Portrait of Pope Pius VII and Cardinal Caprara

In December 1804 Napoleon had himself crowned emperor in Notre-Dame, and he wanted the pope in the room to bless the occasion. So Pius VII made the long trip from Rome to Paris and sat through a ceremony where Napoleon placed the crown on his own head. David was there as the official painter, filling a canvas nearly ten metres wide with the whole scene. These two figures come straight out of that painting. The pope raises his hand in blessing, and beside him stands Cardinal Caprara, the papal legate who represented Rome in Paris. David seems to have wanted a closer, quieter record of how the elderly pope looked during those tense weeks, so he set the pair down again on this single panel. The museum in Philadelphia now dates it to 1808 or a little after, when the great Coronation was still being finished.