The Public Viewing David’s “Coronation” at the Louvre (1810) by Louis-Léopold Boilly

The Public Viewing David’s “Coronation” at the Louvre (1810) by Louis-Léopold Boilly

Here the public views David’s enormous painting of Napoleon crowning Empress Josephine, which was exhibited in the Louvre on three separate occasions in 1808–10. Its display was widely reported in the newspapers. A man in military garb reads the description to enable viewers to identify the various figures in David’s picture, while Boilly scattered further portraits including his own, at far right, among the spectators. One of Boilly’s most ambitious compositions, painted in 1810 it was exhibited at the Galerie Lebrun, Paris, in 1826, in the first posthumous retrospective of works by David and his school