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The Coronation of Napoleon
Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825) · 1806–1807
Notre-Dame cathedral, 2 December 1804: the moment chosen is not the one you might expect. Napoleon has already crowned himself, and now, standing with his back to the altar, he raises a second crown above the kneeling Josephine. Pope Pius VII sits behind him, hand lifted in a blessing that David added only after the Emperor complained that the pontiff appeared to have come all the way from Rome to do nothing. Around them the new imperial elite fills the nave in ranks: marshals, ministers, ambassadors, the Bonaparte sisters carrying Josephine's train, Napoleon's mother watching serenely from the tribune although she had refused to attend the ceremony at all.
Work across the surface slowly. David built the composition like a classical frieze, a horizontal band of figures set against the cool grey architecture, and then let colour do the persuading: the crimson and gold of the clergy on the right, the white satin of Josephine, the deep velvet reds and greens of the court. Nearly two hundred faces are individual portraits, many worked up from separate sittings and from a wax model theatre David built to test the lighting. Notice how little movement there is. Everything is stilled so that the gesture at the centre reads as inevitable.
David, once the painter of the Revolution and a regicide deputy, became First Painter to the Emperor and delivered the canvas in 1808. After Waterloo he went into exile in Brussels and painted a second version, now at Versailles, which differs in small details including the colour of one sister's dress. The picture entered the Louvre in 1889. Vivant Denon, who organised the ceremony's imagery, appears in the middle ground, sketchbook in hand.
Did You Know? Napoleon's mother, Letizia, is shown presiding calmly in the tribune even though she boycotted the coronation entirely after quarrelling with her son.
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