Exhibition labels & didactics - National Gallery of Victoria

NAPOLEON AS EMPEROR:
THE CORONATION, 1804
On 18 May 1804 the French Senate proclaimed First Consul
Bonaparte to be Emperor Napoleon I. Not content with this secular
appointment, Napoleon also felt the need for divine approbation
through religious consecration. Seven months later, a lavish
coronation ceremony for himself and Josephine was held in
Notre Dame Cathedral on 2 December 1804, with Pope Pius VII
in attendance.
Napoleon thus set himself alongside the royalty of Europe and
went one better by becoming an Emperor, whose descendants
would rule France just as he had. In establishing this Empire, he
took on all the panoply of the ancien régime. The court was now
reintroduced, along with the establishment of the military honour
system (the marshals – an eminently royal and medieval title)
and the Légion d’honneur or Legion of Honour, thereby stealthily
reintroducing ideas of social order that had been the bane of the
Revolution. The etiquette for the new Imperial Court used the old
royal etiquette books, adapting them for Napoleon’s purposes.
Not shown in David’s famous painting of the coronation
(Musée du Louvre) – in fact, it was painted out – but present
in David’s cartoon in this room, was Napoleon notoriously
crowning himself. A myth grew up around this act, namely that it
was an extraordinary gesture of hubris, before a shocked pontiff.
The shock and hubris are, however, all additions to the story.
In fact, the complicated hybrid liturgy compiled for Napoleon’s
coronation on 2 December 1804 was produced by a committee
of French and papal negotiators. Each gesture and prayer had
been carefully debated and agreed upon beforehand.
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