‘Conquête militaire’: the ethics of restitution of the Louvre’s Napoleonic legacy

While art provides a physical and transportable object within which heritage and, by extension, national identity is stored and displayed, it nonetheless also exudes and absorbs these same intangible concepts. The Wedding Feast at Cana, one of the largest and most prominent paintings removed from Venice during the 1797 French invasion, is one of those works under discussion when defining where and to whom material culture belongs. This article explores the history and the ethics behind the story of the Wedding Feast at Cana and examines the viewpoints from which ownership and intangible connection for material culture is often viewed.