Napoleon: Revolution to Empire

Throughout the eighteenth century French designers, architects and artists employed visual emblems in their work which bore symbolic meanings appropriate to the contexts in which they appeared. For example, the decoration of a music room in a Parisian Hôtel might incorporate a lyre – a musical instrument associated with Apollo, god of the arts – in the design of the furniture or wall decoration. This practice continued in the post-revolutionary period and reached its apogee in the Empire style. Percier and Fontaine, the favoured architects of Napoleon, were committed advocates of this principle. They argued that the decoration of an object should only ever employ motifs whose symbolic meanings were appropriate to the object’s function. The decoration of a grand Empire interior could, thus, be ‘read’. The symbols employed on furniture, objects and decorative treatments for walls, floors and ceilings provided a clear indication of the intended function of a room.