Empire and Restoration court dress - "Costume Parisien", 1804-19

1804-5. France went by the French Republican Calendar from 1793 to 1805; these first plates are dated "year 13".

Napoléon proclaimed himself emperor in May of 1804, and for the first time in fifteen years, since the commencement of the French Revolution, France had a royal - or, rather, imperial - court. The luxury demanded by and lavishly displayed at the Tuileries, Fontainebleau, Compiègne, St. Cloud exceeded even that of the greatest days of the ancien régime, and Paris was once again fully the cynosure of the fashionable world; in form and embellishment the court dress of the other European kingdoms slavishly followed the French lead. Ten years later, after the fall of Napoléon and the return of the Bourbons - in the prodigious shape of Louis XVIII - the silhouette of regulation dress at the once again merely royal court differed little. But in general, the trimmings became heavier and less graceful, there was something of a nostalgic and often awkward layering on of pre-Revolution excess, and much of the refinement and elegance of the glamorous Empire was lost.

1804-5.

1804-5.

1804-5.

1804-5. Men's court dress differed very little from that of the last days of the ancien régime.

1808.

1809.

1809.

1809.

1809.

1809.

1809.

1810.

1811.

1812.

1812.

1812.

1813.

1814. The white lilies in the coiffure are a clear indication that the Bourbons have returned to power.

1814.

1815.

1816.

1816.

1817.

1817.

1819.

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.

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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.

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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.

The Grand Duke and Grand Duchess of Tuscany, by Joseph Dorffmeister, 1797

Ferdinand III (Peter Leopold Josef Anton Joachim Pius Gotthard; 6 May 1769, Florence - 18 June 1824, Florence), Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1790 to 1801 and, after a period of disenfranchisement, again from 1814 to 1824. He was also the Prince-Elector and Grand Duke of Salzburg (1803-1806) and Grand Duke of Würzburg (1806-1814).

He was a grandson of Empress Maria Theresia of Austria, as he was the second son of Archduke Leopold, then Grand Duke of Tuscany, and his wife Infanta Maria Luisa of Spain. When his father was elected Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Ferdinand succeeded him as Grand Duke of Tuscany. In 1792, during the French Revolution - even though his aunt, Marie Antoinette, was the imprisoned queen of France - Ferdinand became the first monarch to formally recognize the new French First Republic. While other countries became embroiled in conflict with Republican France, his normalization of relations with that country helped stabilize his rule for several years. But by 1799 he was compelled to flee to Vienna for protection when French-spurred republicanism spreading through Italy caused an overthrow of the government in Florence. He was then forced to renounce his throne two years later as Napoléon continued his restructuring of Europe. Ferdinand was compensated by being given the Dukedom and Electorate of Salzburg. He was also made a Prince-Elector of the Holy Roman Empire. Temporarily. Ferdinand was then made Grand Duke of Würzburg, a new state created for him. In 1814, after Napoleon's fall, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany was restored to him. He lived ten more years and was succeeded by his son.

In 1790 Ferdinand married his double first cousin, the Princess (later Grand Duchess) Luisa of Naples and Sicily (27 July 1773, Naples - 19 September 1802, Vienna), daughter of Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies and Marie Caroline of Austria. (She was one of eighteen children, seven of whom survived to adulthood.) They had five children together, the first two dying very young. The Grand Duchess herself died while giving birth to her sixth child, a stillborn son; she was only twenty-nine. Nineteen years later, her husband remarried. His new, much younger bride - a first cousin once removed to both Ferdinand and his late wife - was Princess Maria Ferdinanda of Saxony. There were no children born of this marriage.

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Joseph Dorffmeister (or Dorfmeister; 16 March 1764 - 1814), Austro-Hungarian painter. Older son of artist Stephen Dorfmeister, he studied at the Vienna Academy.

The great Carrousel of Louis XIV, 1662

By the seventeenth century, the medieval tournament had degenerated into the carrousel - a kind of equestrian display - a lavish pageant commemorating a memorable event. They were usually based on an allegorical theme, and the participants, often outrageously costumed, would perform a sequence of processions and equestrian figures to musical accompaniment, and participate in the relatively harmless sport of tilting at a ring.

View of the "Carrousel" facing the Palais des Tuileries.

The most famous carrousel was held in Paris on the fifth and sixth of June, 1662, to celebrate the birth of the dauphin, the first son and heir to the then twenty-five year old King Louis XIV. The pageant played out on a large square arena that had been specially created between the (now lost) Tuileries Palace and the Louvre. (To this day, the area carries the name of the Place du Carrousel.) Surrounded by fifteen thousand spectators, 1,297 participants - 655 of them on horseback - went through their carefully choreographed paces.

"Turkish" trumpeter and drummer.

View of the pageant facing the Louvre; the clutter of buildings obscuring the view of the palace was later cleared away.

"Roman" pages.

Another view facing the Tuileries.  (The central pavilion of the palace, seems to have been "lost" in the fold of the book.)

"American" drummer and trumpeter.

The revelers were divided into five groups: Le Quadrille persan, commanded by the king's brother; Le Quadrille des Turcs, led by the prince de Condé; Le Quadrille des Indiens, headed by the duc d'Enghien; leading Le Quadrille des Américains was the duc de Guise...

"Monsieur" - the duc d'Orléans - the brother of the king.

The prince de Condé.

The duc de Guise.

... and, most importantly, Le Quadrille des Romains, which was led by the king, himself. Louis XIV, at the height of his youthful powers, his horse's caparison reportedly enlivened with diamonds, was described by a contemporary:  "Dressed like a Roman in a long coat embroidered with silver and gold... on his head a silver helmet covered with gold leaf... from which there rises a crest of ostrich plumes dyed red..."

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One hundred and forty-four years later, on this same spot, Napoléon built the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, intended as a grand entry to the Palais des Tuileries.  The palace has disappeared but the arch remains, positioned between the long wings of the Louvre; from it one can see, along the long axis of the Tuileries gardens and the Champs-Élysées, the more famous Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile.  The arch in the Place du Carrousel is one of the many sublime structures of central Paris, but very few know the reason for its very particular name.

The arch was designed by Percier and Fontaine, and modeled on the Arch of Constantine in Rome. 

And to conclude on an appropriately equine note, the quadriga that crowns the arch originally incorporated the famous horses of St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice, which Napoléon had captured in 1797.  In 1815, after Waterloo and the Bourbon Restoration, the French rightfully ceded the horses, which were immediately packed off, back to Venice.  It wasn't until thirteen years later that the ensemble was replaced by a quadriga sculpted by Baron François Joseph Bosio, depicting Peace riding in a triumphal chariot led by gilded Victories.