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The Grand Chaplain, Joseph Fesch, Cardinal and Prince of France

The Grand Chaplin Joseph Fesch, Cardinal and Prince of France

"The Grand Chaplain...is the Bishop of the Court wherever it may be. He supervises everything related to divine service. He administers the sacraments to the Emperor and to the children of the Imperial Family, and baptizes and marries them in the presence of the Emperor. He also baptizes the Emperor's prayers and at the imperial feasts, saying the blessing and grace."

Joseph Fesch was the younger half-brother of Laetitis Ramolino-Bonaparte, Napoleon's mother. The son of a Swiss officer in the service of the republic of Genoa, he was ordained in 1785 after studying at the seminary of Aix. As a priest in Ajaccio, he lived closed to his widowed half-sister and her children, whom he saw growing up. Expelled from Corsica in 1793, the Bonapartes settled in Toulon and Fesch enlisted in the armies of the republic. Appointed commissary of war, he became responsible for provisioning the troops in Lombardy under the Directory. When Bonaparte became head of state in 1799, Fesch was able to resume his clerical vocation and thereafter rose to great prominsence. His particpation in the negotiations for the signing of the Concordat in 1801 earned him the archbishopric of Lyon and the primacy of Gaul, the supreme head of the heiarchy of French prelates. In 1803, he was sent as ambassador to Rome, where he received his cardinal's biretta and in 1804 was entrusted with a major negotiation on behalf of his nephew the emperor: to induce Pope Pius VII to travel to Paris for Napoleon's coronation. During the early years of the Empire, Fesch appointed Grand Chamberlin in July 1804, received various honours, positions at court and diplomatic missions to Rome. As a member of the Imperial Family, he was made a prince of France in 1807.

His portrait by Meynier, commissioned in the summer of 1806, is one of a series of full-length portraits of the Grand Officers of the Imperial Household originally executed for a gallery in the Chateau de Fontainebleau and ultimately moved to the Tuileries then to Compiegne.

Here, the artist repeats the pose and compostion of the famous portrait of Bossuet by Rigaud, showing his subject as a successor to the great prelate of the court of Louis XIV. Unlike the other Grand Officers, the Grand Chaplain was not obliged to wear any prescribed dress other than the cardinal's crimson vestment: holding his biretta in one hand, he is also wearing the sashes of the Leigon of Honour and the insignia of the Golden Fleece.

Fesch wished to be depicted as an active contributor to the religious policy of the Empire. He is proudly pointing to copy of the Catholic catechism of the Empire, for which he wrote some of the articles and obtained the approval of the Holy See. The only discreet reference to the Imperial Household may be on the table beside him; the bees embroidered on a heavy tablecloth of green velvet, the colour of the imperial livery. Meynier's painting is the most political picture of the cardinal, in contrast to other portraits, such as the one at the Chateau de Fontainbleau, in which the artist celebrates Fesch the connoisseur (the cardinal was undoubtedly one of the most important collectors of the entire nineteenth century).

Throughout Napoleon's reign, there were frequent periods of friction in the relationship between uncle and nephew, caused by the Grand Chaplain's refusal to condone the Emperor's treatment of Pope Pius VII after 1808. The image painted by Meynier in 1806, showing Fesch as of Napoleon's inner circle in terms of policy, hides what was in fact increasingly open hostility. Fesch even lost his position for some months in 1809, and although he agreed to perform the marriage of Napoleon and Marie-Louise (April 2, 1810) and the baptism of the King of Rome (June 9, 1811) he refused the archbishopric of Paris. By this time, the Emperor was in open conflict with the pope, who had been arrested in 1809 when the Papal States were annexed to the Empire. Appointed to preside over the national council of France in 1811, which was convoked to find a solution to the institutional crisis caused be the arrest of the pope, Fesch defended the pointiff. The relationship between the Emperor and his uncle is a fascinating subject: it seems to have been impossible to reconcile the viewpoints of an authoritarian sovereign and an increasingly ultramontane prelate, as well as the emotional strain within a complex family clan. In March 1812, Napoleon exiled the archbishop to his diocese in Lyon. After the fall of the Empire, Fesch made his way to Rome, where the pope welcomed him warmly, and with him other members of the Bonaparte family, most notably Madame Mere. It was Fesch who in May 1821 first learned of Napoleon's death and informed his half-sister. He died in 1839, a recipient of many honours and surrounded by his immense collection of art.

Napoleon The Imperial Household, Montreal Museum of the Arts, page 45.

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