Jacques-Louis David was a French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the preeminent painter of the era. In the 1780s, his cerebral brand of history painting marked a change in taste away from Rococo frivolity toward classical austerity, severity, and heightened feeling, which harmonized with the moral climate of the final years of the Ancien Régime.
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres was a French Neoclassical painter. Ingres was profoundly influenced by past artistic traditions and aspired to become the guardian of academic orthodoxy against the ascendant Romantic style. Although he considered himself a painter of history in the tradition of Nicolas Poussin and Jacques-Louis David, it is his portraits, both painted and drawn, that are recognized as his greatest legacy. His expressive distortions of form and space made him an important precursor of modern art, influencing Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and other modernists.
Palace of Fontainebleau, located 55 kilometers southeast of the center of Paris, in the commune of Fontainebleau, is one of the largest French royal châteaux. It served as a hunting lodge and summer residence for many of the French monarchs, including Louis VII, Francis I, Henry II, Louis-Philippe, Napoleon I, and Napoleon III. Though the monarchs only resided there for a few months of the year, they gradually transformed it into a genuine palace, filled with art and decoration. It became a national museum in 1927 and was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981 for its unique architecture and historical importance.
Joseph Cardinal Fesch, Prince of the Empire was a French priest and diplomat, who was the maternal half-uncle of Napoleon Bonaparte. In the wake of his nephew, he became Archbishop of Lyon and cardinal. He was also one of the most famous art collectors of his period, remembered for having established the Musée Fesch in Ajaccio, which remains one of the most important Napoleonic collections of art.
Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, also known as Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson or simply Girodet, was a French painter and pupil of Jacques-Louis David, who participated in the early Romantic movement by including elements of eroticism in his paintings. Girodet is remembered for his precise and clear style and for his paintings of members of the Napoleonic family.
The Empire style is an early-nineteenth-century design movement in architecture, furniture, other decorative arts, and the visual arts, representing the second phase of Neoclassicism. It flourished between 1800 and 1815 during the Consulate and the First French Empire periods, although its life span lasted until the late-1820s. From France it spread into much of Europe and the United States.
The Napoleon Tiara was a papal tiara given to Pope Pius VII in June 1805 a few months after he presided at the coronation of Napoleon I. While lavishly decorated with jewels, it was deliberately too small and heavy to be worn and meant as an insult to the Pope. In the painting of The Coronation of Napoleon by Jacques-Louis David, the tiara is held behind the Pope by one of his aides.
Napoleon Crossing the Alps is a series of five oil on canvas equestrian portraits of Napoleon Bonaparte painted by the French artist Jacques-Louis David between 1801 and 1805. Initially commissioned by the King of Spain, the composition shows a strongly idealized view of the real crossing that Napoleon and his army made along the Alps through the Great St Bernard Pass in May 1800.
The Coronation of Napoleon is a painting completed in 1807 by Jacques-Louis David, the official painter of Napoleon, depicting the coronation of Napoleon at Notre-Dame de Paris. The oil painting has imposing dimensions – it is almost 10 metres (33 ft) wide by a little over 6 metres (20 ft) tall. The work is on display at the Louvre Museum in Paris.
Marie-Georges-Louis Rouget was a French neoclassical painter.
The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries is an 1812 painting by Jacques-Louis David. It shows French Emperor Napoleon I in uniform in his study at the Tuileries Palace. Despite the detail, it is unlikely that Napoleon posed for the portrait.
Napoleon I on his Imperial Throne is an 1806 portrait of Napoleon I of France in his coronation costume, painted by the French painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.
Robert Jacques François Faust Lefèvre was a French painter of portraits, history paintings and religious paintings. He was heavily influenced by Jacques-Louis David and his style is reminiscent of the antique.
Portrait of Monsieur Bertin is an 1832 oil on canvas painting by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. It depicts Louis-François Bertin (1766–1841), the French writer, art collector and director of the pro-royalist Journal des débats. Ingres completed the portrait during his first period of success; having achieved acclaim as a history painter, he accepted portrait commissions with reluctance, regarding them as a distraction from more important work. Bertin was Ingres' friend and a politically active member of the French upper-middle class. Ingres presents him as a personification of the commercially minded leaders of the liberal reign of Louis Philippe I. He is physically imposing and self-assured, but his real-life personality shines through – warm, wry and engaging to those who had earned his trust.
The relationship between Napoleon and the Catholic Church was an important aspect of his rule.
Napoleon I and his wife Joséphine were crowned Emperor and Empress of the French on Sunday, December 2, 1804, at Notre-Dame de Paris in Paris. It marked "the instantiation of [the] modern empire" and was a "transparently masterminded piece of modern propaganda". Napoleon wanted to establish the legitimacy of his imperial reign with its new dynasty and nobility. To this end, he designed a new coronation ceremony unlike that for the kings of France, which had emphasised the king's consecration (sacre) and anointment and was conferred by the archbishop of Reims in Reims Cathedral. Napoleon's was a sacred ceremony held in the great cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris in the presence of Pope Pius VII. Napoleon brought together various rites and customs, incorporating ceremonies of Carolingian tradition, the ancien régime, and the French Revolution, all presented in sumptuous luxury.
Self-Portrait(in French: Autoportrait) is the title of a self-portrait painted by the artist Jacques-Louis David in 1794 while in imprisoned at the Hôtel des Fermes for having supported the Robespierreans. It was his third and last self-portrait. He gave the work to his former student Jean-Baptiste Isabey. It entered the collections of the Louvre in 1852.
The French Restoration style was predominantly Neoclassicism, though it also showed the beginnings of Romanticism in music and literature. The term describes the arts, architecture, and decorative arts of the Bourbon Restoration period (1814–1830), during the reign of Louis XVIII and Charles X from the fall of Napoleon to the July Revolution of 1830 and the beginning of the reign of Louis-Philippe.
Napoleon I as Emperor, also known as Napoleon I in his Coronation Robes, is an oil-on-canvas painting by the French artist François Gérard, produced in 1805 under the First French Empire and currently displayed at the Palace of Versailles. Gérard initially produced the painting as an official portrait of Napoleon I for his throne room at the Tuileries Palace. It was later moved to the Palace of Versailles. The painting spent time at the Louvre, at the Élysée Palace, then at the Château de Saint-Cloud before returning to Versailles in 1894.
The Battle of Aboukir by Antoine-Jean Gros is an oil-on-canvas painting commissioned by Joachim Murat in 1805, and completed in 1806. The painting is a showcase of Napoleonic propaganda, historical accuracy, and emotional intensity. It was in the National Palace of Naples in 1808, and was bought by the Musée du Luxembourg in 1833. Since 1835 it is part of the art collection of the Palace of Versailles. An original sketch, Murat Defeating the Turkish Army at Aboukir, was completed before the larger painting, and is now on display at the Detroit Institute of Arts. The final work served as Gros’ submission for the Salon of 1806.
