by Philip Dwyer
Napoleon and Josephine sat facing the high altar. All the symbols of the Carolingian Empire on the altar were blessed individually by the pope, including a set of spurs, what was supposed to be Charlemagne’s sword, the sceptre of Charles V adorned with a statuette of Charlemagne, and a replica of Charlemagne’s crown made especially for the occasion. According to contemporary accounts, Napoleon was calm but very pale and visibly moved.36 Did he realize the enormity of what he was about to do? Surely he did, and yet he managed a yawn once or twice, possibly deliberately in order to show the republicans present that he did not really care for the ceremony but was obliged for reasons of state to go along with it.
The act of anointment was designed specifically for the ceremony; it was Napoleon who gave the order to proceed, so that he could speak of an act of ‘self-unction’. It is interesting to note that Napoleon did not, as was the tradition in coronation ceremonies, expose parts of his upper body while the anointing was being carried out. Instead, the pope anointed only his head and hands after he had stripped down to a satin tunic.37 It was only after the objects had been blessed that Napoleon received the ring, the sword, the coat of golden bees, the hand of justice and the sceptre. He then climbed the steps of the altar. The gesture that followed has since become symbolic of Napoleonic power. As the pope appeared to crown him, Napoleon took the laurel from the pope’s hands and (re)placed it on his own head. There was no gasp from the assembled dignitaries à la Hollywood’s Désirée. This part of the proceedings had been discussed and planned beforehand, in fact suggested by Cambacérès.38 According to one witness, this was the moment everyone had been waiting for. A profound silence reigned over the cathedral. After the crown had been placed on Napoleon’s head, everyone in the cathedral stood up spontaneously, the men waving their feathered hats.39
This was not the first time a sovereign had crowned himself.40 Napoleon’s excuse was that he did not want any arguments among the court elite about who would presume to hand him the crown in the name of the people.41 As we have seen, he had entered the cathedral with the crown of laurels already on his head, and carrying the sceptre, which he then placed on the altar before both were blessed by the pope. This gesture turned the ceremony on its head. If Napoleon was already symbolically wearing a crown and if he intended placing Charlemagne’s crown on his head in the course of the ceremony, then what was the point of having the pope come all that way?42 Of course the self-crowning was a matter of Napoleon asserting his political independence, underlining how much he owed his elevation not to the pope but to himself and himself alone. In the age-old conflict between the spiritual and the temporal, Napoleon was vigorously asserting the supremacy of the temporal. This sent not only a political but also a personal message.
Then it was Josephine’s turn. As she advanced, her train, which weighed around forty kilograms, was grudgingly carried by the five Bonaparte princesses, a duty they performed so badly that at one point Josephine was unable to move forward.43 She knelt at Napoleon’s feet – a gesture that signified her subordinance to him – and appeared, at least to some in the audience, to be praying to Napoleon rather than to God; tears ran down her cheeks on to her joined hands.44 Napoleon then took the imperial diadem and placed it, as planned, on his wife’s head, although he had trouble making it stay there. There was nothing terribly unusual about a sovereign crowning his wife: the kings of Spain traditionally did so; Frederick I of Prussia had crowned his wife in 1701; and the tsars of Russia, after placing the crown on their own head, took it off and touched their empresses’ forehead with it.45
In France, however, the coronation of a queen was a rare event – Josephine was the only queen to be crowned and anointed other than Marie de Médicis in 1610 – and this was the first time that an empress had been anointed and crowned, and the first time in French history that a queen had been crowned at the same time as her male counterpart. It raises the question why, if there was no historical precedent for both being crowned at the same time, Napoleon felt it necessary to make the gesture. One Napoleonic scholar has called it a ‘caprice’.46 Napoleon, however, insisted because Josephine thereby came to embody the aspirations of the nation.47
Then came the second phase of the ceremony. When the mass was over, Napoleon ascended the ‘grand throne’ erected on a high platform at the west end of the cathedral, with the crown still on his head. There, with one hand on the Bible, he swore an oath to ‘maintain the integrity of the territory of the Republic: to respect and to cause to be respected the laws of the Concordat and of freedom of worship, of political and civil liberty, and the sale of nationalized lands; to raise no taxes except by virtue of the law; to maintain the institution of the Legion of Honour; to govern only in view of the interests, the wellbeing and the glory of the French people’.48 This was not simply a sop to republicans; it was a social pact, a contract between the French people and their sovereign. If Napoleon broke that contract, then the people would have the right to depose him.49 It is also the political culmination of the Revolution. Power was conferred on Napoleon not by God but through a secular contract with the French people. Napoleon thus became the first among equals (primus inter pares).
The imperial party then returned to the Tuileries by a circuitous route so that the people of Paris could catch a glimpse of their new Emperor. That evening, the imperial couple dined alone, with a skeleton staff. In order to respect the tradition that the symbol of royal power had to be maintained for the whole day, Josephine was required to keep the crown on.50
The coronation ceremony was an important step on the path to legitimizing the Empire. On 27 December, at the opening of the Legislative Corps, the minister of the interior, Jean-Baptiste de Nompère de Champagny, explained the legitimacy of the new Empire: it had been called into existence by a senatus consultum and a plebiscite. It was from that moment that Napoleon received the title ‘Emperor of the French’. No other act was necessary to consecrate his authority. The pomp surrounding the ceremony was subsidiary. What mattered most was the ‘immutable oath that ensures the integrity of the Empire, the stability of property, the perpetuity of institutions, respect for the law and the happiness of the nation’.51 Champagny’s speech demonstrates the complexity of the question surrounding Napoleon’s legitimacy. Was he emperor simply because he was a victorious general? Did he represent the people or the nation? Was his a monarchy by divine right? Napoleon’s rule was based on a number of inherent contradictions, as can be seen in his official title – ‘Emperor of the Republic’— as well as in the official coinage that would now circulate throughout the Empire. On the one side were the words ‘Napoleon Empereur’, and on the other was ‘République française’. The word ‘Republic’ would not disappear until September 1807, even if the coins would remain in circulation for some time.
And yet, in spite of the acceptance of the notion of popular sovereignty, the coronation ceremony harked back to ancien régime traditions in which the Church imbued the new sovereign with divine power. Napoleon, although it was never explicitly stated, was using the traditions of the French monarchy to acquire the sacred power that was the foundation of his kingship. The invitations to the coronation pointed out that ‘divine providence’ had called Napoleon to the throne, a sentiment that can also be found in the media of the day, although in somewhat subtler terms. In short, the idea of divine right is curiously mixed with the notion that Napoleon had been called upon by the French people to adopt the title ‘emperor’. The traditional notion of divine right and the revolutionary notion of the sovereignty of the people were thus in precarious balance, and it is perhaps why Napoleon received the appellation of ‘Citizen Emperor’ at the beginning of his reign.52
Representing the Empire
Jacques-Louis David was a witness to the coronation, although he got to the box originally reserved for him only after a punch-up with the grand master of ceremonies, Louis Philippe, Comte de Ségur.53 Ségur did not have much respect for David the regicide – as a member o
f the Convention the artist had voted for the death of the king in 1792 – but he was probably also under a great deal of strain, responsible as he was for the smooth running of the ceremony. David was present because he had been given a commission for four official paintings to celebrate the new dynasty.54 Only two were ever completed: Sacre de l’empereur Napoléon et couronnement de l’impératrice Joséphine (The consecration of Napoleon and the coronation of Josephine), a commentary on the power of Napoleon, and the Serment de l’armée fait à l’empereur après la Distribution des Aigles au Champ de Mars (The Distribution of the Eagles). The Arrivée de Napoléon Ier à l’Hôtel de Ville (The arrival at the Hôtel de Ville) never got beyond the drawing stage, while the misleadingly entitled L’intronisation (The enthronement), which was meant to portray Napoleon swearing an oath to uphold the Constitution before the representatives of the Senate, the Legislative Corps and the Tribunate, did not even get that far. The commission was intended to represent the four ceremonies that took place over a four-day period and that were meant to celebrate the four components upon which the regime was founded – the sacred, the civic, the municipal and the military.55
Detail of David’s painting, Sacre de l’empereur Napoléon et couronnement de l’impératrice Joséphine (The consecration of Napoleon and the coronation of Josephine), 1807. The size of the painting was monumental, even by the standards of the day. At the bottom of the painting were the words Napoleonis, Francorum Imperatoris, primarus pictor (Napoleon, Emperor of France, by the first painter), taken off during the Restoration. The painting, in other words, was meant to be more than a historical document. The spectator understood that it was full of political meaning.
David initially wanted to paint Napoleon crowning himself. We know he changed his mind before May 1807, supposedly because, after making a number of sketches, he could not find a convincing enough pose.56 It is more likely that he was persuaded by fellow artists, including a former pupil, François Gérard, to abandon what would have looked like arrogant posturing, and instead settled on Napoleon crowning Josephine.57 However, the claim that Josephine connived with David to alter the subject matter of the painting is hardly credible, especially since we know just how controlling Napoleon could be. It is more likely that he knew of everything beforehand.58
The actual moment captured is that of Napoleon paying tribute to his wife, a banal husband in, as one art critic has put it, a bourgeois comedy of devotion.59 At the same time, Napoleon was publicly recognizing Josephine; through this ‘ritual of legitimation’ she was now placed at the summit of the state, a gesture that paradoxically underlined her political insignificance, since she was completely subordinated to Napoleon and excluded from the political decision-making process.60 Pius VII, on the other hand, at Napoleon’s insistence, was given a passive role, doing little more than bless the couple.61
The choice of this particular moment in the ceremony may have been inspired by other works of art, such as the Couronnement de Marie de Médicis by Rubens, which was at the Luxembourg Palace (now at the Louvre), or Gabriel-François Doyen’s Louis XVI reçoit l’hommage des chevaliers de l’ordre du Saint-Esprit à Reims (Louis XVI receiving the homage of the Knights of the Order of St Esprit at Rheims), or again Leonard Gautier’s Henry IV, or even the illuminated medieval manuscripts of the History of St Louis.62 Marie de Médicis was Henry IV’s second wife, so it is interesting to note that not only was David emulating a Bourbon ceremony, he was also indirectly referring to the only Bourbon king with whom Napoleon allowed a comparison to be drawn.
Be that as it may, it is Josephine and not Napoleon who is the centre of this work of art, and hence the subject of the coronation. Josephine is seen kneeling before her imperial master, the husband, head bowed, submissive, waiting to receive the crown, while everyone else looks on passively. The moment was designed to promote the myth of the unified family. The message of the painting was further reinforced by the presence of Madame Mère, who was never reconciled to the fact that Napoleon had married Josephine, and who did not take part in the ceremony (she was in Rome at the time). In the painting, she is forced to bear witness to their union, included in the painting at her son’s insistence in order to reinforce the idea of imperial rule as dynastic. Napoleon’s sisters, who had sulked at having to carry Josephine’s train, are standing behind her, serene and demure. David portrayed Josephine in flattering terms as young – one of his daughters posed for the portrait – in order to demonstrate she was still of childbearing age, though she was forty-one.63
The painting was finally finished in November 1807, but it was not until 4 January 1808 that Napoleon (he had been away in Italy), accompanied by a large entourage, paid David a visit in his studio in the abandoned Cluny church on the Boulevard Saint-Germain. He walked up and down the length of the painting for half an hour, which was a very long time for Napoleon, admiring the result and no doubt trying to identify certain characters. Given that there were some 150 people portrayed in the painting it is not surprising he took so long before pronouncing, ‘It is very beautiful! What truth! It is not a painting; one walks into this picture.’64 The act of obliging the artist as well as the courtiers to wait before declaring in favour of the painting smacks of a theatrical gesture. He then, somewhat presumptuously, congratulated David on guessing his ‘thoughts’ by portraying him as a French ‘chevalier’ or knight, probably a reference to the chevaleresque, which had been for some years an important term in the new ‘national’ history that Napoleon wanted to identify with.65 The compliments soon gave way to a few suggestions for changes to be made. The pope was to be shown in a more active role, so that he appeared to give the proceedings his blessing, and the cardinal legate was to carry the Empress’s ring. One can imagine David biting his tongue and having to come up with a tactful answer, however much it must have galled. What did Napoleon really know about art? Even then, David depicted a pontiff whose blessing hand was limp and lacking energy.66
The following month, after three years of work, the painting was ready to be exhibited in the Louvre (although David took it with him to Brussels in 1816 and continued to work on it there), where it can be viewed today and where some visitors invariably spend time trying to identify the participants with the help of a Lucite attached to the painting’s frame, just as the public did in 1808 using a line engraving that was for sale. The painting was, according to one description, a book in which history could be read.67 The most important characters were pointed out in a schematic diagram on the lower part of the frame of the painting when it was first made public in 1808. In this sense the painting is a work of journalism, a Who’s Who of the imperial court.
On the whole, the painting was well received; some even felt compelled to cry out, ‘Vive l’Empereur!’68 According to the newspaper accounts, crowds were always found gathering before the painting.69 It was as close as the people could get to the actual ceremony itself, especially since it gave some the illusion that they were somehow there.70 The police reports, which Napoleon read daily, provide a reasonably accurate account of what people were saying about the painting, and hence about the regime. Since the subject of the painting was Josephine, and even though she appears a great deal younger than she actually was, it appears to have exacerbated rumours about divorce, and about the permanence of the new dynasty.71 If Napoleon did not have any children, it was said the new dynasty would not outlive him. There were few criticisms directed at the painting itself, although they existed. As one contemporary critic observed, tongue in cheek, it was not the type of painting to lend itself to a critique.72 The main criticism seems to have been aimed at the gallery of portraits that dominates the background and some of the foreground. They were only sketched, it was said, and not adequately finished. Moreover, they were looking into space or at nothing at all.73
But the painting was displayed for only one month; it was taken down in March 1808 so that a copy could be made for the Gobelins factory, a project that like many other imperial commissio
ns never materialized. It is not a question, therefore, of how much of an impact this painting would have made on the thousands who queued to see it during the Salon of 1808; the impact would have been relatively limited – to the people of Paris and its environs. The vast majority of the French, if they were to see any representations of the coronation at all, were more likely to see woodcut prints or engravings based on David’s work. One of the most popular was a woodcut engraving entitled Représentation du sacre [et] du couronnement in which the principal events that took place during the ceremony – the papal anointment, the self-coronation and the crowning of Josephine – are all portrayed.
Représentation du sacre [et] du couronnement de Napoleon I, Empereur des Français (Representation of the consecration [and] coronation of Napoleon I, Emperor of the French), no date, but probably 1804. A popular woodcut print of the main stages of the coronation. The few engravings that represent Napoleon kneeling before the pope were destined for a Catholic audience, and were meant to underscore Napoleon as first son of the Church.
Well before the completion of David’s painting a number of portraits of Napoleon in coronation robes were commissioned. François Gérard’s Napoléon Ier en costume du sacre was ordered in 1805 (and later copied in tapestries by the Gobelins). The official, unashamedly regal portrait pleased Napoleon so much that it was reproduced and given to relations, allies, courtiers and every French mission abroad, which is why there are so many copies of the painting in existence today. In many respects, it has its roots in the ancien régime portraits of the French kings, and is comparable to Joseph Siffred Duplessis’ Louis XVI en grand manteau royal.
