan; in Germany, Brünswick's picture gallery was opened to the public in 1701, Düsseldorf's in 1714, and so on. In 1753, the British Museum was created in London. France was the only country without a "public" museum, until the French Revolution.
Publicity for these museums went beyond mere physical accessibility: catalogs were published and translated into several languages, and their prefaces emphasized the notion of common good, of public service rendered by providing access to princely collections. Museums were thus part of a logic of national generosity, stemming from the Enlightenment, according to which the people had the right to share in the beauty of collections, which would enable them to be more cultivated and creative.
If the circulation of the idea of the museum was transnational, so too was that of the works: north of the Alps, Flemish and Dutch art were at the heart of the constitution of princely collections, along with Italian art, antiquities and extra-European objects from scientific expeditions. Travelers such as Montesquieu and Bergeret de Grancourt - friend and patron of Jean-Honoré Fragonard - reported on these circulations, describing the galleries of Düsseldorf and Dresden, admiring them and comparing them to Italian galleries.
