by Susan Jaques
Among them was Vivant Denon, standing in a box at the left. One of the guests invited to welcome Marie Louise to Compiègne, Denon had played a major role in the wedding preparations. In addition to Auguste’s Grand Vermeil Service, the table was set with an Egyptian service designed by Denon and Sèvres director Alexandre Brongniart. Finished just days before the wedding, the service featured some seventy-two plates, a cabaret or coffee service, and a centerpiece in biscuit. The coffee service and a number of plates were decorated with images from Denon’s popular Travels in Lower and Upper Egypt. The centerpiece included miniature reproductions of famous antiquities in the Musée Napoléon.27
While Napoleon and his guests dined at the Tuileries, Parisians enjoyed an alfresco meal. Like the post-triumph feasts of ancient Rome, Napoleon provided poultry, meat, and barrels of wine. To bolster public support for his Austrian bride, the emperor also showered the crowd with a commemorative wedding medallion.28 Vivant Denon conceived the medal’s design with the double portraits of the imperial couple, but was surprised by the enormous quantity ordered by Daru—forty thousand pieces.
To meet the demand, writes Marie-Anne Dupuy, Denon hired extra workers at the Mint. To each copy, the director added his own signature, Denon direxit.29 From Milan, Andrea Appiani and Luigi Manfredini collaborated on a highly symbolic commemorative medal. The obverse featured a double portrait in profile—Napoleon wearing the iron crown of Italy, alongside Marie Louise. On the reverse, Hymenaeus, god of weddings, held a wedding veil in his left hand and a torch in the other, driving away Mars, god of war.
With the awarding of medals, Napoleon was also following a Roman tradition. Roman imperial weddings were commemorated with coins. In fifteenth-century Rome, art-loving Pope Paul II tossed coins to the crowd from his new Palazzo San Marco (today’s Palazzo Venezia). During the Possesso, the inaugural Mass for the popes in the late seventeenth century, coins were also thrown from the Lateran Basilica’s Loggia delle Benedizioni and given to dignitaries inside the church.30
The Moniteur Universel described the lavish setting: “Rearranged for the imperial banquet, the splendid theatre had been transformed into a hall of celebration. This had been achieved by redecorating the stage to merge with the rest of the space, so that instead of an audience area and a stage, one saw only a single room, forming a perfectly ordered whole. The décor comprised two cupolas supported by double arches, together with two pendentives ornamented with columns. One of the sections, placed beside the other, was occupied by the imperial banqueting table, set on a platform beneath a magnificent canopy. . . . The emperor and empress were surrounded by the kings, queens, princes, and princesses of their families.”31 Throughout the twenty-minute meal, “nobody uttered a word,” recalled Captain Coignet. “One was only allowed to speak when addressed by the sovereign master. Imposing it may be, but cheerful it ain’t.”32
Following the banquet, the newlyweds made an appearance on the palace balcony for an homage of the troops below. Heralds distributed gold and silver coins to the crowds in the gardens. A concert was held beneath the windows of the palace. This was followed by fireworks that extended the length of the Champs-Élysées. Throughout the day, music, games, acrobatics, and other entertainments were offered in the public squares, along with barrels of wine. Festivities continued until late in the night.
Napoleon was pleased with the wedding—except for one important exception. Thirteen of twenty-seven cardinals, including Pius VII’s secretary of state Cardinal Consalvi, boycotted the religious ceremony. Since Pius had not recognized the annulment of his marriage to Joséphine, the absence of nearly half the invited cardinals at Napoleon’s wedding raised questions about his future heir’s right of inheritance. Napoleon met their passive resistance harshly, stripping them of their red robes, offices, and estates. Made to wear the simple black robes of priests, the “black cardinals” were exiled to various French provinces until Pius secured their release in January 1813.
The couple spent April at Compiègne, with Napoleon remaining by Marie Louise’s side. The charm offensive was a success. “I assure you, dear papa, that people have done great injustice to the Emperor,” Marie Louise wrote her father. “The better one knows him, the better one appreciates and loves him.”33
Napoleon wooed his bride, twenty-two years his junior, with lavish gifts. LeRoy created items for Marie Louise’s elegant trousseau—linen and silk, hats, capes, fichus (triangular scarves), shoes, gold-leaf fans, embroidered shawls, ball gowns, day dresses, hunting outfits, and overcoats.
As a wedding gift for Marie Louise, Napoleon commissioned a twenty-eight-piece tea service from Biennais (shared today by the Louvre and the National Museum of Scotland). Percier designed many of the main pieces including the double salts, sugar bowl, and punch bowl. The tea caddy features a bas-relief copy of the ancient Roman fresco, the Aldobrandini Wedding (named for its owners, the Aldobrandini family, until it was acquired for the Vatican in 1818). The service brimmed with Napoleonic references—from Jupiter’s eagle on the sugar bowl to the emperor’s portrait on the knife handles. The figures of lovers Cupid and Psyche on the sugar bowl were meant to celebrate the marriage of Napoleon and Marie Louise.34
As part of her marriage contract, Marie Louise had to give up her jewelry collection. Now her husband more than compensated her for that loss, placing a large order with François-Regnault Nitot, who had succeeded his father Marie-Etienne as official jeweler to the emperor. As part of the Crown Jewels, Nitot created a spectacular diamond parure including a crown, diadem, necklace, comb, pair of three-drop earrings, bracelets, a belt, ten dress jewels, and eight rows of gold collets. Nitot set the diadem with the most beautiful of the French crown diamonds, including the Grand Mazarin bequeathed to Louis XIV by Cardinal Jules Mazarin. The light pink, nineteen-carat square-cut diamond was first worn by a relative of Marie Louise—Louis XIV’s wife Maria Theresa of Austria. After Maria Theresa’s death, Louis added the Grand Mazarin to his own chain of diamonds.35
Napoleon placed another order for Mare Louise’s private jewelry collection that fall. Nitot delivered two parures, one of emeralds and diamonds, the other of opals and diamonds, to the emperor in mid-January 1811.
Nitot set thirty-two emeralds in the necklace with the center gem weighing a whopping 13.75 metric carats. Ten alternating oval and lozenge-shaped emeralds surrounded by diamonds were separated by palmettes, each of which enclosed a small round emerald. A pear-shaped emerald surrounded by diamonds hung from each large emerald. Two beautiful pear-shaped emeralds were used for the earrings, embellished with brilliants and two smaller emeralds (the emeralds were replaced by turquoise in the diadem, today at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.).
In 1811, Napoleon also ordered 150 diamond ears of wheat for Marie-Louise’s dress and hair, with over eight thousand white brilliant diamonds. Marie-Louise appears to have approved of the motif, symbol of fertility and attribute of Ceres, Roman goddess of the harvest. In 1812, she received an aigrette of ears of wheat in emeralds and diamonds for her personal jewelry collection.36
Expensive jewelry in the form of earrings, bracelets, necklaces, and rings were Roman status symbols. Roman jewelers used amber, amethysts, sapphires, uncut diamonds, and emeralds. It was Pompey the Great who introduced pearls to Rome. Pompey celebrated his victory over Mithradates VI by parading thirty-three pearl crowns and his portrait in pearls in his triumphal procession.37 As Kenneth Lapatin notes, Pliny considered the general’s pearl infatuation outrageous and effeminate. Nor did he care for Caligula’s pearl slippers, Nero’s pearl scepters and couches, and women’s high-priced pearl earrings. Julius Caesar dedicated a pearl-encrusted breastplate in the temple he built for Venus Genetrix in the Forum Julium. The short-reigned Vitellius reportedly sold one of his mother’s pearl earrings to fund a military campaign.38
Shortly before her divorce from Napoleon, Joséphine received a delivery at her Tuileries apartment, a spectacular cabinet to house her legendary jewelry collectio
n. In his invoice for 55,000 francs, François-Honoré-Georges Jacob-Desmalter wrote: “All of the ornaments relate to the principal subject, the birth of the queen of the earth [Venus, goddess of love] to whom cupids and goddesses hurry to present their offerings.”39 With Marie Louise now occupying Joséphine’s bedchamber, Napoleon changed the locks for the cabinet’s thirty drawers and secret compartments. For extra storage room, he ordered two smaller cabinets for the sides.
A collaboration between Charles Percier, Antoine-Denis Chaudet, and Jacob-Desmalter, the Grand Écrin recalls the beautiful jewelry cabinet of Marie Antoinette, a gift from the city of Paris in 1787 (moved to Saint-Cloud during the Empire). Designed by Percier to evoke a Greek temple, the Grand Écrin’s locks were concealed by mother-of-pearl jewelry motifs—diadems, strands of pearls, engraved rings, and butterfly hairpins. The entablature was decorated with a frieze of bronze and mother-of-pearl tiaras. In Chaudet’s gilded central motif of Venus Anadyomene (Venus Rising from the Sea), the goddess is flanked by handmaidens and cupids playing with swans. Topping the cabinet are Venus’s doves, constant in love.
THREE
BREAKFAST WITH NAPOLEON
Two weeks after the imperial wedding, on April 15, the Austerlitz Column was unveiled. But out of respect for Marie Louise, Napoleon did not attend the dedication ceremony. Made with bronze from seized Austrian cannons, the column celebrated her father’s catastrophic defeat five years earlier.
The soaring column was inscribed “Monument élevé à la gloire de la Grande Armée”—“Monument erected to the glory of the Grande Armée.” Also known as the Column of the Grand Army and the Vendôme Column, the project took four years to finish at a cost of one million francs. It stood nearly twenty-five feet taller than its ancient Roman model, Trajan’s Column.
Just as Romans interpreted Trajan’s column as their emperor’s res gestae, writes Valérie Huet, so too would Parisians experience the Vendôme Column as a testament to the military accomplishments of Napoleon I.1 With the column, Napoleon equated himself and the Grande Armée to Trajan and his Roman legions.
Topping the statue was a figure of Napoleon in a Roman toga with an immense sword and a winged Victory on a globe in his hand. According to Caulaincourt, Napoleon was not pleased. “I don’t want any idols, not even statues outdoors,” he reportedly told him. “It is to my great discontent and without consulting me that Denon made mine for the column in the Place Vendôme.” Some of Napoleon’s advisers were jealous of Denon’s growing authority. “The Emperor commanded, but he was indifferent to the mode of execution, because he lacked the taste to judge by himself (. . .),” wrote Interior Minister Chaptal. “Denon wanted to sign the Emperor through all. Full of himself, of simple amateur, he placed himself in the rank of painters and architects.”2
Several weeks after the column’s debut, Napoleon’s mistress Marie Waleska gave birth to his son, Alexandre-Florian-Joseph, Comte Colonna Walewski. On the evening of June 10, some four thousand guests awaited the imperial couple’s arrival at the Hôtel de Ville, Paris’s City Hall. Nicolas Frochot, prefect of the Seine and de facto mayor of Paris, hired fellow Burgundian Pierre Prud’hon to transform the civic building into Mount Olympus. From a throne outside, Napoleon and Marie Louise enjoyed a mock sea battle on the Seine followed by fireworks and the debut of a choral work.3
As part of the extravagant décor, Prud’hon created an allegory for the imperial marriage, The Wedding Celebration of Hercules and Hebe. After the Greek hero ascended to Mount Olympus, he married Hera’s daughter Hebe, goddess of youth. “The French emperor often fashioned himself as a modern reincarnation of an ancient hero. Napoleon’s young bride . . . could have been seen as a latter-day Hebe,” writes Elizabeth Guffey.4
At the end of the evening, Marie Louise was presented with a spectacular Empire-style toilette set for her apartment at the Tuileries Palace. For the prestigious gift, Prud’hon called on a number of talented colleagues including imperial gold and silversmith Jean-Baptiste-Claude Odiot, bronze caster Pierre-Philippe Thomire, and sculptor Henri Victor Roguier. Filled with antique symbols and mythological references, the five hundred thousand-franc set was “remarkable even by the standards of the French court,” writes Guffey.5
Meanwhile Vivant Denon reported to Napoleon that sixty paintings were exhibited at the 1810 Salon, recording the “severity, simplicity and truth of history.” Among them was Louis-Philippe Crépin’s The Arrival of the Imperial Couple in Antwerp. To avoid hurting Marie Louise’s feelings, Joséphine was removed from Jacques-Louis David’s monumental Distribution of the Eagles.6
After returning from their honeymoon in the Low Countries, Napoleon kept Marie Louise out of the public eye. To fight homesickness, Marie Louise filled her days with activities. Since returning from her honeymoon, she kept busy reading, doing needlework, and taking music and drawing lessons. For her art teacher, Denon selected Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, who he called “. . . the man who draws the best with both pencils and whose talent is the most graceful.”7
Napoleon kept his young wife hidden from public view, possibly because she reminded Parisians of her unpopular relative Marie-Antoinette, or possibly to avoid negative comparisons between the shy teenager and her charming predecessor Joséphine. But the tactic backfired. Marie Louise did not receive a warm welcome by the French, who nicknamed her “the Austrian.”
Napoleon’s consort was also not well accepted at court, or by his favorite sister Pauline. Marie Louise’s cloistered court life was governed by formal etiquette and protocol. Jealous and doting, Napoleon made sure that men were kept safely out of range. In an effort to improve his wife’s popularity, Napoleon had her depicted by the day’s great artists.8
On August 12, 1810, Marshal of the Palace Duroc wrote from Saint-Cloud to Pierre-Antoine Daru, Napoleon’s Intendant-General: “It’s the intention of his majesty to have in Paris Mr. Canova, who, in regard to the arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture, and for all that matters in decorating, can be of great service to His Majesty’s service, whether for his palaces or for all the public establishments, No one has more taste than he has and no one can give better advice.”9
Two days later, Daru fired a letter off to Antonio Canova who was in Florence installing the Monument to Vittorio Alfieri. The sculptor had also been in Florence several months earlier (late April) to oversee the installation of Venus Italica in the Uffizi, his replacement for the Medici Venus, Napoleon’s “bride” for Apollo Belvedere.
“I am authorized by the Emperor, Sir, to invite you on his behalf to return to Paris to make the statue of her Majesty the Empress” wrote Daru.10 A week later, Daru penned another letter to Canova: “The particular case which he makes of your superior talents, and your extended knowledge in all the arts which depend on drawing, has led him to think that your opinions could contribute powerfully to the perfection of works of art which must perpetuate the splendor of his reign.” The letter went on to convey Napoleon’s desire to have the sculptor move to Paris.11
Declining the invitation was not an option. Since their last meeting in 1802, Napoleon had crowned himself Emperor of France and King of Italy, annexed Venice and Rome, and kidnapped the pope. On September 1, Canova wrote Daru from Florence, confirming that he would return to Paris. But he politely declined to move to France, making it clear that Marie Louise’s full-length portrait would be executed in his Rome studio:
“And here I implore Your Excellency to consider the invincible reasons that link me to Italy, and to Rome. It is true to say that this city, mother and ancient seat of the arts, is the only refuge for a sculptor, especially one who has fixed his residence there . . . for very many years. I have given many of these years, however, in service either to His Majesty or to the imperial family, in preference to other very advantageous and honorific commissions, for the dear ambition of ensuring the immortality of my name.”12
On Thursday, October 11, Canova and his stepbrother Giovanni Battista Sartori Canova arrived at the h
istoric Château de Fontainebleau. Though Canova had met Napoleon eight years earlier, this occasion assumed a heightened importance. His patron Pius VII was still under house arrest in Savona. Rome was in dire straits.
As instructed, Canova returned to Fontainebleau two days later. At mid-morning on Saturday, Duroc presented him to the imperial couple. He entered the elegantly furnished room to find the maître d’hôtel serving Marie Louise and Napoleon a morning meal of fricassee of chicken with green beans and rice (the dish was renamed Chicken Marengo after his victory in Italy).13 The head waiter was pouring a glass of the emperor’s favorite white burgundy, Chambertin, when Napoleon looked up.
“You have grown rather thinner, Monsieur Canova.”
Canova thought the emperor had grown older and paunchier.
Napoleon considered meals a waste of time. He usually rushed through breakfast and dinner, spending just ten or fifteen minutes with Marie Louise. But today was an exception. He lingered over his coffee.
“Paris is the capital of the world—you must remain here: we shall make much of you,” he told Canova.
“Sire, you may command me, but if it please your Majesty that my life should be devoted to your service, permit me, Sire to return to Rome, after having completed the object of my visit here.”
Napoleon smiled. “In Paris you will be in your element; for here are all the chef-d’oeuvres of art, the Farnese Hercules alone excepted; but we shall soon have that too.”
“May it please your Majesty to leave Italy, at least, something. These monuments of antiquity are inseparably connected with many others, which it would be impossible to remove, either from Rome or Naples.”
“Italy can indemnify herself by excavations. I shall order some to be commenced at Rome. Pray has the Pope been at much expense in excavations?” Napoleon asked.