Art · Monarchies · Mores · Paris
The Marriage of Napoleon and Marie Louise, by the artist Georges Rouget. The wedding of 1 April 1810 took place in the Louvre, where the architects Percier and Fontaine had rebuilt the Salon Carré as a chapel. The painting captures the moment when Cardinal Fesch blesses the couple; Napoleon and
Art · Monarchies · Pop Culture · Reportage
It is the age of Napoleon that is most vividly represented at the impressive exhibition of the jewellery house of Chaumet at the Grimaldi Forum in Monte Carlo. The history of the house is inseparable from the reign of Bonaparte and his empresses: the many gifts ordered by Napoleon for
Art · Monarchies · People
Jacques-Louis David, 1807. Sketch for the portrait of Napoleon in his coronation robes. On Napoleon's head is the golden wreath made for his coronation on 2 December 1804 by the jeweller Martin-Guillaume Biennais. The laurel wreath points us to Napoleon's favourite style, the antique.
Maps · Monarchies · Museums · Observations · Science · Nature · Reportage
Our stroll through the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco continues. In the frame: equipment for exploring the seabed and taking soil samples, along with preserved marine fauna from the time of the museum's founder, Prince Albert I, who, after service in the French navy, devoted his leisure to a
Architecture · Monarchies · Museums · Science · Nature
The Oceanographic Museum, founded in the late nineteenth century by Prince Albert I, occupies an enormous building overhanging the sea. Inside are a colossal collection of stuffed marine animals, equipment for the study of the ocean, an aquarium, interactive exhibits and a collection of personal belongings and instruments of the
Books · Monarchies · Museums · Mores · Society
In the Historical Museum of The Hague, it is impossible to walk past two child mannequins in eighteenth-century royal livery. These exhibits are a modern reconstruction of the costumes of two court Moors, as Black people were then commonly called at court: Cupido and Sideron. The first came from
Art · Monarchies · Observations
I have three similar eighteenth-century portraits for you. The first shows Marie Adélaïde of Savoy, mother of Louis XV; the others show his consort Marie Leszczyńska, who adopts the pose of her mother-in-law in order to please her husband. But the other details of Leszczyńska's
Art · Monarchies · People · Humour
The Old Man Overstayed His Welcome. Eugène Delacroix, 1855. The painting shows the fifteenth-century Venetian Doge Francesco Foscari, who ruled longer than any other doge: 34 years. Foscari had a most interesting biography, but the choicest episode is this: by then he had become so thoroughly sick to death
Architecture · Monarchies · Observations · Mores
Have you ever noticed these latticed niches just beneath the dome of old theatres? In the royal theatre at the Palace of Fontainebleau, for instance, behind such mesh-covered oculi there lay small chambers with additional seats: the theatrical hierarchy reserved these hidden boxes for people in mourning and, of
Monarchies · Museums · Mores · Paris · Humour
Edward VII (1841-1910) had a special chair for amorous pursuits. Renowned for his unbridled appetites and colourful sexual adventures, the king preferred a particular contraption for comfortable lovemaking with two partners at once. A similar couch is on display at the Sex Machines Museum in Prague, together with a
NB! · Art · Monarchies · Mores · Humour
The bed made for Napoleon and Josephine in 1805 rather hints that it is time to retire. Napoleon was, in general, a lover of luxury, and the style owes much of its subsequent popularity precisely to the emperor's fondness for it
Aristocracy · Monarchies · Observations · Humour
What is going on, and where has the crown gone with a stranger? A most curious scene: the 16th Duke of Hamilton, Alexander Douglas Douglas-Hamilton, aged 40, is escorting the Crown of Scotland to Edinburgh Castle. The Hamiltons have been hereditary keepers of the royal crown since the 16th