ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to penetrate those conflicting mentalities from both the public and private points of view. It discusses the word Egotism which serves almost as an epigraph for the various representations of power. The Consulate and Empire have portrayed as a dismal time for the expression of public opinion and cultural creativity, which was driven into covert corners or even into exile. In cultural terms, the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era mark the cross-roads of the European Enlightenment and Romanticism, and some critics in the early antecedents of later Realism. Napoleon's contribution to the visual arts can be measured more by its scale, by the manifestations of 'big is beautiful', than by the originality of style and methods. Napoleon's tendency to view the education of the public as a utilitarian process, which could be run on martial lines according to the same principles of uniformity and of centralized and hierarchical authority evident in other branches of his civil rule.
