Hail, Napoleon

At the MFA, the lavish lifestyle of one of the world's major empire-builders makes a stunning display

October 19, 2007|Greg Cook, Globe Correspondent

Some say Napoleon Bonaparte was at heart a military man whose personal tastes ran to the simple and practical. But the brilliant general knew the power of appearances. His infantry wore bearskin hats intended to make them appear taller and drummed and hollered war cries to intimidate enemies. As a ruler, Napoleon trumpeted his authority by adopting the historic trappings of royalty and commissioning artists to celebrate his glories.

"Symbols of Power: Napoleon and the Art of the Empire Style, 1800-1815," which opens Sunday at the Museum of Fine Arts, surveys the opulent Empire style that spread across Europe as Napoleon toppled old monarchies and built an empire that at its height in 1812 stretched from Spain and Italy to the Netherlands and the edge of Russia. This magnificent exhibition, organized by Les Arts Decoratifs in Paris and the American Federation of Arts in New York, presents some 190 works, many of which have never been seen outside France.

Napoleon's rise within France's military coincided with the French Revolution, which inspired designers to reject the lavish baroque and rococo ornament of the ousted French royalty and adopt a sober, minimal style. Political liberation also meant women were freed from binding corsets and elaborate hoop skirts. The popular fashion became simple, loose, high-waisted "Grecian"-style dresses in thin cotton, several of which are on view here.

Exhibition organizers also present an example of the full-length mirrors that they say began to appear in women's boudoirs for the first time after the Revolution, inspiring a frank new way of seeing and thinking about the human body. Which may or may not explain the presence here of a bronze and silver cup cast from a mold of Napoleon's younger sister's breast. (Copies can be ordered from the museum shop for $1,995.)

References to classical Greece and Rome were not just superficial, but show how the revolutionaries saw Greek democracy and the Roman republic as models. These ideals soon curdled in the Reign of Terror, with its busy bloody guillotine, followed by economic troubles and food shortages. Napoleon offered order and stability when he became first consul in a 1799 coup, then promoted himself to consul for life in 1802 and emperor in 1804 at age 34.

"Symbols of Power" presents a handful of portable military furniture, including the frame of a folding campaign bed, a design Napoleon so liked that he sometimes slept on one at the Fontainebleau palace. But the exhibit's focus can be seen in room after room of ravishing formal chairs, desks, Empire-waist dresses, china, tapestries, and wallpaper, much of it decorated with Napoleon's imperial symbols: bees, lions, eagles, and "N"s surrounded by laurel wreaths.