The composition, representing the baptism of the King of Rome, which took place on 9 June 1811 in Notre-Dame, Paris, is based on a commemorative medal by Bertrand Andrieu (1761–1822) issued by the Paris Mint under the direction of Dominique Vivant Denon (1747–1825). In March 1812 a correspondent in the Mercure de France opined ‘this medal is without doubt the most perfect ever struck’. It is possible that this box was made to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the baptism. A version with an ivory ground was also produced. While after the exile of Napoleon to St Helena in 1815 there remained some devoted Bonapartists in France – witness the saddler Louis Pierre Louvel who in a bid to exterminate the Bourbons assassinated Charles, Duc de Berry, in 1820 – it took some years for the exemperor’s reputation to be restored after the strain caused by the incessant wars of his reign. Apart from growing disillusionment with Restoration politics, certain events contributed to the process of rehabilitation, notably the publication between 1823 and 1825 of Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de France, sous Napoléon …, his self-justifying account of recent history, and the magnificent state funeral arranged by Louis Philippe in 1840. By the time of the entombment of his remains in a porphyry sarcophagus under the dome of Les Invalides in 1860, Napoleon Bonaparte had become the mystical personification of past glory. This snuffbox is the by-products of this posthumous cult. It is interesting to observe that at the same date another figure from French history enjoyed a latterday rehabilitation: Queen Marie Antoinette, the formerly loathed l’Autrichienne, was transformed to become the embodiment of the douceur de vivre of the Ancien Régime, which had been swept away by the Revolution and the ensuing Napoleonic era.

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