Bucentaur in the context of "Canaletto"

Napoleonic looting of art (French: Spoliations napoléoniennes) consisted of the confiscation of artworks and precious objects carried out by French troops and officials in the conquered territories of the French Republic and Empire, including the Italian Peninsula, Spain, Portugal, the Low Countries, and Central Europe. The looting began around 1794 and continued through Napoleon I's rule of France, until the Congress of Vienna in 1815 ordered the restitution of the works.

During the Napoleonic era, an unknown but immense quantity of art was acquired, destroyed, or lost through treaties, public auctions, and unsanctioned seizures. Coins and objects made of precious metals, such as the Jewel of Vicenza and the bucentaur, the Venetian state barge, were melted down for easier sale and transport, to finance French military wages. In the confusion, many artworks and manuscripts were lost in transit or broken into pieces, which were often never reunited, as occurred with the marble columns of the Aachen Cathedral.

Bucentaure was an 86-gun ship of the line of the French Navy, and the lead ship of her class. She was the flagship of Vice-Admiral Latouche Tréville, who died on board on 18 August 1804, and later of Vice-Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve as the flagship of the Franco-Spanish fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar.

Bucentaure was named after the Venetian state barge Bucintoro which was destroyed by Napoleon after the fall of the Republic of Venice in 1797. While the Venetian name is of uncertain etymology (it may have originated in the bucinatores aboard who blew their instruments to herald the arrival of the Doge), the French Bucentaure's figurehead depicted a bucentaur: a mythical, centaur-like creature with the body of a bull and the head of a man.

The Marriage of the Sea ceremony (Italian: Sposalizio del Mare) was a major maritime event in the Republic of Venice commemorated on Ascension Day. It symbolized the maritime dominion of Venice and was manifested by the throwing of a golden ring into the Adriatic Sea. This ritual gesture was performed by the doge of Venice until the fall of the republic in 1797.

Since 1965, the ceremony has been reenacted annually by the mayor of Venice reprising the role as doge.