Imperial Art is organising the first ever auction of NFTs related to physical personal property belonging to Napoleon Bonaparte. This unique auction is being held to mark the bicentenary of Napoleon I's death, as well as the 216th anniversary of the Battle of Austerlitz and the 217th anniversary of the emperor's coronation.
Imperial Art, an international market leader for works of art from the period of the first French Empire is launching the first ever physical and digital auction, using NFT technology. Five historical objects will be sold online through an NFTs sale. The unique selection will be offered for sale via the OpenSea digital platform.
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This unique auction organised by Imperial Arts will include the following objects:
- Napoleon's Cane from St. Helena, a unique record of the emperor's last home on St. Helena. Carved from whalebone by a Chinese craftsman on St Helena, the cane has a detachable pommel that allowed the emperor to point his armies on a map;
- A gold snuffbox that belonged to Napoleon I, in perfect condition and signed by Jean-Baptiste Isabey, the greatest miniature portraitist of the Empire period. Such objects are extremely rare, the only similar artifacts being in the Château de Versailles or the Musée de Fontainebleau;
- A handwritten letter from Napoleon I to General Count Bertrand, his Grand Maréchal du Palais, who faithfully followed Napoleon into exile;
- An Imperial bust of Napoleon I, an official representation of the Emperor from the Empire period, in cast iron attributed to Vivant Denon.
- A miniature portrait of Napoleon I, a painting on ivory in a bronze case, representing Napoleon in the uniform of a colonel of the Garde chasseurs à cheval, after the painting by Robert Lefèvre.
All the details of these extraordinary objects will be available on the sale website: napoleon.ovr.arteia.com
This sale is a ground-breaking event: it is the first sale of historical objects certified by an NFT, an unforgeable digital certificate of ownership. For this sale, Imperial Art is using Arteïa's physical object authentication solution.
An NFC chip, programmed by Arteïa and securely linked to the object and/or the paper certificate of authenticity provided by the gallery, makes it possible to link the object to its digital duplicate, recorded in a secure database on the blockchain. It is thus finally possible to sell the physical object via NFT.
Tarik Bougherira, founder of the Imperial Art gallery, said: "We are extremely proud to launch this ambitious and unique project in the art market, especially on such a special date as a three-year anniversary. Imperial Arts is now setting a milestone for what I believe will be our market in the future. I also hope that through this operation we can bring the passion of art collecting to a new kind of audience".
The operation is accompanied by Hashtag Avocats, Havas Sovereign Technologies and Arteïa.
"We are proud to accompany such a historic operation. First, because of the exceptional objects offered for sale, but also because of the Arteïa technology used. Thanks to a system of secure NFC chips, each object will itself be equipped with a digital clone that allows it to be put up for sale via NFT. Thus, the buyer of the NFT can recover his physical object. This solution allows Napoleonic history to be revived in the age of the metaverse," explains Philippe Gellman, CEO of Arteïa.
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