Notre-dame: why the French elite is picking up the tab
Donations by France’s richest families illustrate the changing relationship between business, culture and the state
On Monday evening guests arrived at the Château de Versailles near Paris to celebrate the reopening of the Queen’s Apartments after a three-year refurbishment. They had barely begun to sip champagne and marvel at the rococo decoration where Marie-antoinette once lived when word reached them of a fire at Notre-dame cathedral.
Soon the guests were hunched over their smartphones watching the medieval Gothic masterpiece in the centre of Paris engulfed in flames, as its burning spire crashed through the roof. “It was a moment of distress and sorrow,” says Elisabeth Ponsolle des Portes, who heads the Comité Colbert, the French luxury association. “Everyone had tears in their eyes.”
Just as private donors have played a crucial part in the continuing restoration of Versailles, so they have quickly emerged to raise funds for a restoration of Notre-dame cathedral after the fire at one of the most visited tourist sites in Europe.
On Monday night, President Emmanuel Macron stood in front of the still-burning cathedral that he called “the epicentre of our life” to announce a national subscription fund to rebuild Notre-dame. Before the fire had even been extinguished, the Pinault family, who control luxury conglomerate Kering, promised €100m from their family holding company Artemis.
“Faced with such a tragedy, everyone wishes to restore life to this jewel of our heritage,” said François-henri Pinault, Artemis chairman.
Hours later, the rival Arnault family, whose patriarch Bernard Arnault is the richest man in Europe, said that alongside its luxury group LVMH it would give €200m for the restoration and put its creative, architectural and financial teams at the state’s disposal.
“As caretakers of these big French names we feel a responsibility,” Antoine Arnault, who is Mr Arnault’s eldest son, told the FT. “Given everything that France has given us, we try to give back when something catastrophic happens.”
The response to the fire highlights the way in which the relationship between governments in Europe and private wealth is changing in an era of budget austerity, growing economic inequality and populist political pressures.
“Historically contributions of this kind were not part of the French culture because like everything else it was the job of the state,” says Ezra Suleiman,
professor of international studies at Princeton University. “Now the state cannot afford to fund these projects and, therefore, the private sector has to step in.”
Both the Pinault and Arnault families made much of their fortunes in the luxury industry, a sector synonymous with the pride and heritage of “Made in France”. Their donations to NotreDame are the latest illustration of the outsized role that the two families — old rivals ever since the Pinaults won the battle for control of Italian luxury brand Gucci 20 years ago — have come to play in sponsoring French culture.
In 2014, Mr Arnault opened the Frank Gehry-designed Fondation Louis Vuitton, a contemporary art museum in Paris, which will one day be gifted to the city. The Bourse de Commerce, a former commodities exchange in central Paris, is being turned into a museum featuring works from François Pinault’s vast art collection. Mr Pinault also contributed €3.5m for the recently-restored Hauteville House in Guernsey, where Victor Hugo — author of French Gothic novel The Hunchback of Notre-dame — lived in exile.
Mr Suleiman says the two families are playing the sort of role in French public life that wealthy industrialists played a century ago. “The Pinaults and the Arnaults have taken a pioneering role in business and are now active in arts and philanthropy, like the Carnegie and Rockefeller families in America at the turn of the 20th century,” he says.
By midweek, over €800m of donations had poured in from France and abroad. Among the largest were €100m from French energy group Total and €200m from the Bettencourt Meyers family alongside its cosmetics group L’oréal and the family foundation.
The French taxpayer is also contributing, including €50m from Paris city council and €10m from the Îlede-france region, which incorporates the capital.
“We have seen a reflex of national unity around this symbol of NotreDame,” says Jean Garrigues, a history professor at the University of Orléans. “It’s perhaps the major symbol of our history, of our culture, even of our French identity.”
At a fashion show in Rome for Lvmh-owned Fendi in July 2016, the models walked on water. They glided down a glass runway that stretched over the 300-year-old Trevi Fountain, which had recently completed a €2.5m restoration funded by the Italian luxury brand.
Fendi’s reconstruction of the Baroque fountain is just one of many examples of French and Italian luxury groups taking the lead in restoring famous European monuments.
“Luxury brands have got an interest in linking their image with monuments that are treasures of humanity, and are located in places that are among the most visited cities in the world,” says Mario Ortelli, an adviser for the luxury industry.
There are also juicy tax breaks. In 2003 France passed a law through which individuals and businesses benefit from at least a 60 per cent discount on charitable gifts. In Italy, the equivalent tax break for cultural donations by businesses and individuals is 65 per cent.
In recent years, Bulgari has supported the refurbishment of Rome’s Baths of Caracalla and the Spanish Steps; Venetian businessman Renzo Rosso, founder of fashion brand Diesel, donated €5m to the restoration of the Rialto bridge across the Grand Canal in Venice.
And in 2011 Diego Della Valle, chairman and owner of Italian leather goods company Tod’s Group, embarked on a €30m restoration of the Colosseum in Rome. “It’s because of love for one of the most important Italian monuments — representing Italy all around the world,” he said at the time. “When we are able to contribute, why not?”
The rapid pledge of hundreds of millions of dollars for Notre-dame’s restoration has come at a time of growing resentment of the establishment and the French elite. The grassroots gilets jaunes movement that has shaken the government since November is in part a protest against high taxes, inequality and a perception that Mr Macron is a “president of the rich”.
“I’m not sure this type of philanthropy will really be appreciated by French society,” says Mr Garrigues. “These are several Frances, which don’t like each other, which hate each other.”
Indignation from the gilets jaunes and trade unionists followed almost as quickly as donations poured into the restoration fund. “The oligarchy gives to Notre-dame,” said Benjamin Cauchy, a prominent gilet-jaune, in a tweet. Ingrid Levavasseur, an early instigator of the movement, condemned “the inertia of big companies when faced with poverty when they show how they can mobilise a truckload of cash in one night for Notre-dame”. Philippe Martinez, head of the CGT, a big trade union federation, said: “In a click €200m, €100m . . . If they are able to give tens of millions to rebuild Notre-dame, let them stop telling us that there is no money to satisfy the social emergency.”