The Empire style was the French neoclassical style associated with Napoleon and distinguished by military and imperial motifs.
It developed during the Consulate and First French Empire, roughly from 1799 to 1815, and was promoted by Napoleon’s designers Charles Percier and Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine. The style used classical Roman and Greek forms to project authority, order, victory, and the grandeur of the state.
Its ornament often included eagles, bees, laurel wreaths, stars, trophies, weapons, imperial initials, sphinxes, and figures of Nike, the ancient goddess of victory. Egyptian motifs also became fashionable after Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign. In furniture and interiors, symmetry, mahogany, gilded bronze, and monumental geometric shapes reinforced the official character of the style.
The main mix-up is with Directoire, the preceding and generally more restrained neoclassical style associated with the French Directory. Rococo belongs to an earlier, more playful decorative tradition, while Gothic Revival deliberately looked back to medieval architecture rather than Napoleon’s Roman-imperial imagery.