With the ascension of Napoleon III in 1852, Second Empire France had a revival of court life. The stability of the new imperial regime and a buoyant economy brought exhibitions, grand balls, and stage productions to the forefront of Parisian lifestyle. An increased interest in the arts paved the way for a variety of aesthetic experimentation in...

Sixteenth-century Europe saw, with the apogee of humanism, the reactivation of intellectual and creative energies towards classical antiquity, through which the decorative arts flourished. Designs were highly imaginative, with increasingly complicated, fantastical motifs, in which material opulence coexisted with humanist knowledge in the form of historical and mythological themes.[1] A case in point is this...