Le Sacre de Napoléon

On the second of December 1804, in a freezing Notre-Dame, Napoleon had Pope Pius VII brought all the way from Rome to lend the ceremony the blessing of the Church, and then, at the crucial moment, lifted the crown and set it on his own head. David, the official painter, first sketched exactly that. But an emperor crowning himself, with the Pope reduced to a spectator, looked too raw, so David changed it. What he finally painted, on a canvas almost ten metres wide, is the softer instant that followed, Napoleon turning to crown the kneeling Joséphine while Pius sits behind, one hand raised in blessing. The Pope had come expecting to place the crown himself. In the picture he has been eased into the background, present, approving, and no longer in charge.