A Napoleonic Medal Cabinet

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Notes

1. The home of Lady Monson. At the time, it was set on a modern plinth now removed. It was immediately identified by myself and Martin Levy, Director of H. Blairman & Son.

2. Bequeathed to the Metropolitan Museum by Collis B Huntington in 1900, last seen in Britain on display at the V&A in 1972. Arts Council of Great Britain, The Age of Neoclassicism, cat. 1609, Plate 143.

3. Sotheby’s, London Treasures, Princely Taste (3rd July 2013), Lot 42. Purchased by Blairman & Son. Museum number: W.8-2014. Purchased with the support of the Art Fund, the Friends of the V&A, Stephen and Anne Curran, the American Friends of the V&A, the Gilbert Trust for the Arts, The Leche Trust, The Furniture History Society, The Society of Dilettanti Charitable Trust, Nicholas and Lady Goodison’s Charitable Settlement, and donations made possible by the American Friends of the V&A (Dr Susan Weber, the Audrey Love Charitable Foundation, the Gilbert Public Arts Foundation Trust, and The Cahn Family Foundation), as well as many other donors.

4. The 150 savants Napoleon took on this epic journey came from every discipline of scholarship. They amassed a vast body of knowledge about ancient and modern Egypt, published over 23 volumes as Denon, Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Egypte.

5. Denon, Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Egypte, Plate 80.

6. These have also been likened to bees which are closely associated with Napoleon. The insects on the Metropolitan Museum’s cabinet are clearly more like scarabs but differ in detail to those on W.8-2014.

7. This is upside down and may be a later inscription rather than a signature. The drawing originally formed part of a collection of drawings acquired by the Union Centrale des Arts Decoratifs in 1885 from A. Rapilly. Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, Cabinet des Arts Graphiques, CD3240.

8. It is unknown who assembled the album and when; Arizzoli-Clémentel, “The Percier and Biennais Album,” pp. 195–201.

9. The Metropolitan Museum’s curator, Preston Remington first suggested in 1927 that Biennais might have entirely made their cabinet; Remington, “Martin Guillaume Biennais,” pp. 122–6.

10. It was given to Napoleon who subsequently left it to his sister Pauline Borghese; Napoleon. Exh. cat., Cat.107.

11. Griffiths, “The End of Napoleon’s Histoire Métallique”, pp. 35–49.

12. Dion-Tenenbaum, Napoléon Ier ou La Légende des Arts, p. 100.

13. At the time of acquisition it was thought to have been acquired by the widely travelled Frederick John Monson, 5th Lord Monson (1809–1841). It is now known to have entered the Monson family in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. It was given to Augustus Debonnaire, 9th Lord Monson (1868–1940) by his cousin Arthur Henry Augustus Ellis (1866–1934) who inherited it from his mother Mina Frances Labouchere. Information given to the author by Lady Monson.

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Leela Meinertas

Leela Meinertas has been a curator at the V&A since 1976. After working in the Circulation Department and then Furniture Department on the nineteenth- and twentieth-century collections she moved to the Theatre Museum until returning to the V&A in 1996 to work on FuturePlan projects. Between that date and 2016, she worked on the British Galleries (opened 2001), at Apsley House, on the Medieval & Renaissance Galleries (opened 2009), the Furniture Gallery (the Dr Susan Weber gallery) (opened December 2012) and Europe 1600–1815 (opened 2015). In the Furniture, Textiles and Fashion Department, she works primarily on eighteenth-century furniture. [email protected]