Napoleon at the Louvre

This past Sunday Glenn and I visited the Louvre again, this time with a particular agenda to see the exhibit "Le Tresor de Notre Dame de Paris."  Somehow I was imagining an overflowing treasure trove of precious and beautiful items dating back centuries or millenia that had been whisked to safety during the fire and that were now on public display before their move back to the renovated Notre Dame.  I suppose that was sort of what the exhibit was, but "overflowing treasure trove" might be a somewhat aspirational description.  Apparently, many of the older gold and silver chalices, crowns, sceptres, and monstrances had been melted down for their metal during various wars.  The items remaining in the Notre Dame treasury were a little underwhelming, but still interesting.  Many dated from Napoleon's reign around 1800, so not ancient but of historical interest.  

Here is a crown, above, and vestment, below, used during his coronation.

And here are details from a couple of additional vestments.  There were some fancy priests back in the day.

We were reminded by the Napoleon-related items to seek out the monumental painting by Jacques-Louis David of Napoleon's coronation, so we went in search of it.  One the way, we came across this David portrait (unfinished) of a young Napoleon from 1797.  

We found the painting of the coronation on the second floor and took several minutes to soak it all in.  It is a lot.  Here are two details.  In the first, you can clearly see the vestment I showed earlier.  In the second, wider, view, Napoleon is holding a similar crown to the one in the first photo of the post, although it does not appear to be identical.  

All of this Napoleon in evidence seemed too much of a coincidence given the release of Ridley Scott's "Napoleon" starring Joaquin Phoenix in about a week.  (Most likely, I had seen an advertisement for the film and subconsciously sought out Napoleon-related works.)  In any case, I think we'll try to make time to see the movie.