Minerve entourée des muses de la Victoire, couronne le buste de Napoléon (1808) by François-Frédéric Lemot. In English: Miverna surronded by the muses of Victory crowns the bust of Napoleon. It is the pediment of the (beautiful) Louvres Colonnade.
Let's have a couple of close-up shall we?...
... bees, eagle: ok that fits the Napoleonic theme.
Ludovico Magno... so that would be Louis XIV... Wait what? That very much does not fit.
Did Minerva have too much hydromel and crowned the wrong monarch? Is it just Napoleon cosplaying the Sun king? Did Lemot got away with it because from the street honestly you can't tell and the whole thing looks rad? I mean: come on!
So how Napoleon ended up in a revival of the Grand Siecle on a public building? Well, he lost against the coalition. And the Count of Provence became king. And he was not thrilled by that sculpture. Wanted it gone from the colonnade.
In the end, what gave? Lack of money from the king? Laziness from the sculptors? A general sense of "why bother, you might be gone in a month anyway"? I don't know. But decision was made to just put a wig on him, carved Ludovico Magno and voila! It has been Louis XIV all along.
So in the end we have Minerva with her eagle/bees spangled shield crowning the bust of Louis the Great (who looks quite frankly pissed about all that). For some reasons, the king forgot about was fine with Empire symbolic staying there.
