The Caesar of Paris

The Caesar of Paris
Author: Susan Jaques
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018-12-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781681778693

A monumental cultural history of Napoleon Bonaparte’s fascination with antiquity and how it shaped Paris’ artistic landscape. Napoleon is one of history’s most fascinating figures. But his complex relationship with Rome—both with antiquity and his contemporary conflicts with the Pope and Holy See—have undergone little examination. In The Caesar of Paris, Susan Jaques reveals how Napoleon’s dueling fascination and rivalry informed his effort to turn Paris into “the new Rome”— Europe’s cultural capital—through architectural and artistic commissions around the city. His initiatives and his aggressive pursuit of antiquities and classical treasures from Italy gave Paris much of the classical beauty we know and adore today. Napoleon had a tradition of appropriating from past military greats to legitimize his regime—Alexander the Great during his invasion of Egypt, Charlemagne during his coronation as emperor, even Frederick the Great when he occupied Berlin. But it was ancient Rome and the Caesars that held the most artistic and political influence and would remain his lodestars. Whether it was the Arc de Triopmhe, the Venus de Medici in the Louvre, or the gorgeous works of Antonio Canova, Susan Jaques brings Napoleon to life as never before.

Restoration

Restoration
Author: Thomas Crow
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2023-10-17
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0691253048

How social upheavals after the collapse of the French Empire shaped the lives and work of artists in early nineteenth-century Europe As the French Empire collapsed between 1812 and 1815, artists throughout Europe were left uncertain and adrift. The final abdication of Emperor Napoleon, clearing the way for a restored monarchy, profoundly unsettled prevailing national, religious, and social boundaries. In Restoration, Thomas Crow combines a sweeping view of European art centers—Rome, Paris, London, Madrid, Brussels, and Vienna—with a close-up look at pivotal artists, including Antonio Canova, Jacques-Louis David, Théodore Géricault, Francisco Goya, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Thomas Lawrence, and forgotten but meteoric painters François-Joseph Navez and Antoine Jean-Baptiste Thomas. Whether directly or indirectly, all were joined in a newly international network, from which changing artistic priorities and possibilities emerged out of the ruins of the old. Crow examines how artists of this period faced dramatic circumstances, from political condemnation and difficult diplomatic missions to a catastrophic episode of climate change. Navigating ever-changing pressures, they invented creative ways of incorporating critical events and significant historical actors into fresh artistic works. Crow discusses, among many topics, David’s art and influence during exile, Géricault’s odyssey through outcast Rome, Ingres’s drive to reconcile religious art with contemporary mentalities, the titled victors over Napoleon all sitting for portraits by Lawrence, and the campaign to restore art objects expropriated by the French from Italy, prefiguring the restitution controversies of our own time. Restoration explores how cataclysmic social and political transformations in nineteenth-century Europe reshaped artists’ lives and careers with far-reaching consequences. Published in association with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC Please note: All images in this ebook are presented in black and white and have been reduced in size.

Paris: The 'New Rome' of Napoleon I

Paris: The 'New Rome' of Napoleon I
Author: Diana Rowell
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2012-08-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1441126031

Napoleon I employed a myriad of media through which to promote his propaganda and his universal hegemony. Classical Rome - home to the great Caesars - was central to his ambitious visions for the transformation of Paris into an imperial metropolis of unprecedented magnitude. Exploring the interrelationship between antiquity, the display of power and the reinvention of Paris, this volume evaluates how the Roman world and post-antique exploitations of Rome influenced Napoleonic Paris, and how Napoleon promoted his authority by appropriating Rome's triumphal architecture and its associated symbolism to relocate 'Rome' in his own times. The volume shows how consideration of Louis XIV's legacy is crucial to understanding the evolution of Napoleon's fascination with imperial Rome. It also charts Napoleon's manipulation of the populist rhetoric of Republican France (and Rome) as he moved from being a general fighting for the Revolutionary cause to become the 'absolute' ruler of a new empire.

The Mediterranean World

The Mediterranean World
Author: Monique O'Connell
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM
Total Pages: 647
Release: 2016-05-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1421419025

A history of this hub of culture and commerce: “Enviable readability . . . an excellent classroom text.” —European History Quarterly Located at the intersection of Asia, Africa, and Europe, the Mediterranean has connected societies for millennia, creating a shared space of intense economic, cultural, and political interaction. Greek temples in Sicily, Roman ruins in North Africa, and Ottoman fortifications in Greece serve as reminders that the Mediterranean has no fixed national boundaries or stable ethnic and religious identities. In The Mediterranean World, Monique O’Connell and Eric R. Dursteler examine the history of this contested region from the medieval to the early modern era, beginning with the fall of Rome around 500 CE and closing with Napoleon’s attempted conquest of Egypt in 1798. Arguing convincingly that the Mediterranean should be studied as a singular unit, the authors explore the centuries when no lone power dominated the Mediterranean Sea and invaders brought their own unique languages and cultures to the region. Structured around four interlocking themes—mobility, state development, commerce, and frontiers—this book, including maps, photos, and illustrations, brings new dimensions to the concepts of Mediterranean nationality and identity.

Plunder

Plunder
Author: Cynthia Saltzman
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2021-05-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 0374710392

One of The Christian Science Monitor's Ten Best Books of May "A highly original work of history . . . [Saltzman] has written a distinctive study that transcends both art and history and forces us to explore the connections between the two.” —Roger Lowenstein, The Wall Street Journal A captivatingstudy of Napoleon’s plundering of Europe’s art for the Louvre, told through the story of a Renaissance masterpiece seized from Venice Cynthia Saltzman’s Plunder recounts the fate of Paolo Veronese’s Wedding Feast at Cana, a vast, sublime canvas that the French, under the command of the young Napoleon Bonaparte, tore from a wall of the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore, on an island in Venice, in 1797. Painted in 1563 during the Renaissance, the picture was immediately hailed as a masterpiece. Veronese had filled the scene with some 130 figures, lavishing color on the canvas to build the illusion that the viewers’ space opened onto a biblical banquet taking place on a terrace in sixteenth-century Venice. Once pulled from the wall, the Venetian canvas crossed the Mediterranean rolled on a cylinder; soon after, artworks commandeered from Venice and Rome were triumphantly brought into Paris. In 1801, the Veronese went on exhibition at the Louvre, the new public art museum founded during the Revolution in the former palace of the French kings. As Saltzman tells the larger story of Napoleon’s looting of Italian art and its role in the creation of the Louvre, she reveals the contradictions of his character: his thirst for greatness—to carry forward the finest aspects of civilization—and his ruthlessness in getting whatever he sought. After Napoleon’s 1815 defeat at Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington and the Allies forced the French to return many of the Louvre’s plundered paintings and sculptures. Nevertheless, The Wedding Feast at Cana remains in Paris to this day, hanging directly across from the Mona Lisa. Expertly researched and deftly told, Plunder chronicles one of the most spectacular art appropriation campaigns in history, one that sheds light on a seminal historical figure and the complex origins of one of the great museums of the world.

Architectural Restoration and Heritage in Imperial Rome

Architectural Restoration and Heritage in Imperial Rome
Author: Christopher Siwicki
Publisher:
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2020
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0198848579

Challenging the idea that heritage is a purely modern phenomenon, this volume addresses how historic buildings were treated in Imperial Rome, examining the way in which the ancients restored the monuments they inherited from earlier generations and developing our understanding of the Roman concept of built heritage.

The Age of Napoleon

The Age of Napoleon
Author: Charles Otto Zieseniss
Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art
Total Pages: 286
Release: 1989
Genre: Clothing and dress
ISBN: 0870995715

Empire Splendor

Empire Splendor
Author: Bernard Chevallier
Publisher: Vendome Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2008-10
Genre: Architecture
ISBN:

France's Empire period, guided by the grand visions of the Emperor Napoleon, was one of the most sumptuous and creative epochs in French art, architecture, and decoration. By 1800, Neoclassical architects Percier and Fontaine had left an indelible mark on the Imperial residences and on the palatial homes of the country's leading families. The elegant decorative sensibility of this period reflected a nostalgia for the treasures of ancient Rome and Egypt and resulted in the creation of stunning, opulent interiors to match equally regal facades. Empire Splendor is a gorgeous photographic odyssey through France's most splendid Neoclassical residences, including extravagant chateaus, beautiful urban palaces, and Napoleon's official domiciles. Renowned curator Bernard Chevallier leads a detailed, room-by-room tour through the finest Empire antechambers, bedrooms, libraries, salons, and beyond. This is a captivating visual experience for historians, decorators, and art lovers alike.

Decline And Fall Of Napoleon's Empire

Decline And Fall Of Napoleon's Empire
Author: Digby Smith
Publisher: Frontline Books
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2005-06-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1853676098

Until now, there has been no study of the significant errors that Napoleon made himself which, though apparently trivial at the time, proved to be major factors in his downfall. Digby Smith tracks his rise to power, his stewardship of France from 1804–15, and his exile. He highlights his military mistakes, such as his unwillingness to appoint an effective overall supremo in the Iberian Peninsula, and the decision to invade Russia while the Spanish situation was spiralling out of control.