Imperial husband and wife - two miniatures by Jean-Baptiste Isabey, 1810

Each miniature is 9.75 by 6.5 inches.

These portrait miniatures on ivory were intended as pendants and most likely commemorate the occasion of the marriage of Napoléon and his new empress, Marie-Louise of Austria. It is said they are dressed in their wedding clothes, but as there are several portrayals of them which are believed to represent their attire as worn that day - all of them differing slightly - it is difficult to be certain. In his portrait, the Emperor of the French is in court dress and wears the collier of the Légion d'Honneur about his shoulders, with the Grand Cross of the Order of the Iron Crown pinned to the left side of his chest. In his sword hilt is mounted the "Regent", the most famous diamond of the French crown jewels. The Empress is also wearing court dress and is resplendent in a ruby and diamond parure, the work of Nitot; from the necklace is suspended a miniature of the Emperor, also by the hand of Isabey.

*

The Entry of Napoléon and Marie-Louise into the Tuileries Gardens on the Day of their Wedding, by Étienne-Barthélémy Garnier, 1810.

In Paris on 2 April 1810 Napoléon married the Archduchess Marie-Louise, eldest daughter of his political foe, the Austrian Emperor Franz I; Franz had agreed to the marriage as a political peace offering, and a marriage by proxy had been performed in Vienna two weeks previously. The eighteen-year old Marie-Louise met her new husband for the first time at Compiègne on 27 March; the marriage was apparently consummated that very night and the couple left for Paris the next day. On Sunday, 1 April 1810, there was a civil wedding held in the Galerie d'Apollon of the Château de Saint-Cloud, and the following day - riding in the coronation coach, accompanied by the cavalry of the Garde Impériale and the Marshals of France - they arrived at the Tuileries Palace and processed through the Grande Galerie of the Louvre to the Salon Carré - which had been transformed into a chapel by the Emperor's architects Percier and Fontaine - where the final, religious ceremony was held.

The bridal procession through the Grande Galerie.

The religious marriage ceremony in the Salon Carré of the Louvre, by Marie-Georges-Louis Rouget, 1811.

*

 Napoléon présentant le roi de Rome nouveau-né à l'impératrice Marie-Louise dans sa chambre à coucher, aux Tuileries, a watercolor by the same Isabey, 1811.

It had been merely for dynastic concerns that Napoléon had told the Empress Joséphine at the end of 1809 that he must divorce her. He still loved her - and would always love her - but, now forty-six years old, she was unable to give him an heir. They were divorced in January of the next year and, only four months later, there was a new Empress of the French. A year later, on 20 March 1811, Marie-Louise gave birth to a son, the Emperor's all-important heir, and Napoléon-François-Charles-Joseph Bonaparte, roi de Rome, was the delight of his father. But three years later the Empire had fallen and Napoléon would never see his wife - the two had had an amicable realtionship - or son again, and the boy would be brought up at the Austrian court. After the abdication of his father in 1815, many of the latter's adherents referred to the boy as Napoléon II, and he would chafe at the restrictions increasingly placed on him in Austria; Chancellor Metternich was understandably worried about another Bonaparte rising to any degree of influence or power. Eventually given the title Herzog von Reichstadt, the boy also grew distant from his mother, who had married for a second time and had three more children. Described as intelligent, serious, and focused he died of tuberculosis at the age of only twenty-one.

Napoléon Ier présente le roi de Rome aux dignitaires de l'Empire, 20 mars 1811, by Marie-Georges-Louis Rouget, 1811.

L'Impératrice Marie-Louise veillant sur le sommeil du roi de Rome, by Joseph Franque, 1811.

Grand - Madame Grand/Catherine de Talleyrand-Périgord, Princesse de Bénévent by Vigée Le Brun and Gérard

Portrait by Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, 1783.

Very loosely adapted from the Metropolitan Museum's website - both paintings are in their collection - and other sources:

Noël-Catherine Verlée (or Worlée; 1761, Tranquebar, Tamil Nadu  – December 10, 1834, Paris), was the daughter of a minor French official posted to India. At the age of barely sixteen Catherine married a civil servant of Swiss descent working in Calcutta, George Francis Grand. The couple separated soon after, due to her brief but scandalous affair with Sir Philip Francis, a British politician. Subsequently, Madame Grand removed to London.

In about 1782 she moved to Paris where, being a beautiful blond, ill-educated but musical and clever, she became a very fashionable courtesan; the portrait that Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun painted of her in 1783 when she was only twenty-two attests to her lively personality and stunning looks at the time. She returned to Britain just before the French Revolution, but by 1794, with the Revolution waning, Madame Grand had returned to France.

Madame Grand now entered into a highly visible affair with Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, later prince de Bénévent, the brilliant - and infamously wily - statesman and former bishop of Autun, who had become a principal figure in the emerging government of the Directory. When she was arrested on suspicion of espionage in March 1798, Talleyrand secured her freedom. That same year, having been estranged from her husband for more than ten years, Madame Grand obtained a divorce in absentia.

Portrait by François Pascal Simon, baron Gérard, circa 1804-5.

Elaborate negotiations with Napoléon and the Vatican were required before the former bishop was allowed to marry, at Neuilly, on September 10, 1802; despite the First Consul's strong reservations, Napoléon and Joséphine signed their marriage contract. Upon their first official reception at the Tuileries, Napoléon is alleged to have remarked, "I hope that the good conduct of citoyenne Talleyrand will cause the fickleness of madame Grand to be forgotten." (The alternate - and more likely - version of the marriage negotiations is that Talleyrand was actually quite reluctant to regularize their union, and had to be coerced by Napoléon for the sake of propriety and his political career.)

With her less than respectable personal history, Napoléon ensured that Madame de Talleyrand was rarely at court; his Empress' own scandalous past was problem enough. At any rate, the couple quickly drifted apart, living separately; Talleyrand had already taken an official mistress, Madame Dubois, when he married, and was soon preoccupied with other women. Eventually, he arranged that his wife should go and live - luxuriously - in London. She returned to Paris in 1817, during the Restoration, and lived there quietly until her death at the age of seventy-three.

Les Yeux d'un ange roux - a portrait of M. Duval by Firmin Massot, circa 1820s

A small - approximately nine and a half by eleven and a half inches - oil painting on wood. I've been able to find nothing on the charming subject of this portrait except that it appears he was, like the artist, of Swiss nationality. The small panel's very noticeable craquelure only serves, I think, to emphasize the young man's quite dewy beauty.

***

Firmin Massot (5 May 1766, Geneva – 16 May 1849, Geneva), Swiss portrait painter. The son of a master watchmaker, he began his studies at the age of twelve, later attending classes at the Société des Arts de Genève where he studied with Jean-Étienne Liotard, among others. He traveled in Italy from 1787 to 1788 and the following year exhibited for the first time at Geneva's Salon; at the next Salon, he won the Grand Prize. He married in 1795 and he and his wife would have three children. In 1799, he was named director of the Écoles de dessin de la ville de Genève and, one year later, became a member of the Société des Arts. From 1807 to 1813, he traveled throughout France, making contacts with fellow artists, François Gérard and Jean-Baptiste Isabey among them. And from 1828 to 1829, he toured England and Scotland, receiving many commissions along the way. Until 1820, many of his portraits were done in collaboration with the landscape painter Wolfgang-Adam Töpffer and the animal painter Jacques-Laurent Agasse. Massot would paint the figures while his associates would fill in the backgrounds with various items and symbols particular to the sitter. Perhaps because of this teamwork, very few of his paintings are signed and attribution has proved difficult. Approximately 250 works by his hand have been authenticated. He was commissioned by many illustrious clients, including Madame Recamier, the Empress Joséphine and her daughter, Queen Hortense. After a long and successful career, he died in the place of his birth at the age of eighty-three.

His elder sister, Jeanne-Pernette Schenker-Massot was also an artist, a successful miniaturist.

Par baron Gérard, en pied - royal and imperial ladies, Bonaparte and Bourbon

Hortense, wife of Louis Bonaparte and Queen of Holland, daughter of the Empress Joséphine, with her son Napoléon Louis, 1807.

Elisa Baciocchi Levoy née Bonaparte, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, Princess of Lucca and Piombino, and her daughter Elisa, 1811.

The Empress Marie-Louise and the King of Rome, 1813.

Caroline Murat née Bonaparte, Queen of Naples, with her children, circa 1809-10.

Marie-Lætitia Buonaparte née Ramolino, "Madame Mère", mother of Napoléon I, two variations of the same portrait, circa 1802-4.

A third variation.

Marie-Julie, wife of Joseph Bonaparte and Queen of Spain, with her two daughters, Zénaïde and Charlotte, circa 1808-9.

Madame Bonaparte, later the Empress Joséphine, at Malmaison, 1801.

Queen Hortense with her son Napoléon Louis, 1807.

***

The duchesse de Berry and her children, Louise-Marie-Thérèse d’Artois and Henri d'Artois, duc de Bordeaux, comte de Chambord, 1822.

The duchesse d'Orléans, later Queen Marie-Amélie, with her son Ferdinand, duc de Chartres, 1819.

Copy after Gérard by Louis Joseph Noyal.

Viewing large - David and Boilly (and Joséphine)

"Le Sacre de Napoléon", 1807. The painting contains well over one hundred figures, each of them an actual portrait.

The painting was put on display in the Louvre three separate times between 1808 and 1810, the public's interest was so great.

Officially titled "The Consecration of the Emperor Napoléon I and Coronation of the Empress Joséphine in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris on 2 December 1804", but commonly known as the "Coronation of Napoleon", Jacques-Louis David's monumental canvas - approximately twenty by thirty-two feet - was finally completed in November of 1807, nearly three years after the solemn event itself. It was quickly sent to be put on display in the Louvre, where the public came in droves to view it. Louis-Léopold Boilly, the great chronicler of Parisian life at the turn of the nineteenth century, commemorated the contemporary enthusiasm for the great commemorative work.

"The Public Viewing David's 'Coronation' at the Louvre", 1810. By comparison, Boilly's painting is a mere 24 by 32 inches.

One could obtain a guide identifying the important personages in David's painting. Some of the figures above are consulting their guides.

The artist scattered portraits of real figures among the crowd, including his own; Boilly is the grey-haired fellow in the group at far right.

David's masterpiece - still drawing crowds - as it hangs in the Louvre.

***

Though this painting is commonly understood to represent and is usually referred to as the coronation of Napoléon, it isn't. David had originally planned to show that extraordinary Corsican at the very moment of his coronation - when he unexpectedly snatched the crown from the Pope and crowned himself - but later chose to portray the newly-minted emperor in the act of crowning his beloved and soon-to-be-ex- wife. At any rate, Joséphine is the heart of this vast work, visually, and the graceful, bejeweled Empress is both literally and figuratively the point on which the whole composition is centered.

***

View the images larger below.

Madame Riesener and her son, Léon, by Delacroix, 1835

Madame Riesener (née Félicité Longrois, 1786-1847), known as a beauty in her youth, had served as lady-in-waiting to the Empress Joséphine. (And is thought to have had a brief liaison with the Emperor, as well.) In 1807 she married the painter Henri-François Riesener (1767-1828), himself the son of the famous cabinet maker, Jean-Henri Riesener. The painter Delacroix was a nephew of Henri-François, and therefore a cousin of the latter's son, Léon (1808–1878), who would also become a well-known artist. Delacroix was the elder by a decade, and did much to further the career of Léon, and the two were very close.

Madame Riesener was forty-nine and seven years a widow when she sat for her nephew.

The details of Madame Riesener's toilette are very artfully chosen and suavely rendered.