by Susan Jaques
In the end, Napoleon chose his own center of power. On August 13, he announced the selection of Notre Dame Cathedral, then called the Metropolitan Church of Paris. Set on an island in the Seine on the former site of a Roman temple and early Christian churches, the vast Gothic cathedral could accommodate thirty thousand guests. During the ancien régime, the cathedral had hosted some royal occasions, including solemn entries, Te Deums, and weddings such as that of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in 1779.
But Napoleon’s selection of the Gothic cathedral presented a dilemma. Comparing Notre Dame to “a vast symphony in stone,” Victor Hugo later wrote: “. . . it is difficult not to sigh, not to wax indignant, before the numberless degradations and mutilations which time and men have both caused the venerable monument to suffer, without respect for Charlemagne, who laid its first stone, or for Philip Augustus, who laid the last.”16
During the Revolution, the cathedral suffered extensive damage. Revolutionaries had mistaken twenty-eight Old Testament statues of the kings of Judah for the kings of France, and roped and pulled them down from the west façade. Inside, relics and altars were pillaged and vandalized. Renamed the Chief Temple of Reason, the cathedral hosted a festival in November 1793. As Blake Ehrlich describes, statues of Voltaire and Rousseau replaced figures of saints in niches. The goddess of Reason, played by a Paris Opera star, emerged from a Greek temple and sat on a throne of greenery on a high altar. Holding torches, female attendants in white robes with tricolor sashes and flower wreaths paraded up and down the aisle. Following the lighting of the Flame of Truth by the goddess, the Opera’s Corps de Ballet performed.17 The Chief Temple of Reason became a wine depot.
After Napoleon and Pope Pius VII signed the Concordat, Notre Dame was quickly redecorated for the installment of Jean-Baptiste de Belloy as bishop on Palm Sunday, 1802. Pillars were draped with cloth, the altar was rebuilt, and a figure of Christ was transferred from Arras. In preparation for the ceremony, Napoleon ordered nearby houses demolished to create more room for expected crowds for the coronation. Streets along the cortege route were paved, including the rue de Rivoli, the Place du Carrousel, and the Quai Bonaparte.
To decorate the cathedral, Napoleon again turned to Charles Percier and Pierre Fontaine. Having started their careers designing backdrops for the Opera and the Comédie-Française, the designers had experience producing dramatic visual effects. In addition, Percier embraced medieval architecture as a student at the French Academy and had made numerous drawings of the Gothic basilica of Saint Denis and Chartres Cathedral. This experience came in handy for the coronation décor for Notre Dame. Percier and Fontaine created an elaborate stage set that evoked both ancient and medieval history, helping fashion Napoleon’s image as the direct heir to the Caesars and Charlemagne.
At Notre Dame’s main entrance, the designers erected an arcaded portico resting on four square pillars. As Jean-François Bédard describes, this portico was divided into three registers matching those of the church’s west façade. The lowest level featured statues and niches that corresponded to the location of the statues destroyed during the Revolution. For the middle register, large pointed arches repeated the cathedral’s central archway, known as the Portal of Judgement. These were flanked with pillars decorated with niches in the manner of the buttresses that separated the three portals of the church’s west façade. The top register replicated Notre Dame’s Gallery of Kings with a continuous band of statues in niches surrounded by a parapet.18
In front of Notre Dame’s main doors, Percier and Fontaine built a huge Gothic pavilion out of wood, papier-mâché, and painted canvas. In addition to hiding Notre Dame’s decapitated sculptures, the portico functioned as a grand entrance. According to the official coronation program, the structure featured “four great Gothic arches, supported by four pillars on which were placed statues of the thirty-six cities that were called to participate in the ceremony.”
Two of the pillars were topped with statues of Clovis and Charlemagne, each holding scepters. Between the two pillars was a long mast flying a replica of the ancient banner of Saint Denis. During the Middle Ages, the orange-red silk oriflamme became the battle standard of the French kings, carried in crusades and wars. According to legend, Charlemagne himself carried the banner to the Holy Land in response to a prophecy about a knight with a golden lance, from which flames would burn and drive out the Saracens. Capping one of the arches were the arms of Napoleon with figures representing the sixteen cohorts of the Legion of Honor. Percier and Fontaine crowned the entire structure with imperial eagles and gothic pyramids.19
From the cathedral entrance to the archbishop’s palace, the duo also constructed an enormous rotunda embellished with filigree decoration and large, colorful Gobelins tapestries. Portable tapestries had previously been used as décor for royal coronations at Reims. The long, tent-shaped rotunda, conceived by Percier and Fontaine for the king of Etruria’s visit to Malmaison in 1801, was repurposed to provide shelter for Napoleon’s VIP guests as they disembarked from their coaches. Another wooden gallery along the side of the cathedral functioned as a dressing room for Pius VII and the imperial couple.
Inside, the designers combined the popular new Empire style with medieval chic. Sumptuous brocaded wall hangings featured the new coats of arms and symbols of the First Empire—golden eagles and bees, laurel wreaths, and garlands of oak leaves. There were also Carolingian-themed tapestries featuring Charles IV’s scepter topped with Charlemagne’s statuette and the hand of justice crosswise under the imperial crown. The cathedral was carpeted; damage was hidden with gold-fringed crimson silk and velvet drapes. To light the vast cathedral, candelabras embellished with gilt winged Victories were attached to the pillars; two dozen crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling.
Since seating was at a premium, Percier and Fontaine removed the ironwork choir screen along with two altars to make room for tiers of wooded seats covered with silk and velvet in the clerestories and flanking the nave. On a platform to the left of the high altar, the designers installed a canopied throne adorned with the papal arms for Pius VII. Facing the high altar on a dais of four steps (recycled from the funeral of the former archbishop of Paris, Jean-Baptiste Royer), they placed two chairs of state for the imperial couple.
Near the main entrance, toward the west end of the nave, a dramatic dais was erected with twenty-four red carpeted steps. Beneath a triumphal arch of eight gilded columns, the designers placed the rounded-back throne of Napoleon, reminiscent of a Frankish shield.20 Joséphine’s throne was placed one step below.
In advance of the ceremony, Napoleon ordered sacred vessels, processional crosses, and lace vestments transferred to Notre Dame. He also returned relics formerly in the treasury of the Sainte-Chapelle, which had been sent in 1791 to Saint Denis and later displayed in a cabinet of curiosities in the National Library.21 Despite these additions, classical décor outweighed Christian symbols.
Percier and Fontaine created a cross between a Greek temple and the grandeur of ancient Rome. “God wouldn’t have recognized the place,” quipped one observer.22
Letizia Bonaparte boycotted the coronation. For starters, she was angry at her son for excluding brothers Lucien and Jérôme from the succession plan. In addition, Napoleon’s devout mother despised her daughter-in-law who she called la putana, the whore. She could not bear to see Joséphine crowned Empress of France.23
In fact, Napoleon had not yet decided whether Joséphine would be crowned alongside him in December. When his wife complained about his extramarital affairs, Napoleon fired back, accusing her of spying and driving him to marry a woman who could bear him a child.24 With preparations for the sacre underway, the threat of divorce loomed large.
Ultimately, Napoleon decided to make Joséphine empress. As he told politician Pierre Louis Roederer at Saint-Cloud, “My wife is a good woman who does them [the family] no harm. She is willing to play the empress up to a point, and to have diamonds and fine clothes—the trifles of her age!
I have never loved her blindly, yet if I have made her an empress it is out of justice. I am above all a just man. If I had been thrown into prison instead of ascending a throne, she would have shared my misfortune. It is right for her to share my grandeur.”25
Part of that grandeur were the couple’s magnificent coronation costumes designed by Joséphine’s good friend Jean-Baptiste Isabey, a former student of Jacques-Louis David. “The coronation of Napoleon was a political pageant such as the world will never see again,” writes Herbert Richardson, “simply because we shall never get again such a combination as Napoleon as producer and principal actor, and Isabey, the painter and miniaturist, for master of the robes.”26
By imperial decree, Napoleon’s grand habillement included: “white silk pantaloons and stockings; white slippers with gold embroidery; a white silk tunic, bordered and embroidered with gold crepine at the base; a cloak attached at the shoulders, made of purple velvet spotted with golden bees, embroidered around the edges and lined with ermine [a privilege of royalty since the Middle Ages]; white gold-embroidered gloves, a lace cravat; open crown of gold, formed into bay leaves formée; gold scepter and hand of justice; sword with gold handle, encrusted with diamonds, attached to a white sash worn around the waist and decorated with gold crepine.”27
To Isabey, the Childeric bee that Napoleon had adopted for his personal emblem was too compact to produce the desired effect when embroidered in gilt thread on the purplish-red velvet coronation cloak. In its place, he designed a larger bee with partially open wings. For fifteen thousand francs, the firm of Picot produced three hundred of these embroidered gold bees for the mantle, along with Ns and olive, laurel, and oak leaves. Russian ermine decorated with tufts of black astrakhan lined the mantle. It was so heavy, Napoleon reportedly nearly fell over from the weight.28 Napoleon’s long classical white satin tunic was embroidered in gold and fringed at the ankles. Napoleon nixed the idea of Roman sandals in favor of shoes. As a compromise, gold embroidery was added to imitate laces.
For inspiration for the imperial mantle, Isabey looked to the ancient paludamentum. Purple, the most prized color in ancient Greece, Egypt, Phoenicia, and Rome, was produced from the juice of Mediterranean shellfish. According to legend, the source was discovered by Heracles’s dog whose muzzle turned red after nibbling mollusks. After trying to extract murexes from their shells, Phoenician sailors also noticed their fingers had turned bright red. It took vast quantities of purpura and murex to extract the juice to make the purple dye.
Costly purple fabric adorned both ancient rulers and the statues of their gods.29 In the late Republic, Julius Caesar made a controversial gamble. At official ceremonies, he wore the ceremonial clothing of kings—a purple cloak, long red boots, and a laurel wreath. At the Lupercalia, the Roman fertility festival, Mark Anthony tried crowning Caesar with a diadem with white ribbons. When the crowd protested, Caesar was forced to refuse the monarchial symbol.
In imperial Rome, the color purple was restricted to the emperor, priests, magistrates, and commanders. Violations were considered treason—as the son of Macedonian king Juba II learned the hard way. After wearing a purple outfit in Rome, the young man was arrested and put to death.30 Roman citizens were allowed to add a band or braid of purple to their ceremonial attire; the width and shade indicating rank and age. Wealthy Romans also decorated their villas with prestigious purple furnishings.31
On his way to and from Notre Dame, Napoleon wore a petit habillement, a spectacular purple velvet cloak bordered in ermine and elaborately decorated in point couché gold and silver embroidery, along with a plumed black velvet hat. From top to bottom, the cloak’s facings were embellished with a large motif repeated three times: N inscribed in an aureole with twelve stars of glory. The base of the aureole was bordered by ears of wheat, above it, a bee was surrounded by oak branches entangled with vine, olive, and laurel branches. Sewn onto the robe’s left breast was a plaque of the Legion of Honor featuring the imperial eagle.32
In designing Joséphine’s costume, Isabey looked to both classical fashion and a celebrated painting cycle of Marie de’ Medici. Flemish Baroque artist Peter Paul Rubens produced two dozen canvases for the Luxembourg Palace, home of the Italian-born French queen. Like Marie de’ Medici’s collar, Joséphine’s silk lace collar stood high behind her head, subtly connecting her with the last woman to be crowned queen of France. Isabey added other historical flourishes to Joséphine’s dress, including knuckle-length sleeves, a late Gothic high waistline, and Renaissance-style puffed and embroidered upper sleeves.33
To complement Napoleon’s fringed tunic, Joséphine’s white silk satin and silver brocade gown was trimmed with gold fringe at the hem. Diamonds adorned the bodice and edges of the sleeves; golden bees were embroidered all over the gown. Even her white satin slippers had a golden bee embroidered on each toe, topped by a cluster of gilt bobbin lace.
Joséphine’s seventy-two-foot mantle was lined and bordered with ermine. Gold bees, Napoleon’s cipher, and oak, laurel, and olive leaves were embroidered onto the crimson velvet. Isabey intended to hang the mantle from Joséphine’s left shoulder in a dramatic toga-like style, complementing Napoleon’s robe worn open at the left shoulder. But at eighty pounds, the mantle was too heavy and had to be anchored low on Joséphine’s back by sturdy shoulder straps. Even with this adjustment, Joséphine still had trouble walking through the cathedral. Both the gown and mantle were produced by Joséphine’s favorite marchand de modes Louis Hippolyte LeRoy who raved: “These objects were of a magnificence and taste which exceeded all imaginings.”34
Joséphine’s jewelry was equally splendid. Her crown was decorated with black pearls, attached by clips to the diadem.35 In contrast to Napoleon’s ring with an emerald, symbol of divine revelation, the jeweler Marguerite set Joséphine’s coronation ring with a ruby, symbol of joy.36 She also wore Charlemagne’s sapphire talisman from Aachen.37
“The coronation costumes were clearly intended to impress by virtue of their sheer magnificence, and their evocation of earlier historic periods, from classical antiquity to the 17th century, served to underscore the legitimacy of Napoleon’s claim to the throne,” write Lourdes Font and Michele Majer.38
Isabey also dressed many of Napoleon and Joséphine’s A-list guests. Spectators were required to wear court dress made exclusively from French materials, with Isabey dictating the colors to be worn. He dressed the marshals of the Empire in royal blue. The Bonaparte princesses wore embroidered, trained dresses with delicate lace collars à la Catherine de’ Medici.39
Like the French royal coronations at Reims where “everything was painstakingly fine-tuned to express meaning,”40 Napoleon’s coronation was meticulously staged with the emperor himself as choreographer.
In addition to the costumes, Napoleon ordered Isabey to produce a series of seven drawings, each with more than a hundred figures, elaborating highlights of the upcoming ceremony. But worried about missing the deadline, the artist took a cue from the French painter Nicolas Poussin. Scouring Paris for toy figurines, Isabey dressed the wooden dolls in papal, imperial, and other costumes and placed them in a large model of the cathedral.
Napoleon and his aides used Isabey’s faux cathedral to organize and rehearse the upcoming sacre, putting the figures in their proper places.41
THREE
THE SACRE
Like Charlemagne, Napoleon sought divine legitimacy for his new Empire. After being proclaimed Emperor Napoleon I by the Senate in May, he sent Pope Pius VII this unusual invitation:
“Most Holy Father:
The happy effect produced upon the character and morality of my people by the reestablishment of religion induces me to beg your Holiness to give me a new proof of your interest in my destiny, and in that of this great nation, in one of the most important conjunctures presented in the annals of the world. I beg you to come and give, to the highest degree, a religious character to the anointing and coronation of the first Emperor of the French. That ceremony
will acquire a new lustre by being performed by your Holiness in person. It will bring down upon our people, and yourself, the blessing of God, whose decrees rule the destiny of Empires and families. Your Holiness is aware of the affectionate sentiments I have long borne towards you, and can thence judge of the pleasure that this occurrence will afford me of testifying them anew. We pray God that He may preserve you, most Holy Father, for many years, to rule and govern our mother, the Holy Church.
Your dutiful son, Napoleon.”1
Pius didn’t RSVP at first. It had been over a millennium since a pope had ventured abroad to crown a civil ruler. In 754, Pope Stephen II traveled to Paris to consecrate Charlemagne’s father Pepin the Short, king of the Franks. In a splendid ceremony at Saint Denis, Stephen bestowed Pepin with the additional title of Patricius Romanorum, Patrician of the Romans. In thanks, Pepin defeated the Lombards and presented Stephen with the former Exarchate of Ravenna, leading to the establishment of the Papal States. In 800, Pepin’s son Charlemagne traveled to Rome to be crowned by Pope Leo III at St. Peter’s Basilica.
Five months of negotiations ensued, conducted by Napoleon’s uncle Cardinal Fesch, ambassador to the Holy See. From the Rhineland, Napoleon sent Arch-Chancellor Cambacérès a French translation of the prescribed coronation ceremony from the Roman Pontifical, asking for changes.
Against the advice of the Curia, Pius agreed to officiate. He hoped that his cooperation would result in concessions including the return of seized papal real estate and changes to the Concordat. In light of the recent experience of his predecessor at the hands of the French, Pius executed his will before departing for Paris. With a forty-person entourage, six cardinals, four bishops, and numerous officials, the pope left Rome on November 2 and crossed the Alps via the Mont Cenis Pass. After a two day stopover in Florence, Pius continued to France.