The Napoleon III rooms in the Musee du Louvre, Paris

Magazine Antiques, March, 1994 by Anne Dion-Tenenbaum

On November 18, 1993, the renovated wing now know as the Richelieu wing of the Musee du Louvre (Pl. I) opened to the public, marking the two hundredth anniversary of the museum's creation. The wing parallels the rue de Rivoli and was one of several construction projects at the Louvre initiated by Napoleon III (1808-1873) soon after he was proclaimed emperor in 1852. His aim was to join the Louvre and the Tuileries, and a decree to this effect was issued on March 12, 1852, with construction to be completed within five years.

The architect Ludovico Tullio Joachim Visconti (1791-1853) was appointed to direct the project, and when he died, Hector Martin Lefuel replaced him. Lefuel modified Visconti's elevation by adding an extra story and considerably enriching the decoration of the exterior. He did, however, preserve the majority of Visconti's plan, creating a gallery parallel to the existing Grande Galerie overlooking the River Seine, and two other galleries parallel to the rue de Rivoli. In both cases the old and new galleries were connected by broad corridors.

Initially it was planned that the Richelieu wing should house the ministries of the police and the interior, the telegraph administration, and the government printing office. In the end, however, the wing housed a barracks, a library, the ministry of the imperial household, and the offices and living quarters of the minister of state. The minister, who functioned as the liaison between the government and the legislature, also was responsible for large government building programs and was in charge of the government newspaper, the Moniteur universel. The minister of state's rooms,(1) now restored and furnished as they were originally, offer the first opportunity to study Second Empire interiors at the Louvre.

Because he was both minister of state and minister of the imperial household between 1852 and 1860, Achille Marcus Fould (1800-1867) was in charge of construction at the Louvre under Napoleon III. He chose the artists and decoration and appears to have been conscientious, making many visits to the site and not hesitating to ask for changes, among them the color of the ceiling in the large antechamber and the caryatids in the niches in the small dining room. The extensive correspondence between Fould and Lefuel(2) indicates that it was Fould who chose Charles Raphael Marechal to paint the ceiling in the large salon (see Pl. VI). It was hardly a conventional choice to name a son of the painter and stained-glass maker Charles Laurent Marechal de Metz (1801-1887) since no other monumental paintings by him are known. Fould also dictated the subject of the paintings. The coves of the ceiling illustrate the stages of construction of the Louvre and Tuileries under Francois I, Catherine de Medicis, Henri IV, and Louis XIV, for the continuity of building under successive monarchs was a theme dear to Napoleon III. The ceiling is adorned with an allegorical representation of the union of the Louvre and Tuileries by Napoleon III and his empress, Eugenie (1826-1920), and scrolls celebrate the emperor's military, economic, and social achievements.

The exterior of the wings is a unique testimony to Lefuel's style since most of his original interiors have vanished. His surviving studies for the decoration of the rooms(3) show that Lefuel skillfully coordinated the work of many artists and artisans. In general they were not well known except for Charles Francois Daubigny (1817-1878), who decorated the introductory gallery and who adorned the grand staircase with paintings of the chateau and garden of the Tuileries and the Pavillon de Flore. Victor Francois Eloi Biennourry (1823-1893) painted an allegory of the arts on the ceiling of the large antechamber, Emile Levy (1826-1890) painted the ceiling of the family salon cameo blue, Ernest Augustin Gendron painted the ceiling of the salon-theater (see Pl. X), and Eugene Appert (1814-1867) painted the sky on the ceiling of the large dining room, where Louis Godefroy Jadin (1805-1882) added scenes of the hunt. Other contributors to the decoration were the sculptors Frederic Emile Knecht (1809-1889), Louis Alphonse Tranchant (b. 1822), and Laurent Jean Lausanne, called Laurent Jan (see Pl. VII). The latter adorned the niche in the small dining room with a trompe-l'oeil painting.

The Louis XIV style was adopted for the decorations, as it was for all official buildings during the Second Empire. This style was the source for the extensive use of high quality gilding, marquetry in the style of Andre Charles Boulle (1642-1732), and the painted ceilings surrounded by high relief decoration executed in molded composition by Joseph Felix Simouillard and a stuccoist by the name of Bernard (see Pl. V). The sumptuousness of the decor, which appears almost crushing today, much impressed contemporaries. When the rooms were first opened a journalist for the Paris newspaper Le Monde illustre of February 16, 1861, wrote:

One cannot imagine a more opulent residence, and one wonders how it will be possible to decorate the renovated Tuileries even more richly, as befits the state residence of the sovereign!(4)