Portrait of the Emperor Napoleon III

The portrait represents the emperor Napoleon III standing right next to symbols of the imperial power: the "justice hand", the crown and the ermine mantle and it was realized with another one representing the empress Evzenie with whom he lived at the Saint-Cloud castle since 1852 (the year of his coronation) and of which it is possible to see a part of the parc with the small lake on the background of the work. The two miniatures derive from the paintings, today lost, made by the painter Franz Xaver Winterhalter, one of the most notorious French portrait painters of that period. Only this miniature is signed and dated "F. de Fournier 1857", as further evidence of the link with the other one. The small size suggests they are an official gift perhaps for a political figure (remember the alliance between France and Piemonte during the Crimean War in the fifty's years of the XIX century). The artist especially realized indoors of residences and castles, among which Fontainebleau and the Tuileries. His watercolours remain a precious witness in order to study the decorative arts characterising the Second Empire.