The “Sacre” scent celebrates the noble, intense union of two wood species: pine and cedar. The former, absolutely green, symbolizes winter and immortality; the latter, powerful in its red coat, is reminiscent of ceremonial velvet shimmering under the warm light of a flame, enshrouded in an amber-like vetiver scent. Around them, spicy, peppery juniper berries, much valued in Ancient Rome, form a guard of honour, sweetened by the subtle gold of a regal honey. Precious incense floats up towards the archways of the cathedral. In a faraway echo, colourful petals celebrate this memorable day. The scent evokes the strange journey of one of France’s most famous paintings, painted by Jacques-Louis David. The monumental painting was commissioned by Napoleon to immortalize the “Consecration of Emperor Napoleon I and Coronation of Empress Josephine in the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris on December 2, 1804.” The extensive, sumptuously luxurious ceremony, voluntarily reminiscent of the Roman Empire, was held before a crowd petrified by the freezing cold, under the redecorated vaults of the cathedral, hung with precious tapestries dotted with golden bees, and shrouded in the sacred smokes of myrrh and incense. Walking out of the cathedral, the emperor, a crown of oak and laurel leaves in diamonds and gold on the forehead, was acclaimed with the salvo of a one hundred and one gun salute.
That’s when painter David started working on the monumental painting in his workshop in the former chapel of the Collège de Cluny, near the Sorbonne, in the heart of medieval Paris. The scent of an ideal library, full of ancient manuscripts, mingled with the smell of wood: juniper, cedar, pine bearing the patina of time, incense from the church under the medieval vaults, while David was painting. It took him two years. In 1837, the painting was transferred to the walls of the Coronation room on the first floor of the Palace of Versailles on the orders of King Louis-Philippe. Coincidentally, the room, built in the 17th century, was used as a second chapel at the time of Louis XIV. There, waxed wood takes honey and gold hues, another symbolic echo of the later Empire’s ubiquitous bees. In 1889, “The Consecration of Napoleon” is hung alongside other masterpieces – some of them millennia old – in another sort of sacred building, this one a temple of the Arts: the Louvre Museum. Consecration is one step away from sanctity.
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