by Susan Jaques
Swans reappeared during the Renaissance, especially in the decoration of grotesques. According to Jean-Pierre Samoyault, Percier depicted the swan as it had appeared in Nero’s Golden House in Rome and its copy at Raphael’s Vatican Loggia.30 Swans, along with butterflies, dancers, and flowers for Joséphine’s furnishings were a dramatic contrast to the masculine Empire style emblems.
Percier’s X-shaped stool, painted white and gold, was also based on an antique model. The form recalls numerous chairs on Greek vases, Etruscan and Roman mural paintings, and coins, as well as the curved legs of the “curule” chair. Also for the boudoir, Percier designed a pair of candelabra produced by Thomire in gilt-bronze. Hellenistic winged figures of Victory held floral wreaths from which branched ten candle sockets decorated with acanthus leaves. As symbols of military triumph, these winged figures soon became a key motif for Napoleonic décor.
Percier and Fontaine made quick work at Saint-Cloud. By August 1802, Fontaine wrote, “The renovations at the château de Saint-Cloud are complete. The apartments are finished. We oversaw the selection, fabrication, and placement of every piece.”31 Working at the hourglass-shaped desk, Napoleon penned his frequent dispatches. Saint-Cloud would continue to witness a number of important events during Napoleon’s rule, including the proclamation of the Empire on May 18, 1804, in the north wing’s Apollo Gallery.
Of the dozens of former royal palaces, Saint-Cloud was the most convenient. The first consul began holding frequent audiences at the château. Lasting for several hours, these were attended by cardinals, bishops, senators, councilors of state, deputies, tribunes, generals, ambassadors, magistrates, and private citizens.32 On Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, the consular couple also hosted dinners for twelve to fifteen guests, followed by card games. Civil costumes replaced military uniforms at palace functions. For the fete of July 14, 1802, Napoleon exchanged his uniform for a coat embroidered with red silk. But he did don a black military cravat. “There is always something about me which smells of the army; there is no harm in that,” he said.33
Percier and Fontaine’s opulent take on Neoclassicism became known as the Empire style. Their objective was to go beyond mere fashion, writes Hans Ottomeyer, with a unified use of color and fabric, and lasting materials like marble, mahogany, and satinwood.34
In 1801, Percier and Fontaine published the first installment of the Recueil de décorations intérieures. The book featured seventy-two plates illustrating the furnishings, decorations, and interiors for their celebrity clients. According to the authors, its purpose was to contribute “to the dissemination and upholding of the principles of taste that we have derived from ancient art, and that we believe are linked, albeit by a less apparent chain, to those general laws of truth, simplicity, and beauty.”35
The Recueil proved tremendously influential, establishing an international neoclassical taste and inspiring generations of decorators and designers. Percier’s models generated a style across a number of different media. “Jewellers, goldsmiths, engravers, cabinetmakers, and wallpaper manufacturers drew upon the work of Percier,” observed the Journal du Commerce in 1805, “such that it is not unusual to find in a single apartment a tapestry, a clock, a table service, and a woman’s parure in the same design elements.”36
Percier and Fontaine were opposites in personality. Percier was obsessed with work, with a “compulsive passion for details” and an “unchecked penchant for drawing” writes Jean-Philippe Garric. He wore the same clothes every day and rarely appeared in public, prompting Napoleon to remark to Fontaine, “Your Percier does nothing: I never see him.”37
In fact, Percier was the creative force behind the successful partnership. As Tom Stammers writes, Percier’s “imagination released a bestiary of griffins, chimeras, sphinxes, swans, and lions into French drawing rooms; from tented rooms and ‘Etruscan’ Sèvres vases, few icons of the First Empire were untouched by his genius for design.”38
With his ability to execute projects quickly, the confident Fontaine won over Napoleon. Trained in construction and engineering, Fontaine managed the technical aspects of building and the business side. Fontaine described their division of responsibilities: “Percier, whose temperament and taste, indeed his gifts, were ill-suited to the trouble and demands of business, left all practical matters to me,” wrote Fontaine. “I handled the correspondence as well as the accounts, and he focused almost exclusively on study drawings and graphic compositions.”39 By 1803 and 1804, Percier and Fontaine were working exclusively for France’s consular couple, creating increasingly glamorous takes on antiquity.
During the eighteenth century, excavations of the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum (buried by Vesuvius in 79 C.E.) revived enthusiasm for the classical past and inspired the neoclassical artistic movement. An early phase of Neoclassicism, the goût grec or Grecian style, became the rage in France during the reign of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. In a complete departure from the ornate baroque and asymmetrical Rococo styles associated with Louis XIV and Louis XV, goût grec furnishings featured bold, angular shapes of symmetrical design with decoration inspired by classical motifs like ram’s heads, urns, and swags.
With the Empire style, Percier and Fontaine created an opulent spin on Neoclassicism based on the splendor of imperial Rome. They enlivened austere classical forms with gilding and redecorated former royal palaces with a dramatic palette of white and gold, purple, red, and emerald green. Roman arabesques, laurel wreaths, trophies, eagles, and sphinxes, along with Napoleon’s cypher, appeared on everything from throne-shaped chairs and tented beds to luxe carpets and porcelain dinner services. Perfectly in tune with France’s bold new leader, the Empire style took off across the Continent, a powerful symbol of Paris’s ascendancy as Europe’s cultural capital.
TWO
CAESAR’S FRIEND
Napoleon and Joséphine kicked off 1802 with a two-week trip to Lyon where he was elected chief magistrate of the new Italian Republic. Composed of the Cisalpine Republic and provinces taken from Austria by the Treaty of Lunéville, the Republic represented the first time “Italy” had appeared on Europe’s political map since the fall of Rome.1
The first couple also visited the city’s renowned silk factories. Determined to revive France’s luxury industries, Napoleon ordered silk to decorate both the Tuileries Palace and Saint-Cloud from Camille Pernon, formerly the main supplier to the crown. Sumptuous silk panels were hung in the Tuileries’s Gallery of Consuls.2 For Napoleon, getting the silk weavers back to work was a pragmatic issue. “I am afraid of these insurrections based on the lack of bread,” Napoleon told Interior Minister Jean-Antoine Chaptal. “I would be less afraid of a battle of 200,000 men.”3
Napoleon’s patronage of the silk industry continued, as he renovated a series of former royal palaces. Over the ensuing decade, silk, brocade, and velvet were ordered to decorate the former royal palaces of Fontainebleau, Meudon, and Compiègne. Later, for the redecoration of Versailles, a staggering 87,500 yards of silk was delivered to the Mobilier Imperial.4
Napoleon continued to appropriate former royal palaces, both physically and symbolically. As Jean-Philippe Garric describes, in addition to the practical need to lodge with his entourage and host guests, Napoleon pursued two other goals: assuming the monumental heritage of the ancien régime and leaving a testimony of his reign for posterity.5 With some four dozen palaces in his real estate portfolio, most sacked during the Revolution, Napoleon would personally keep France’s luxury goods industry busy.
For the Tuileries, Saint-Cloud, Compiègne, and Fontainebleau, Percier and Fontaine ordered enormous carpets from Savonnerie, named for the savonnier or weaver. Under the direction of artist Charles Lebrun, the former royal factory had woven hundreds of spectacular carpets for Louis XIV. These included thirteen carpets for the Louvre’s Apollo Gallery, followed by a set of ninety-three carpets for the Grand Gallery, each nearly thirty feet long. Now the enormous looms were back in use, producing Empire style designs
by architect La Hamayde de Saint-Ange.
With the new year, Napoleon began arranging marriages for his relatives, most of which proved disastrous. Like the Roman emperors who almost exclusively arranged marriages for family members, Napoleon’s matchmaking was intended to further his political ambitions. On January 4, his brother Louis married Joséphine’s daughter Hortense. In love with someone else, Louis could barely tolerate his young wife. Also that month, Napoleon married off his youngest sister, seventeen-year-old Caroline, to the dashing cavalry officer Joachim Murat, a veteran of his Italian and Egyptian campaigns.
It was at the Murats’ Château de Villiers-la-Garenne near Neuilly that Napoleon saw Cupid and Psyche and Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss by the celebrated neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova. The Scottish colonel who commissioned the works had trouble shipping them to England, and Joachim Murat acquired the pendants after visiting Canova’s studio during the French occupation of Rome in 1798. Cupid and Psyche was a popular neoclassical theme and Canova produced many versions of the mythological lovers.
The Murats’ standing Cupid and Psyche was the embodiment of innocence. With Cupid leaning on her shoulder, the graceful Psyche holds his hand and passes him a butterfly, symbol of the soul to the ancient Greeks. In contrast, his erotic Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss inspired French novelist Gustave Flaubert to kiss “the armpit of the swooning woman stretching out her long marble arms to Cupid. And then the foot! The head! Her face! Forgive me, but it was my first sensual kiss for so long; indeed it was something more; I was kissing beauty itself.”6
Napoleon was also smitten. In September 1802, François Cacault, French ambassador in Rome, summonsed Canova to Paris to produce a portrait bust and statue of the first consul. It was Canova’s second invitation.
In 1797, then General Napoleon Bonaparte learned that Canova was in financial straits. As a result of the French occupation of Venice, the new democratic municipality froze Canova’s pension for his tribute to the naval hero Angelo Emo. Eager to be portrayed by Europe’s most sought after artist, Napoleon personally wrote to Canova that August, promising to reinstate his life annuity of one hundred silver ducats a month:
“I have come to understand, Monsieur, from one of your friends, that you have been deprived of [your] Venetian pension. The French Republic acknowledges the great talents that you possess. As a celebrated artist, you have a special right to be protected by the Army of Italy. I am ordering that your pension should be restored to you in full. I hope that you will let me know if this order has not been fulfilled and that you believe the pleasure it gives me to do something useful for you.”
Napoleon never made good on his promise. Later that year, he offered Canova a commission to carve a relief portrait of himself for Padua, near Venice. Canova declined, citing health issues and bad roads. Three years earlier, Canova had turned down Catherine the Great’s invitation to travel to St. Petersburg. But in the case of Napoleon, his motivation was patriotic. France’s recent pillaging of Italy’s masterpieces and its ceding of his beloved Venice to Austria were deeply upsetting. “I have St. Mark in my heart and nothing in the world will change me,” Canova pronounced after the fall of the millennium-old Venetian Republic to Napoleon.7
Later in 1797, when French troops besieged Rome, Canova found himself trapped. A pro-French mob stormed his studio, nearly destroying his model for a statue of Ferdinand IV of Naples. Among the works seized by the French in Rome were some of Canova’s prized plaster models. Around this time, Canova expressed his anti-Bonapartist sentiment in a letter to a friend: “I would happily lose anything, even my life, if by it I could help my beloved country, for I shall call it thus till my dying breath.”
Though the new governors of French-controlled Rome gave Canova various honors, he sought refuge in his hometown of Possagno. Located north of Venice in the foothills of the Dolomites, the small village was not far from the birthplaces of such Renaissance giants as Bellini, Giorgione, and Titian. Born in November 1757 to a family of stonemasons, Canova was just three years old when his father died. His mother remarried two years later, leaving him in the care of his paternal grandfather Pasino, a stone-cutter. At eleven, Canova was apprenticed to a local sculptor who arranged for him to study drawing, painting, and sculpture in nearby Venice.
During these formative years, Canova formed a special bond with Venice, one that would be reciprocated. As part of his training, Canova drew the terra-cottas and plaster casts of ancient Greek sculptures assembled by collector Filippo Farsetti at Palazzo Farsetti on the Grand Canal. Canova’s early works from the 1770s were naturalistic, including his stone figures Orpheus and Eurydice, and marble Daedalus and Icarus. In 1775, the young sculptor left Giuseppe Bernardi’s studio and opened his own atelier inside the cloister of the Church of Santo Stefano.
In 1779, the twenty-two-year-old traveled to Rome under the protection of Venetian ambassador Girolamo Zulian. Two years later, Canova settled in Rome permanently, joining a community of artists lured by the city’s ancient ruins and monuments. For Canova, like Charles Percier, Rome offered an inexhaustible source of inspiration. He studied and copied Rome’s famed statues including the Apollo Belvedere, along with its temples, baths, triumphal arches, and bas-reliefs. He immersed himself in the art of Rome’s churches and private collections. His library featured archeology, the classics, and biographies of ancient heroes. He mastered correct Italian and learned some English and French, languages that would prove extremely useful. In pursuit of antiquity, Canova traveled to the archeological sites of Naples, Paestum, Pompeii, and Pozzuoli.
In a competition organized by Venetian aristocrat Don Abbondio Rezzonico, Canova produced Apollo Crowning Himself, an antiquity-inspired statuette. Its success allowed Canova to obtain a massive block of marble for his 1782 Theseus and the Minotaur from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Canova took the advice of his friend Gavin Hamilton, the Scottish archeologist and dealer, and portrayed Theseus and the Minotaur after their epic struggle.
Canova depicted the legendary Greek hero sitting astride the prostrate Minotaur, holding a club in his left hand and resting his right on his victim’s leg. By the leg, Canova carved the coils of thread Theseus used to retrace his steps from the lair. By the time Canova finished the work, his patron Girolamo Zulian had moved to Constantinople. Zulian gave the sculpture to Canova who sold it to a collector in Vienna. The dramatic marble was the talk of Rome. As Canova’s acclaim grew, commissions poured in. French critic Quatremère de Quincy called the marble Canova’s masterpiece.
In 1782, the twenty-four-year-old sculptor was briefly engaged to Domenica Volpato, the beautiful daughter of the noted Rome engraver Giovanni Volpato. But Canova broke off the engagement after his fiancée seemed more interested in engraver Raffaello Morghen. Canova never married. Art became his true passion. “I love [art] so much that it absorbs me totally without being able to lose a moment,” he wrote his early patron, Giovanni Falier.8
Among the sculptors the young Canova admired was Rome’s seventeenth-century phenom, Gian Lorenzo Bernini. After seeing Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne at the Borghese Villa, an astonished Canova wrote: “the nude is so beautiful I can scarcely believe it.” Under the patronage of the popes, Bernini dominated his era with his theatrical marbles and dazzling architectural projects. Though Canova would share Bernini’s celebrity, he broke completely with his predecessor’s Baroque style, producing elegant, exquisitely carved neoclassical marbles.
Canova’s artistic practice was also strikingly different from that of Bernini, who famously took his scalpel straight to marble. Preparatory drawings and oil paintings were the key first step for Canova—a natural extension of sketching ancient statues and casts during his early training. Renaissance painters Giorgione, Titian, Raphael, Correggio, along with a Venetian contemporary, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, were great influences. Canova avidly collected Tiepolo’s drawings and oil sketches.9
What Canova was after in his sculptures, writes Rachel Spence,
was to emulate the exquisite, sensual detail of painting. Canova’s “scalpel proceeded like a paintbrush,” wrote his secretary and biographer Melchior Missirini.10 Canova followed his preparatory sketches and paintings with clay and terra-cotta models. These modelli allowed him to work out the details of a composition before spending money on marble and labor.
While visiting the Rome studio of sculpture restorer Bartolomeo Cavaceppi, Canova was struck by the excellent quality of the copies produced by his assistants using plaster casts of antiquities. Canova decided to hire formatore, specialists in taking molds of antique sculptures, to make plaster molds of his clay models (in the process, the clay models were destroyed). In his 1765 Encyclopedia, Denis Diderot described the pointing machine, an innovation developed at the French Academy in Rome. The procedure involved multiplying or dividing measurements of an original to make larger or smaller reproductions. Canova adapted the pointing technique to produce original works, not replicas.
The plaster model was covered with black nails. These were carefully measured and transferred onto the marble block by his studio assistants. The plaster model was key to Canova’s practice, allowing him to create numerous copies or variants in marble. According to Johannes Myssok, Canova revolutionized sculptural technique and “. . . adopted the workmanship of antique sculpture far more profoundly than any sculptor before him.”11
The façade of the building housing Canova’s studio was covered in marble fragments from sarcophagi and imperial Roman relief sculptures. “These artifacts reflect the decorative taste prevalent in the early 18th century, the same taste adopted by Canova in designing the Museo Chiaramonti and the Galleria Lapidaria in the Vatican Museums,” writes Mario Guderzo. “He even acquired an entire series of eighty pillars and donated them to the museum as bases for the statues, writing, ‘said pillars are to be used as an erudite and elegant base for the statues, saving a vast sum of money instead of having them newly created in marble.’”12
