Art as State Weapon

To run his trophy museum, Napoleon installed Baron Denon, an archaeologist and diplomat, as its first director. Denon turned what had been a royal collection into a public museum — open to ordinary citizens and arranged to tell a story of French greatness. Making the spoils of war freely viewable reframed plunder as a gift to the nation.

The machine Napoleon built — official painters, controlled exhibitions, manufactured imagery — set a template that totalitarian regimes of the 20th century would draw on. Much of the modern dictator's portrait gallery echoes this Napoleonic playbook.