Objects

This luxurious inkstand (GMLC-624-000) (which before 2021 had never been publicly exhibited) was made for the Grand Cabinet (formal office) of Napoleon I at the Palais des Tuileries by Martin Guillaume Biennais (1764-1843) and delivered there in December 1813. At the same time, the Emperor’s goldsmith supplied an identical copy for the palace of Fontainebleau(exhibited at the exhibition […]

The “grand cabinet” of his “grand appartement de représentation” [great reception apartment] was, in Napoleon’s eyes, the most important room in the Tuileries Palace. It was here that he held the Council of Ministers and received the oaths of the dignitaries and great officers of…

When Bonaparte became First Consul, head of state, he wanted a ceremonial weapon for grand state occasions, based on the example of the very lavish sword made in 1784 for Louis XVI. He specified that it should “be in keeping with the customs related to…

This ensemble of two necklaces, a pair of bracelets, a diadem, a brooch, a pendant and six pins, attributed to jewellers Marie-Étienne Nitot and François-Régnault Nitot (father and son), is decorated with cameos in malachite, natural pearls, yellow gold and tortoiseshell. All except three of the cameos have antique-style figures on them, female or male profiles. The two […]

In the decree of 10 July 1804, Napoleon I stipulated that the new imperial coat of arms should be “d’azur à l’aigle à l’antique d’or, empiétant un foudre du même” (“azure, with an eagle in the manner of antiquity, coloured gold, clutching in its talons a thunderbolt of the same colour”). After the proclamation of […]

This posthumous portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte carved in marble must be one of the most curious works to come out of the studio of French sculptor Auguste Rodin. It was commissioned in 1904 by the American collector Kate Seney Simpson,The daughter of a Brooklyn banker and art collector, George I. Seney and wife of New […]

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 […]

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 […]