In pictures

The exceptional quality of the bronze work transforms this pendulum into a sculpture. The choice of the imagery of a pendulum to decorated one’s home reflected the moral virtues, even a political ideology of its owner. The mythological or historical allegory dominated and often served the imperial propaganda. This “Love guided by Fidelity” is a model that […]

Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte was elected President of the Republic on 11 December 1848, by universal male suffrage. He was sworn in on 20 December before the Assembly. Built in the 1720s for Louise-Francoise de Bourbon, daughter of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan and Princess of Conde, the Palais Bourbon was requisitioned in 1790 to house […]

Pictured on the wall, Napoleon I sits upright on his back-to-front seat, in the bivouac on the eve of his great victory at Austerlitz, whilst below Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, wearing a bicorne too big for him, is slumped on a seat, doubtless drunk, empty bottles at his feet. The analogy between the two “Napoleonic” postures is hardly to […]

Elected President of the Second Republic on December 11, 1848, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte took the oath on December 20 in the National Assembly, before moving to the official residence determined by the Assembly, the Elysée palace. See another image of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, Prince-president.

After his election as President of the Second Republic on 11 December 1848, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte took the oath on 20 December in the National Assembly, before moving into the official residence decided by the Assembly, namely, the Elysée Palace. His success at the election owed much to the nostalgia and legacy of Napoleon I which […]

The Bibliothèque de la Ville de Paris (BVdP), owns this rare example of a Livret Ouvrier (Worker’s Record Book, a document used during the First Empire), belonging to Amable Stopin, an apprentice hatter in Paris. The 10-page booklet includes 11 sheets and a printed text recapitulating the terms of distribution and use of the document, […]

This portrait is probably a copy of an 1806 official portrait by Robert LEFÈVRE, 1756–1830 (collection Château de Versailles) or of a preparatory work (half length) by the same artist.

In the same way as the rulers who preceded him, Napoleon attempted to recreate the splendour of the royal hunts which had been suppressed by the French Revolution. He did not however have a real interest for hunting or for hunting with hounds which he considered to be a pale substitute for war. In this […]