Jeffrey Lash

Inset from my favorite painting at Versailles.  Jacques Louis David was commissioned by Napoleon to paint a large composition commemorating his consecration, which had taken place in Notre Dame in Paris, on 2 December 1804. The picture was exhibited in the Salon Carré in the Louvre in 1808, then in the Salon of that year; it was next placed in the Tuileries, in the Salle des Gardes. Under Louis Philippe it was installed at Versailles in a room decorated in imitation of the Empire style, together with David’s Distribution of the Eagles and Gros’ Battle of Aboukir; in 1889 it was transferred to the Louvre, and its place at Versailles was taken by Roll’s Marseillaise. In 1947 this latter picture was replaced by a replica of David’s Consecration of Napoleon, begun by the painter in 1808 and not finished till 1822, in Brussels; this replica was bought by the Musées de France in England, in 1946.

One of the restored village buildings located in the “Queen’s Hamlet” in Versailles.