The Caesar of Paris

by Susan Jaques

  Carved gemstones, intaglios, and cameos were the ultimate status symbol in Rome, valued more than silver and gold. By the first century, Rome’s most sought-after carvers were Greeks who created intricate designs with a variety of stones, from cornelian and onyx to amethyst and sapphire. Among the renowned engravers were Dioskourides, his sons Hyllos, Solon, and Aulos.24

  With multi-layered, multi-hued sardonyx, artists created depth by carving figures in the lighter layers and the background in the darker shades. Roman emperors and empresses had themselves depicted in double portraits of sardonyx.

  Like Napoleon and Joséphine, Trajan and Plotina married shortly before he became emperor. A carved cameo in white and dark purple sardonyx shows them side by side in profile, with Trajan crowned with a laurel wreath and his wife elegantly coiffed (circa 105–115 C.E., now in the British Museum). The realistic portrait of the middle-aged couple includes crow’s feet and sagging necks.25 Also like Napoleon and Joséphine, Trajan and Plotina did not have children. In 100, Trajan’s great-niece Sabina married Hadrian, the son of his cousin. On his deathbed, Trajan adopted Hadrian as his heir. Because the adoption letter was signed by Plotina, there is speculation that she may have manipulated the succession.

  About a century later, a deeply cut sardonyx portrait cameo of Septimius Severus and Julia Domna shows the couple in three-quarter frontal pose (circa 207–211, Kansas City, The Ferrell Collection). The emperor is depicted in the guise of his patron god Serapis—with a long beard divided in the middle and corkscrew hair on his forehead. He also wears a laurel wreath and a military cloak or paludamentum at his shoulder. Julia, who wielded great power as a widow, sports long wavy hair and a beaded necklace.26

  Augustan dynastic propaganda reached its height with cameos created in state workshops.27 Among surviving imperial cameos, the largest and finest are the Gemma Augustea and the Grand Camée de France. Decorated with members of the imperial family, the elaborate group scenes are tour de forces of gem cutting. Both cameos are thought to have been gifts from ambitious Empresses Livia and Agrippina the Elder to Augustus and Tiberius. Both women are notorious for doing whatever it took to promote their sons, Tiberius and Nero.

  The cameos feature two very different images of Augustus. The first seen on the Gemma Augustea is that of the father of his country, Pater Patriae, a title Augustus received in 2 B.C.E. Jupiter, who Virgil called “the father of gods and men,” represented the all-encompassing authority of father.28 Poets promoted the Jupiter/Augustus connection. “You reign, (Jupiter), with Augustus second in power!” wrote Horace.29 In the second image used in the Grand Camée de France and the Ara Pacis, Augustus wears a veil and toga, the garment of peace.

  Carved in low relief during the last decade of Augustus’s reign, the Gemma Augustea is white above dark bluish–brown sardonyx. The elaborate carving marks the victories of Livia’s sons Tiberius and Drusus and their service to Augustus, their stepfather. Augustus sits on a bisellium, the seat of honor, holding a scepter of Jupiter and augur’s staff while a veiled woman, a personification of the civilized world, crowns him with an oak wreath.30 As Martin Henig describes, the goddess Roma hints at Augustus’s quasi-divinity; the eagle perched by his feet suggests he is a sort of earthly Jupiter.31 Wearing the toga picta, the embroidered toga for triumphant generals, Tiberius, his adopted son and heir, disembarks a triumphal chariot. Germanicus, Tiberius’s adopted son and nephew, stands in front of Augustus in a military uniform. The lower tier depicts conquered barbarians and soldiers.

  Another imperial portrait group, the Grand Camée de France is the largest known cameo from antiquity (circa 23 C.E., 31 x 26.5 cm, Cabinet des Médailles, Bibliothèque Nationale de France). Against a background of dark layers of sardonyx, the artist carved some two dozen figures, many recognizable, in three tiers. The goal of the gem was to assert the dynastic continuity and legitimacy of the five Julio-Claudian emperors (Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero). The top section features the deified Augustus surrounded by other deceased family members including Germanicus, husband of Agrippina the Elder and father of Drusus Caesar, Nero Caesar, and Caligula, along with Drusus the Younger (son of Tiberius), and Drusus the Elder (brother of Tiberius).

  The veiled Augustus looks down upon his successor, the enthroned Tiberius. Tiberius is surrounded by his living family members, with his mother and Augustus’s wife Livia enthroned to his right and Agrippina the Younger and her brother Nero Caesar to his left. Holding sheaves and poppies, Livia is portrayed as the unifier of the Julian and Claudian houses. As Julia Fischer puts it, the cameo was an advertisement for domus Augusta, a phrase coined at end of Augustus’s reign in reference to his dynasty. Livia was now celebrated as the wife of emperor and the mother of his successors.32 In front of Tiberius are Germanicus, his designated heir, with his wife Agrippina the Elder. Behind are Nero and the figure of Providentia (Foresight); behind Livia and Tiberius are Claudius and his wife Agrippina the Younger.

  Wearing a laurel crown and the aegis of Jupiter as a hip mantle, Tiberius holds the lituus and scepter. Tiberius presides over a solemn ceremony, possibly the appointment of armed Nero. From the Augustan period on, notes Christopher Hallett, Roman emperors were depicted wearing Jupiter’s aegis like a chlamys or hip-mantle, holding the scepter and thunderbolt of Jupiter.33 Like the Gemma Augustea, Rome’s conquests are illustrated by barbarian Parthian and Germanic captives at the bottom.

  It’s thought that Agrippina the Elder gave her stepfather Tiberius the cameo after the death of his son and heir to persuade him to choose one of Germanicus’s three sons (Caligula, Nero Caesar, and Drusus Caesar) as his successor. The strategy did not go as planned. In 29 C.E., Tiberius had Agrippina arrested, along with the two elder sons, Nero Caesar and Drusus Caesar. Tried and exiled, Agrippina died in 33; Nero Caesar and Drusus Caesar died in 31 and 33, respectively. Caligula eventually succeeded Tiberius, but not thanks to Agrippina’s efforts.

  After the end of the Roman Empire, the Grand Camée was taken to Constantinople where it became part of the treasury of the Byzantine Empire. Gradually, it lost its original meaning and became an object of Christian worship. Enclosed in a holy mount, it came to be known as the Triumph of Joseph at the Court of the Pharaoh. The extraordinary gem was among the relics acquired by Saint Louis. By 1279, it was part of the treasury of the Sainte Chapelle in Paris. In 1791, France’s National Assembly ordered the chapel’s treasures sold. After Louis XVI intervened, the famed cameo was deposited at the Cabinet of Medals.

  Napoleon was familiar with the famous Grand Camée. On February 16, 1804, the Cabinet of Medals was robbed; the ancient cameo (along with the future Hope diamond and other objects) was taken to Amsterdam. According to Millin, the Cabinet conservator, the thief was trying to sell the cameo when the consul at Amsterdam recognized it and alerted authorities. The Grand Camée was returned to Paris in 1805, minus its original gold Byzantine setting. Millin hired David’s pupil Auguste Delafontaine and his son Pierre-Maximilien Delafontaine to design a new gilded bronze frame.

  The Delafontaines replaced the old mount with one in the fashionable neoclassical style. “This mount must have been expensive,” writes Jean-Baptiste Giard, “but it no doubt answered the need to enhance the brilliance of the stone whose representation particularly interested the strong man of the moment, Napoleon, and his close collaborators . . . the Great Camée again evoked the gloriousness of the day, and it was important that it be worthily presented, even sanctified in a new monstrance.”34

  For the rectangular frame, the Delafontaines combined the legendary story of Rome’s founding with the Apotheosis of Augustus, depicted in an esteemed ancient cameo in the Louvre. As Chantal Bouchon writes: “The choice of the Apotheosis of Augustus embellished by the mythical scene of the foundation of Rome, confirms at the highest symbolic level Napoleon’s desire to assert his direct descent from the reign of Augustus, which was regarded as the beginning of European civilization.”35

  The center
of the upper band features a Roman eagle grasping a thunderbolt in its claws, flanked by laurel wreaths inscribed with the names of Horace, Ovid, Virgil, and Maecenas. On the lower band below, the Wolf suckles the twin infants Romulus and Remus, flanked by laurel wreaths containing their names. On the right, a half pediment shows Fame bearing a bust of Augustus within a laurel wreath. Pilasters decorated with trophies support a frieze, horns of abundance, two crowns, and the Roman eagle; above the frieze, a pediment adorned with a bust of Rome in a crown worn by two Victories. The pedestal features seated griffins and golden ornaments.36

  Napoleon recognized the political value of gem engraving, patronized millennia ago by the rulers of ancient Greece and Rome. With their ancient provenance, carved gems became a popular art form for imperial dynastic propaganda. Keen to associate the ancient art form with his own regime, he instituted a biannual prize for medalists and gem engravers in 1803; the Prix de Rome began two years later.

  As a result of Napoleon’s 1796 Italian campaign, many ancient Greek and Roman cameos and intaglios had been seized and brought to France. As emperor, Napoleon claimed the national collection of engraved gems housed at the Cabinet des Medailles. In 1808, eighty-two cameos and intaglios were removed by imperial decree; the jeweler Nitot mounted them with pearls into a parure of tiara, necklace, bracelets, and belt. State property, these were returned after the divorce and used by Marie Louise.37

  With the birth of the Eaglet, members of the imperial family exchanged gifts featuring dynastic themes. Thanks to a wider color palette, artist Louis-Bertin Parant refined a technique for painting porcelain that simulated the sardonyx, agate, carnelian of antique cameos.38 Parant became renowned for the technique after creating the antique cameos for the Sèvres Table of the Grand Commanders. With his colleague Jean-Marie Degault, Parant specialized in these trompe l’oeil cameos. Napoleon ordered two iconographique grec services painted by Degault with figures from antiquity; one was delivered to his uncle Cardinal Fesch in 1811.

  In 1812, Napoleon gave his wife a Sèvres oval plate, Empress Marie Louise guiding the first steps of the King of Rome. Painted against a brown background to imitate sardonyx, Minerva and the infant march toward Napoleon represented by a bust. The insignia of the Legion of Honor is already pinned to the baby’s chest. Parant exhibited the faux-cameo plate at the Salon of 1812, along with his Table of the Grand Commanders. “The most important piece, in terms of composition, is a bas-relief representing the Empress guiding the steps of the King of Rome,” observed art writer Charles Paul Landon. “This work is full of grace, finesse, correction, and a complete illusion.”39

  Napoleon ordered a number of Sèvres porcelain services to mark his son’s birth. As a New Year’s present, Napoleon gave his sister-in-law Queen Julie of Spain The great legislators of antiquity. The cameo-like tray featured Minerva instructing the King of Rome. As Tamara Préaud writes, “Augustus shows a remarkable similarity to Napoleon, which cannot have been a coincidence.”40 The covered bowl, for example, sported a pair of Parant’s painted cameo-style medallions—Minerva bringing the newborn king of Rome by boat to the Roman river god Tiber, and Minerva handing over the king of Rome in the shape of Hercules to his father, Napoleon I.

  Shortly after his marriage to Marie Louise, Napoleon decided to build a “Palace for the King of Rome.” “Napoleon convinced himself of the need to build an entirely new palace in Paris which would free him from the impression of being a guest in the old residences designed for other monarchs . . .” writes Sylvain Cordier.41

  Before the Eaglet was even born, work began on his gilded nest. Napoleon purchased land on the hill of Chaillot in the western part of Paris near the Bois de Boulogne, on the right bank of the Seine opposite the Champ-de-Mars. As the symbol of Napoleon’s dynasty, the palace was to be Europe’s largest, outdoing Versailles. Napoleon carefully examined alternative plans drawn up by Charles Percier and Pierre Fontaine. The range of ideas writes Jean-Philippe Garric, illustrates the complexity of representing Napoleon’s new dynasty.42

  By this point, Napoleon had stayed in a number of famous palaces throughout Europe, including Andrea Doria’s Villa del Principe in Genoa, Frederick the Great’s Sanssouci in Potsdam, the Habsburg’s Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, and Madrid’s Royal Palace. These grand residences, highly personal expressions of their celebrated owners, provided a point of comparison for the emperor as he considered his own new palace.

  “Napoleon himself almost always designated the residences whose plans seemed fitting, and which he wanted to compare with the one he intended to build,” recalled Percier and Fontaine in their final book, Résidences de souverains.43 According to Garric, “Critical discussion of the principal palaces of modern Europe was one way for the emperor to imagine his own place in the gallery of great men; the latter were represented by their residences, and it was his intention, with his architect’s help, to fashion an analogous monumental self-portrait.”44

  Pierre Fontaine describes one planning meeting on the future palace with members of Napoleon’s court. With the exception of Duroc, the courtiers simply repeated whatever the emperor said. Finally Napoleon turned to Marie Louise, five months pregnant, for her opinion.

  “I do not know anything,” she responded.

  “Do not be afraid,” replied the Emperor. “Speak, they know even less than you and I have not committed to do or to believe anything they say. Your opinion is necessary to me; it concerns the palace where our son will live.”

  According to Fontaine, “the Empress examined the plans and made some judicious observations, which everyone hastened to applaud . . .”45

  One of Percier and Fontaine’s concepts was an Italianate-style palace rising directly from a quay on the Seine. Another imagined a series of stepped terraces leading up from the river to a rectangular five-floor hilltop palace.46 The main façade alone, not counting the wings, was to span over 325 feet. A vast park and gardens would encompass the Bois de Boulogne. According to Fontaine, the palace was to be “the most extensive and extraordinary creation of our century.”47

  As Sylvain Cordier explains, the hilltop Palace of the King of Rome was intended to dominate Paris—much like the legendary palaces of the Roman emperors had dominated Rome. “The elevated position recalled in principal the legendary memory of the residences of the Caesars on the Palatine Hill in Rome, dominating the Forum,” writes Cordier.48 Symbolically, the palace would face the Champ des Mars and Napoleon’s alma mater, the École Militaire.

  In January 1811, a budget of twenty million francs was approved for the palace, and Percier and Fontaine started work on a series of neo-baroque Italianate-style ramps and terraces. Their original plan called for three terrace levels, a courtyard, and a five-hundred-meter-long colonnade. The main body of the palace formed a parallelogram, with a large central salon. As a model for the imperial apartments, Percier and Fontaine looked to Versailles, designing parallel apartments for the emperor and empress on the first, or “noble,” floor. Two small courtyards with fountains flanked the salon. There were plans for a chapel, theater, and galleries, and room for four hundred horses and eighty carriages.

  In March 1812, Napoleon extended the project to include an administrative complex below the Chaillot hill opposite the palace on the left bank of the Seine. The complex was to encompass institutional palaces for the Archives Impériales, the Arts, the University, and the Grand Master.49

  Fontaine continued to upstage his talented partner, receiving the Legion of Honor award in 1811. A few years before, painter Théophile Vauchelet described the retiring Percier: “Percier resided at the Louvre; he lived like a philosopher, in extreme simplicity; the walls of his cabinet were of neutral gray plaster, completely covered with precious old master drawings and painted sketches by his friends, who were then the likes of David, Gérard, Girodet, etc. Percier always wore a long gray frock coat, buttoned all the way up; his health was delicate and he almost never went out; it was Fontaine who took care of external busi
ness. . . . He was a good man and had exquisite manners but was very sparing with his time; he dreaded the distraction of visitors.”50

  In addition to Percier and Fontaine’s grandiose Paris palace for his son, Napoleon added the Château de Meudon to the Eaglet’s real estate portfolio. Located between Paris and Versailles, the château was one of the last projects of Jules Hardouin-Mansart, designer of Versailles. Louis XIV commissioned Meudon for his eldest son and namesake. But the Grand Dauphin didn’t get much time to enjoy his new castle. Louis died of smallpox at Meudon shortly after its completion. Before the French Revolution, artist Hubert Robert relandscaped the gardens for Louis XVI.

  In 1807, Napoleon added the château to his list of imperial palaces, ordering renovations by architect Jean-Baptiste Lepère. Among the changes was a wing to replace one destroyed by fire, along with new Empire-style furnishings. Further refurbishments were undertaken at Meudon between 1810 and 1811, part of Napoleon’s plan to turn the château into the residence of the Children of France. This “Institute of Meudon” would educate the children of his siblings, rulers of the satellite kingdoms, along with the sons of the “first families” of those states. The plan was to have youngsters live in the princely apartments organized around the king of Rome’s state apartment.51

  Napoleon visited Meudon in April 1811. Two months later, the residence was offered to his mother, Madame Mère. The following spring, the toddler king of Rome moved in with his devoted governess who he affectionately called “Maman Quiou,” two under-governesses, and his own medical team consisting of a physician, surgeon, and vaccinator.52