Seditious Miniature, Carrying A Pro-napoleonic Message, French Work, Early 19th Century

Miniature on ivory representing a symbolic landscape with the tomb of Napoleon Bonapart
Goucache, mixed technique on ivory
Diameter: 7.5 cm
French work, around 1821-1825

This seditious Bonapartist miniature claims that the Emperor is still alive, and not died in St Helena in 1821. It represents an ancient obelisk-shaped tomb with a broken point. On the obelisk is the crowned "N", the base of the tomb bears the writing "Alive Always". Behind we see the water symbolizing the sea and in the middle an island with a rotunda sheltering an anchor, symbol of a Saint Helena island accessible only through a boat trip. In the background we see mountains, which again send us back to the rocky island of St Helena. This miniature is a valuable testimony to a whole series of small works, such as display cases, snuff boxes or miniatures that circulated among the Bonapartists (who were quite numerous) after the fall of the empire. As François René de Chateaubriand will have written about Napoleon “Alive, he missed the world; dead, he possesses it. »