Crown of Napoleon, called the Crown of Charlemagne
Martin-Guillaume Biennais (1764-1843) · 1804
The closed crown of gilded brass, whose eight arches meet beneath a globe topped with a cross, was made not for a medieval king but for Napoleon. When he decided that his coronation of December eighteen hundred and four would include the so-called Honours of Charlemagne, the old regalia of Saint-Denis, he found that the medieval crown had been destroyed at the Revolution. His goldsmith Martin-Guillaume Biennais therefore made a new one in a deliberately antique style, with palmettes and balls alternating along the upper edge of the band. What makes it precious are the forty cameos and intaglios set into the band and arches. They are genuine ancient and medieval gems, taken by Vivant Denon, director of the museum, from the treasures of Bourges, Arpajon and Saint-Denis, most of them from a reliquary that Jean, duke of Berry, had given to Saint-Denis in fourteen hundred and one.
Look at the gems one by one: profiles, deities and mythological scenes carved in layered stone, each in its own setting, so that the crown looks like a jewel case turned inside out. The velvet cap inside, violet and embroidered with gold, was supplied by Jacques-Evrard Bapst when the crown was restored for the coronation of Charles the Tenth in eighteen twenty five, the last king of France to be crowned at Reims. A shield above the case bears the words Crown of Charlemagne, the name under which the object was paraded.
The crown was displayed at Notre-Dame in Paris from eighteen hundred and four to eighteen sixteen, then sent to the royal furniture store, and kept at the Ministry of Finance after the revolution of eighteen forty eight. In eighteen fifty two it entered the Musée des Souverains, the museum of French rulers created under Napoleon the Third, and from there passed to the Louvre. Carried in the coronation procession, the crown stood for the continuity with the kings of France that the new emperor was so anxious to claim, even though the emperor himself wore a golden laurel wreath.
Did You Know? Not one of the crown's forty gems was made for it: every cameo was taken from an older treasure, some carved in ancient Rome.
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