'A fascinating and deeply rewarding book' Adam Zamoyski, Daily Telegraph Napoleon's Plunder chronicles one of the most spectacular art appropriation campaigns in history and, in doing so, sheds new light on the complex origins of what was once called the Musee Napoleon, now known as the Louvre. It centres on the story of Napoleon's theft of Paolo Veronese's Wedding Feast at Cana, a vast, sublime canvas that in 1797 the French army tore from a wall of the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice. Feast was just one of Napoleon's spoils of war, which he claimed for the French nation and displayed in a public museum - the Louvre. He filled the former palace of the French kings with his acquisitions, and Europe flocked to Paris and hailed the Louvre as the greatest museum in the world. Did he take it for himself? Or for France? Or for the world at large? Saltzman interweaves the stories of Napoleon's military campaigns, uncovering the treaties through which he obtained his loot, with the histories of the plundered works themselves, exploring how these masterpieces came into being. As much as a story of military might, this is an account of one of the most ambitious cultural projects ever conducted.

A spellbinding account of the rapacious pursuit of the most exquisite paintings in the world
In the Gilded Age, newly wealthy and culturally ambitious Americans began to compete for Europe's extraordinary Old Master pictures, causing a major migration of art across the Atlantic. "Old Masters, New World "is a backstage look at the cutthroat competition, financial maneuvering, intrigue, and double-dealing often involved in these purchases, not to mention the seductive power of the ravishing paintings that drove these collectors-including financier J. Pierpont Morgan, sugar king H. O. Havemeyer, Boston aesthete Isabella Stewart Gardner, and industrialist Henry Clay Frick. Packed with stunning reproductions, this is an ideal gift book for art lovers and history buffs alike.