Objects

The figure of Napoleon is inseparable from his famous bicorn, accompanied by his no less famous grey “redingote” (a large frockcoat commonly known as his “greatcoat”). They made him more easily recognisable in the midst of his his caparisoned staff, decked with trimmings and golden braids.…

This tiara was made around 1811 by François-Regnault Nitot, son of Marie-Etienne Nitot, jeweller of the Empire and founder of the house that would become Chaumet. Not only is it a masterpiece of craftsmanship, it also carries a symbolic dimension dear to Josephine and Napoleon.

Martin Pigneret: mantle clock, circa 1815. This clock brought back from St Helena by General Bertrand still marks the hour of the Emperor’s death.

After the Emperor died [at five forty-nine in the evening of 5 May], General Bertrand noted in his notebooks for 5 May 1821, “At ten in the evening Abbé Vignali said a few prayers, […] at half past eleven, the Emperor was shaved. Six hours…

At the insistance of Fanny Bertrand, who wanted to be able to remember the features of the Emperor and give them to his mother Madame Mère, the British physician Burton, having found gypsum on the island, was able to take a death mask of the Emperor in several sections, at 4pm on 7 May. He […]

Napoleon took two of his favourite campbeds (created by Marie-Jean Desouches) with him into exile on St Helena. This one (known as the “lit Murat”, and given to the Musée de l’Armée in 1973) is that in which he died, at 5.49pm on 5 May 1821, in the drawing room* of Longwood House. The other St Helena campbed (now […]

This cross was the one which was placed on Napoleon’s body, as depicted in many of the drawings made at the scene the day after his death and also in later imagined representations such as that by Mauzaisse (1843) showing the Emperor’s corpse dressed in his…

Although Biennais is today associated with gold and silverware, he began his career as a “tabletier” [maker of small objects] in Paris in 1788 (Arch. nat. Y. 9334). A tabletier’s shop was where you could buy any of a thousand small objects, useful or not,…

Of all the existing images of the Empress Eugenie, the photographs of her in prayer are the most iconic. This photographic portrait taken by Gustave le Gray  in the summer of 1856 for the painter Thomas Couture, was widely disseminated after it was taken. This wasn’t the first time the Empress was captured in prayer; the […]

Napoleon Eugène Louis Jean Joseph Bonaparte (1856-1879), Prince Imperial, was the recipient of a number of orders and decorations during his life, although these distinctions are often overshadowed by the large and impressive collection belonging to his father, the Emperor Napoleon III. Napoleon III’s collection is the only complete set of decorations belonging to a […]