Ambition and Desire: The Dangerous Life of Josephine Bonaparte (55 page)

The house at Malmaison (
illustration credit i1.15
)

View of the Wooden Bridge
by Auguste Garneray. The garden at Malmaison. (
illustration credit i1.16
)

View of the Salon de Musique, Malmaison,
by Auguste Garneray, 1812. Josephine’s picture gallery was her pride and joy. (
illustration credit i1.17
)

Josephine’s dining room at Malmaison. She decorated the house in a mixture of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman styles. (
illustration credit i1.18
)

Josephine’s formal bedroom at Malmaison. She lies between golden swans, an eagle watches over her bed, and the ceiling is painted as the sky. (
illustration credit i1.19
)

Josephine,
by Baron Antoine-Jean Gros, 1809. A bust of Eugène is on the left, Malmaison lies in the background, and the hydrangea flowers (hortensia) symbolize her daughter. Letters lie at her feet. (
illustration credit i1.20
)

Josephine kneels to be crowned by Napoleon (detail), by Jacques-Louis David, 1807. David showed Napoleon crowning Josephine—a neat solution, as a painting of Napoleon crowning himself would have been ridiculed.

The Consecration of Emperor Napoleon I and the Crowning of Empress Josephine in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris on 2 December 1804,
by Jacques-Louis David, 1807 (
illustration credit i1.21
)

Napoleon’s sisters at the Coronation (detail), by Jacques-Louis David, 1807

Napoleon’s mother at the Coronation (detail), by Jacques-Louis David, 1807 (
illustration credit i1.22
)

One of Josephine’s court gowns, 1805. The dress is elaborately embroidered with thread made of real silver. (
illustration credit i1.23
)

Josephine’s tiara (
illustration credit i1.24
)

Queen Hortense
by Fleury-François Richard, 1815. Artistic, sensitive and beautiful, Hortense was doomed to misery when her mother compelled her to marry Louis Bonaparte. (
illustration credit i1.25
)