The Caesar of Paris

by Susan Jaques

  Until the emperor banished Canova’s Napoleon as Mars the peacemaker to the storeroom, the plan had been to install an exact replica in the middle of the Roman Forum between the arches of Titus and Septimius Severus.57 To celebrate the birth of Napoleon’s son, the newly cleared ancient sites of the Forum, the Colosseum, and the area around the Capitol were illuminated.

  In the summer of 1811, while Nero’s Golden House was being excavated in Rome, architect and engineer Scipione Perosini submitted a plan for an even larger palace for Napoleon, one of several ambitious proposals. Occupying prime real estate, the imperial compound called for demolition of the city’s ancient monuments. In the end, Napoleon decided to enlarge and redecorate the Quirinal palace where Pius had recently been kidnapped.58

  Napoleon had assured Canova that the art confiscations in Italy were over. Despite this, Denon arrived in August 1811, lured by the suppression of monasteries the previous fall. After closing down convents and monasteries, Napoleon demanded a loyalty oath that required signers to swear hatred to all monarchs other than the emperor. As Susan Nicassio explains, this meant clerics had to swear hatred to the pope. Those refusing to sign were deported or imprisoned. By decree of France’s Council of State in May 1812, anyone who did not sign the oath of loyalty was declared a felon and arrested, their possessions confiscated.59

  Meanwhile, Canova could do nothing to stop Denon’s latest looting. Assisted by Benjamin Zix, Denon spent five months scouring the monasteries of Pisa, Siena, Genoa, Perugia, and Florence, all departments of France. Specifically, Denon was looking to fill a gap at his encyclopedic Musée Napoléon—the so-called “primitives” of Tuscany. This little-known, underappreciated school of the tweflth through the fifteenth centuries is considered the precursor to high Renaissance art. The paintings were created with egg tempera—pigment mixed with beaten egg and water—on a smooth white ground of gesso—whiting, glue, and water applied in thin coats to a wooden panel.

  Among the masterworks Denon negotiated for was Cimabue’s enormous altarpiece, Madonna with Angels, from Pisa’s Church of San Francesco, along with works by Giotto, Pisano, Fra’ Filippo Lippi, Lorenzo di Credi, Domenico Ghirlandaio, and Perugino, Raphael’s teacher. From Venice’s new Accademia, Denon plucked Fra Angelico’s Coronation of the Virgin. Originally from the Church of San Domenico a Fiesole, the six-part predella included scenes from the legend of St. Dominic, grouped around a painting of the dead Christ with the Virgin and Saint John.

  The Coronation inspired Renaissance art critic Giorgio Vasari to write: “Above all the things that he did, fra Giovanni surpassed himself and demonstrated his greatest excellence . . . indeed it seems that those blessed souls could not appear otherwise in heaven, or rather, would appear so if they had bodies, because all the male and female saints there are not only full of life with gentle and charming expressions, but all the coloring of the works seems as though by a saint or an angel . . . I never see this work without something new appearing to me, nor do I ever have my fill of it.”60

  PART EIGHT

  THE FALL

  “You who know history so well, are you not struck by the similarities of my government with that of Diocletian—that tight-knit web of government that I am spreading over such distances, those all-seeing eyes of the Emperor, that civil authority which I have been obliged to keep all-powerful in the midst of an entirely military empire?”

  —Napoleon Bonaparte to aide-de-camp Narbonne, 1812

  ONE

  THE GOLDEN PRISON

  By mid-1812, Napoleon was at the height of his power, ruling over Europe’s largest empire since ancient Rome. He was preparing to invade Russia when he learned that Pius’s declining health was alarming supporters, including his father-in-law, the Austrian emperor.

  Much to Napoleon’s consternation, the pope’s two and a half years of captivity in Savona had not produced any political concessions. Throughout his confinement, Pius resisted pressure from several delegations to sign a new concordat and affirm bishops nominated by Napoleon—a move that threatened the Church with schism.

  Pius further enraged Napoleon by refusing to acknowledge the dissolution of his marriage to Joséphine (Pius had performed their religious union before the coronation in December 1804). This position threw the legitimacy of Napoleon’s newborn son and heir into question. In early June 1812, Napoleon decided to move “the obstinate old man” to France where he would personally deal with him when he returned from Russia.

  To minimize the risk of a public relations disaster, Napoleon wrote his brother-in-law, Prince Camillo Borghese, at Turin with meticulously detailed instructions to ensure that the pope’s transfer remain a secret. “Precautions will be taken to see that [Pius VII] passes through Turin at night . . . that he passes through Chambery and Lyon at night. . . . The Pope must not travel in his Pontifical robes . . . (but) in such a way that nowhere . . . can he be recognized.”1

  At midnight, the seventy-year-old pontiff was hustled out a side door into a carriage. Per Napoleon’s order, his white vestments and pectoral cross were replaced by a priest’s black cassock. The pope’s white satin shoes were smeared with ink, the gold embroidered crosses ripped off.

  By the time Pius reached the Alps, his bowels were blocked and he could not urinate. In agony, delirious with fever, he was helped into the Benedictine hospice at Mount Cenis, where an abbot administered the Last Sacraments.2 Captain Lagorse, who Pius had chosen to travel with him, sent for a surgeon.

  When Dr. Balthazar Claraz arrived at the hospice, Lagorse told him, “You are going to see a sick man, I do not tell you who he is, you will know him; but if you come to publish it, tremble . . . it’s all about your freedom, and maybe your life.”

  In his account two years later, the doctor would write of the pope: “. . . he was as pale as a dying man, he had a fever and suffered continual pains without being able to sleep; his urine, which flowed only in drops, was red, showing great inflammation . . .”3

  According to the surgeon, he urged rest for the ill pontiff, but Lagorse insisted on setting off Monday night, June 15. He ordered Claraz to attend to the pope during the journey. The monks provided cushions, sheets, a blanket, and a quilt. To ease the pain, Claraz gave the pontiff drugs and had him lie on a makeshift cot in the coach, which he called a “bed of misery and pain.”4

  The passage through Lyon was especially painful, with its unequal pavement and the speed of the horses, recalled Claraz. “I was obliged to hold with one hand, the head of the SP [Pius VII] to avoid the counter-blows of the car, and I put the other on the stomach. When we had crossed Lyon, and when the horses stopped, SP [Pius] asked me if this path was finished, I answered him affirmatively, and then he pronounced these remarkable words which will remain engraved, forever, in my memory: ‘May God forgive him [Napoleon]. I already have.’”5

  After a grueling four and a half days, Pius arrived at Fontainebleau at noon on Friday June 19. The château’s imposing gates were now adorned with Napoleon’s monogram N topped with an imperial crown and surrounded by laurel leaves. According to Claraz, the gatekeeper was not expecting the pope and would not allow the coaches to enter. Pius spent the first night in the Palace of the Senate, before being transferred to the château.6

  Though Pius was exhausted, memories came flooding back as he was carried through the château into his apartment. It was the same suite he had stayed in eight years earlier when he had traveled to France to officiate at Napoleon’s coronation. In honor of his stay, the apartment of the former Queen Mother (the widowed Anne of Austria) had been redecorated in a record nineteen days.

  This time, Pius was not an honored guest, but a prisoner. As Christophe Beyeler writes, “Rome, the ‘Eternal City,’ became the second capital of the French Empire, while Pius VII was relegated to Fontainebleau, the ‘golden prison.’”7 For the first two weeks after his arrival, Pius was too sick to speak or move.

  As the favorite palace of François I and his Valois successors followed by
the Bourbon kings, Fontainebleau’s guestbook included such notables as Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and Sweden’s Queen Christina. During the queen’s stay, she ordered her master of the horse murdered in the Stags Gallery.8 Through the centuries, Italian, Flemish, and French artists had decorated the sumptuous château.

  During the Revolution, Fontainebleau’s furnishings were sold off in the Fountain Courtyard. The splendid tapestries, chandeliers, and mirrors were all gone. Despite the ransacking, the French court’s décor survived, leading Napoleon to describe it as having “the shape and color of time.” On June 29, 1804, Napoleon visited the château with Pierre Fontaine. He instructed the architect to transform the storied palace into his fall country residence. Money was no object. In one decade, Napoleon spent twelve million francs on construction and furniture for the palace, which he called “the true home of kings.”9

  To create a stately entrance and facilitate the review of his troops, Napoleon’s architects razed the historic western wing and opened up the courtyard. The magnificent upper chapel of Saint-Saturnin, built by Henri II and Henri IV, was repurposed as a library. The François I Gallery became the Emperor’s Gallery, adorned with many of the military portrait busts from Tuileries Palace’s Gallery of Consuls.10

  Percier and Fontaine turned the Bourbon bedchamber into Napoleon’s Throne Room, filled with military motifs including laurel and oak wreaths, eagles clutching thunderbolts, the emperor’s monogram, and lion’s maws and paws. Flanked by two imperial standards, his throne was installed in 1808 in the alcove formerly housing the king’s bed. Produced by Jacob-Desmalter after a design by Percier and Fontaine, the dark blue velvet throne with gold bees sat on a raised dais beneath a soaring canopy.

  Pierre-Philippe Thomire carried the military theme into his candelabra for the Throne Room’s fireplace and console tables. Ancient helmets and victory wreaths were joined at the base by swords and a shield adorned with figures of Temperance, Prudence, and Fortitude. The Savonnerie carpet, woven after a design by the architect Sainte-Ange, sported the inscription SPQR, acronym for Senatus Populusque Romanus, or The Senate and People of Rome. The Roman Senate adopted the official slogan at the start of the Republic. The carpet’s panoply of Roman symbols include lictors’ fasces, a sword with an eagle hilt, a crested helmet, an ancient breastplate adorned with an eagle, and a standard topped by a she-wolf.

  Fontainebleau’s game-rich forests had long attracted France’s royals. In the tweflth and thirteenth centuries, France’s Capetian kings traveled to Fontainebleau to hunt. François I hosted hunting parties here, and the Bourbons continued the tradition, decorating some of the rooms with hunting themes.11 Napoleon revived the tradition of fall hunting trips. He would spend some fifty days hunting here during three imperial court visits.

  In the fall 1807, the château hosted one thousand courtiers, guests, and foreign dignitaries; with another four thousand in the town itself. Theater companies from Paris entertained guests. Napoleon’s sisters Caroline and Pauline organized dances in the ballroom featuring an extraordinary coffered octagonal ceiling and Renaissance frescoes.12 At the close of the second imperial court stay in 1808, Napoleon informed Joséphine of his decision to divorce.

  The last imperial court visit had taken place in the fall of 1810. With the octagonal Pond Pavilion restored, newlyweds Napoleon and Marie Louise floated across the Carp Pond in a decorated gondola, like Louis XIV and his courtiers.13 In November, Napoleon’s nephew Prince Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, son of King Louis and Queen Hortense of Holland, was baptized in the château’s Trinity Chapel by Cardinal Fesch. In 1850, the prince became president of France’s Second Republic, then Emperor Napoleon III two years later.

  Pius did not enjoy the spectacular château that his adviser Cardinal Bartolomeo Pacca dubbed “another state prison.” The former Benedictine monk lived simply, writes Christophe Beyeler, confining himself to his apartments where he found strength in prayer and study.14

  To add insult to injury, Napoleon selected the Palazzo del Quirinale, the papal residence where Pius had been kidnapped, as his imperial palace in Rome. The Eternal City’s second largest palace after the Vatican, the Quirinale had its start in the 1580s during the pontificate of Gregory XIII. Over two centuries of popes had commissioned the most celebrated architects and artists of their day to design and decorate the palace.

  Napoleon did not consider the Quirinale sufficiently grand. According to the emperor’s architect, “it lacks everything: the apartments are very small and it is merely a skeleton.” At the start of 1811, Napoleon ordered an extensive redo of the palace, which was renamed Monte Cavallo. In February, Raffaele Stern, Pius VII’s architect since 1805, was named “Architect to the Imperial Palace.” He joined Antonio Canova, Martial Daru, and Denon on a special planning commission.

  Stern submitted three plans for the renovation. The first focused on making the palace immediately habitable. The second included demolition of the semi-cylindrical stronghold in the façade, the Dataria, Panetteria, and the ex-monastery of San Felice in order to enlarge the piazza with its famed Dioscuri statues. The third proposal involved moving the main palace entrance to the Strada Pia and razing buildings on the other side of the road to create a large garden.15

  Given Napoleon’s planned trip to Rome in 1812, the first option was chosen with the focus on reorganizing and redecorating the palace interiors. Monte Cavallo turned out to be one of the Empire’s most costly projects, with a budget of over half a million francs. In addition to refurbishing the gilding, stucco, and woodwork, many of the palace’s physical spaces were reconfigured. A throne room, a hall of the marshals, and antechambers were created. Apartments for the emperor and empress were configured from a papal audience hall and gallery. The corner papal summer apartment (with a wood balcony offering panoramic views of Rome) was turned into Napoleon’s dining room with a new mythological-themed frieze and ceiling decoration. Tapestries, silver, furniture, and china were ordered from Paris.

  To create ceiling paintings and friezes for the palace’s new iconographic program, Stern quickly assembled a dozens of Rome-based neoclassical artists. They included painters Felice Giani, Francesco Hayez, Palagio Palagi, and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. Among the sculptors were Bertel Thorvaldsen, Carlo Finelli, Giuseppe Pacetti, Carlo Albacini, and Francesco Massimiliano. The artistic program was designed to glorify the Empire by explicitly comparing Napoleon to his ancient predecessors.

  History painter Vincenzo Camuccini, named head of the Accademia di San Luca in 1805, applied his formal academic style to two paintings for the emperor’s apartment. Both works related to state patronage of the arts throughout history—Charlemagne Summoning Italian and German Scholars to Found the University of Paris and Ptolemy III Philadelphus Among Scholars Brought to the Library of Alexander. (Camuccini would paint Pius’s portrait in 1814 after Raphael’s famous Pope Julius II.)16

  With its papal throne, the Carlo Marotta Hall had been used by the popes for audiences and consistory meetings. Stern divided the large space to create Napoleon’s bedroom and bath. Carlo Albacini produced the bedroom’s porphyry fireplace. Next door in the bathroom, Pelagio Palagi alluded to Napoleon’s accession with images of mythological investiture and weaponry, including five canvases inspired by the Iliad and the Aeneid.

  In 1806, the year Ingres arrived in Rome, his portrait Napoleon on the Imperial Throne was an abject failure in Paris. Now he was hired to execute the ceiling painting for Napoleon’s bedroom, along with two works for Marie Louise’s second salon. Knowing Napoleon’s passion for the poem Ossian, Baron Martial Daru, Intendant of the Crown Assets, suggested the subject for the oval ceiling painting. In a letter to Napoleon in 1797, Jean-Pierre-Louis de Fontanes, future Grand Master of the Imperial University, wrote: “It is said that you always have Ossian tucked away in your pocket, even in battle, like some sort of bard of valour.”17

  Billed as a translation of an epic cycle of Scottish poems from the early dark ages,
Ossian turned out to be written in the eighteenth century by Scot James Macpherson from fragments of ancient sagas. Like Homer’s Odyssey, the blind bard Ossian sings about the life of the Scottish warrior Fingal, with subjects taken from ancient Roman history. Ingres would buy back Ossian’s Dream from an art dealer in 1835 when he returned to Rome as director of the French Academy. Back in France, Ingres restored the canvas and continued adding touch-ups until his death (today in the Musée Ingres, Montauban).18

  In the Emperor’s Great Study, created by joining two symmetrical rooms, the décor united Napoleon and Julius Caesar. Adorning the ceiling were groups of Winged Victories in white and gold faux mosaic style, and six colorful medallions by Felice Giani of the protecting gods of the Roman Empire against a Wedgwood blue background. The center of the ceiling sported Palagi’s large Julius Caesar Dictating Commentaries, based on an episode from Plutarch’s biography of Caesar. Palagi subbed Napoleon’s face for that of Caesar.19 Napoleon’s First Study celebrated victory and war. Giani filled his ceiling battle scene with references to classical art. A frieze by Giuseppe Pacetti and plasterwork expert Pietro Trefogli depicted pairs of Victories holding helmets over medallion portraits of the twelve Caesars, Rome’s emperors until Diocletian.20

  The Room of Peace glorified peace as a necessary condition for the arts. Giani created a sacrificial scene for the ceiling, with two altars dedicated to Peace and Janus. Giani also painted the inside panels of the coffers with four tablets depicting personifications of the arts. Canova’s student Alessandro D’Este continued the theme with a stuccoed frieze of twenty-six dancing winged figures of Fame alternating with twenty-two portrait medallions of Italian and French artists, architects, and musicians. Among the notables are Leonardo, Raphael, Titian, Palladio, and Michelangelo.21