Objects

The phonautograph, the first machine ever to record sound, was invented during the Second Empire, in 1853, by the Frenchman Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville (1817-1879). Using a technique analogous to that of today’s seismometer (which converts earth tremors into a visual signal), the phonoautograph consisted of a membrane, placed at the end of an acoustic […]

Click here for an enlargement The first playing cards appeared in Europe at the beginning of the 14th century. However, even as late as the 18th century, they were by no means unified in their style. In France, the pack comprised the four classic suits – spades, diamonds, hearts and clubs (the French word trèfle […]

Swiss-born Abraham-Louis Bréguet was encouraged to go into watchmaking by his step-father Joseph Tattet, who came from a family of watchmakers and had a showroom in Paris. Bréguet completed his apprenticeship under an horlogist in Versailles. He established his own house in Paris in 1775 on the Quai de l’Horloge and became a master in […]

Joseph Bonaparte, a new king for Spain On 20 July 1808, Joseph Bonaparte arrived in Madrid, the capital of what Théophile Gautier was to describe as the most “anti-classical” country in Europe. In comparison with Paris – and even with Naples where Joseph had reigned for two years, Madrid was a small town that had […]

The Palais Impérial de la Bourse (Imperial Palace of the Stock Exchange) was conceived by Napoleon as part of a wider political and architectural program. Upon his coming to power with the coup of 18 Brumaire, Napoleon was determined to rebuild the political institutions of France which had for a decade been shaken by Revolution. […]

Magritte made four versions of this work, “L’Avenir des statues” (‘The Future of Statues’), in the period 1933 to 1937. He took a commercial plaster version of Napoleon’s death mask and painted onto it a deep-blue sky spotted with sunlit clouds. According to David Sylvester, it is only the polish on the plaster and the […]

Both globes had been part of the furniture at Plantation House since 1805. In July 1816, the Governor Sir Hudson Lowe had them sent to Longwood House where they were installed in the parlour also known as the billiard room. Virtually all the witnesses of the exile mentioned in their writings these “two globes, one […]

This bronze – also known as “Le réveil de Napoléon” (Napoleon awakes) – is by the sculptor François Rude and was commissioned in early 1840 by Claude Noisot, a former grenadier-à-pied and captain of the Old Guard. This military man was a faithful devotee of the Emperor, and had participated in the campaigns in Austria […]

The majority of glassware for the Maison de l’Empereur or Imperial Household came from the Montcenis crystal manufacturer. The Montcenis firm, established in 1787, had been the official crystal manufacturers to the monarch during the Ancien Régime, and they would play a significant role in the development of the French glass- and crystalware industry. So […]

After Napoleon’s death on 5 May 1821, a secular cult began to grow around him, propagated by the testimonies of the men and women who had accompanied him to St. Helena. At the same time iconography in which Napoleon was compared to the mythological Prometheus became popular. The Napoleonic cult peaked at the time of […]