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What happened to the French Crown Jewels? The Crown Jewels collection was deliberately formed in 1530 by king François Ier who isolated a small group of eight stones or jewelry in his possession and declared them inalienable.
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- Louvre Museum Paris. Artworks. Louvre Map. Louvre Map Pdf. Floor Plan
On 2 December 1804, a grandiose and unprecedented ceremony took place in Paris... the coronation of Emperor Napoleon I. Traditionally, French kings had been crowed in Reims cathedral, but Napoleon...
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- Overview
- Proclamation of the French Empire
- The coronation
- The painting
- The history of the painting
The Coronation of Napoleon, monumental oil painting (20.37 × 32.12 feet [6.21 × 9.79 meters]) by French artist Jacques-Louis David completed in 1806/07. The work depicts the moment during Napoleon I’s coronation as emperor of France when he crowns his wife, Joséphine, as empress. David took up the challenge of painting a crowded and lavish ceremony...
The idea for the French Empire came about in 1804, partly as a solution to the frequent threats on the life of Napoleon Bonaparte, then the first consul. Earlier that year a British-financed assassination plot had been uncovered, and Bonaparte decided to react vigorously to deter his opponents from any more such attempts. He readily accepted the su...
The coronation took place on December 2, 1804, at Notre-Dame Cathedral at the center of Paris. This choice of location was the first of many breaks with the traditional coronations of French kings. Most monarchs of France had been crowned at Reims Cathedral, northeast of Paris, but, because of that church’s very association with the ancien régime, it was rejected as a venue. Indeed, among the many incongruities Napoleon had to navigate was the challenge of using the ceremony to legitimize his reign without recalling the monarchy that had been overthrown during France’s revolution. Every aspect of the ceremony was carefully considered beforehand.
Napoleon, accompanied by Joséphine, entered the church wearing a crown of laurels, a purple velvet cloak lined with ermine, and the necklace of the Légion d’honneur while holding a gold scepter, the hand of justice, and a sword featuring a gold handle encrusted with diamonds. After briefly praying, Napoleon handed the regalia to his advisers and gave a religious oath to Pius VII. Napoleon had persuaded the pope to travel to Paris from the Vatican to officiate the coronation, a move that not only outdid the coronations of French kings, who were typically crowned by an archbishop, but also recalled Charlemagne, who was coronated by the pope in Rome in 800 and thus founded the Holy Roman Empire. The imperial couple then received the sacred unction, or the holy blessing, on the forehead and on both hands. The regalia was blessed and then received by the emperor and empress, who knelt side by side. Napoleon ascended the steps to the altar, and, as the pope held up the crown, Napoleon famously seized it from the pope’s hands and placed it on his own head. He then took the imperial diadem, turned to his wife, who knelt at his feet, and placed it on her head. Although Napoleon’s self-crowning may have seemed bold, a number of sovereigns in history had crowned themselves. The most unusual aspect of this part of the ceremony was the crowning of Joséphine. French queens were rarely coronated—Marie de Médicis was the last to be crowned, in 1610—and not one had ever been coronated alongside her husband.
To commemorate the coronation and other inaugural ceremonies, Napoleon appointed David first painter to the imperial court and commissioned four monumental paintings from him. He had previously found David’s Napoleon Crossing the Alps (1801) celebrating his military success at the Battle of Marengo (1800) so flattering that he ordered three more versions to be painted. David attended the coronation with his family and began preliminary studies for The Coronation of Napoleon in 1805. Based on these early sketches, scholars have observed that David seemingly intended to adhere closely to the rituals as they actually happened, but, upon Napoleon’s inspection of the painting before the Salon of 1808, David was required to make several changes that were not historically accurate.
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Perhaps the most significant change in the final work was the shift in the central action. Initially, David planned to depict Napoleon crowning himself, his right arm holding the crown high above his head, his left hand clutching the sword, and the pope sitting passively behind him. Ultimately, however, David painted the emperor crowning Joséphine, both of his hands holding the diadem high above the empress’s bowed head. Unlike the other changes Napoleon requested, this modification still represents fact, and it is unclear whether David made the shift at the order of Napoleon or if he did so by his own choice. A few contemporaries lamented that by choosing the more restrained action David emptied the painting of its most significant moment. Yet, the decision was not without benefits. Napoleon’s raised arms and Joséphine’s bent figure offered not only more drama but also a much clearer narrative.
Indeed, restraint and narrative clarity are two of the hallmarks of the Neoclassical style, of which David was a leading proponent. These ideals seemingly guided him in the challenges of depicting an opulent ceremony with some 20,000 dignitaries present. So as not to distract the viewer, David depicted very little action apart from Napoleon’s raised arms and Joséphine’s bowed form. Behind Napoleon, the seated Pope Pius VII raises his right hand in a gesture of blessing. This small act was not part of the original composition but was added after Napoleon’s inspection.
Beyond Napoleon, Joséphine, and Pius, the rest of the figures are organized in groups, and most face forward, as if on a theater stage. The only figures who viewers see from the back are Napoleon’s advisers toward the right foreground of the painting. Their profiles, however, distinguish them as Charles-François Lebrun, treasurer of Napoleon’s empire, holding a scepter; Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès, archchancellor of the French Empire, gripping a staff topped with the hand of justice; Louis-Alexandre Berthier, marshal of France and chief of staff of the Grande Armée, carrying a globe representing the French Empire; and other figures. In addition to this grouping, David depicted members of the clergy and, farther in the background, a collection of ambassadors, including those from the Ottoman Empire and the United States.
David completed the painting with Napoleon’s desired revisions before it was unveiled at the 1808 Salon. The public greeted the work with great fanfare. As the professors of art history Todd Porterfield and Susan L. Siegfried wrote in the introduction to the 2006 publication Staging Empire: Napoleon, Ingres, and David, the work served as “a surrogate experience of the actual event, a chance to witness the coronation ceremony by proxy after a delay of several years.” The French artist Louis-Léopold Boilly depicted the massive crowds who came to view the piece in his oil painting The Public Viewing David’s Coronation at the Louvre (1810).
Beginning in 1833, The Coronation of Napoleon was displayed in the Palace of Versailles alongside the only other painting David completed from Napoleon’s four-painting commission, The Distribution of the Eagle Standards on 5 December 1804 (1808–10). The former, however, was moved to the Louvre in 1889, where it remains in the 21st century. Meanwhile, a group of American entrepreneurs commissioned David to paint a copy of The Coronation, which he completed during his exile in Brussels in 1822. This copy traveled throughout the United States and Europe before Versailles acquired it in 1947, replacing the empty spot left behind by the original.
Jul 6, 2023 · What happened at the coronation of Napoleon? At the coronation of Napoleon, the new French emperor placed the crown on his own head before crowning his wife, Empress Joséphine, who knelt before him. Contrary to popular belief, Napoleon's decision to crown himself had been planned and had not been done to spite Pope Pius VII, who had approved ...
- When was the coronation of Napoleon?The coronation of Napoleon I took place on Sunday, 2 December 1804, in the Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris.
- Who refused to attend the coronation of Napoleon?Two of Napoleon's brothers, Lucien and Jérôme Bonaparte, did not attend the coronation after falling out with Napoleon. Napoleon's mother, Letizia,...
- What happened at the coronation of Napoleon?At the coronation of Napoleon, the new French emperor placed the crown on his own head before crowning his wife, Empress Joséphine, who knelt befor...
- Why is the coronation of Napoleon significant?The coronation of Napoleon is significant because it marked the birth of the First French Empire, ushered in the Napoleonic Era, and saw a return o...
Napoleon prayed briefly and then gave the regalia he was carrying (hand of justice, sceptre, crown, necklace of the Légion d’honneur, sword) to the Grands dignitaires, during which the choir sang the Veni creator spiritus. At the end of this plainsong, the pope received Napoleon’s religious oath.
The crown lands, crown estate, royal domain or (in French) domaine royal (from demesne) of France were the lands, fiefs and rights directly possessed by the kings of France. [1] While the term eventually came to refer to a territorial unit, the royal domain originally referred to the network of "castles, villages and estates, forests, towns ...
2 December is a special date for those fascinated by Napoleon Bonaparte. Not only is this the date he crowned himself Emperor of France in 1804, but also the date of his greatest victory a year later, the Battle of Austerlitz. James Rogers is joined by world-leading historian Andrew Roberts to dissect the conditions, tactics and aftermath of ...
