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As Befits a Legend: Building a Tomb for Napoleon, 1840-1861. - book reviews

Art Bulletin, The, March, 1996 by Jane Mayo Roos

In an article in the Times Literary Supplement several years ago, Umberto Eco quoted a 17th-century tale by way of arguing the case for textual "rights." The story had appeared in John Wilkins's Mercury, or The Secret and Swift Messenger (1641), and the lines of the narrative can be summarized as follows.(1) A servant was charged with delivering a basket of figs, along with a letter that enumerated how many figs had been sent. The servant could not read and had no understanding of the signifying potential of the marks on the page. In the course of the trip he consumed some of the figs, and when the basket was delivered he was reproached by the recipient for having eaten a portion of the gift. When the letter was brought forward as proof, the servant denied the charge and cursed the document. He was then given a second mission to perform - another basket, another letter - and once again he consumed some of the figs. This time he took care to hide the letter while he ate, convinced that if it could not see him, it could not accuse him of theft. When he was reproached once again, he admitted having eaten the figs and, awestruck by the paper that "could speak" against him, he vowed to mend his ways.

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Eco introduced the tale in order to challenge the idea of the infinite indeterminacy of the written text and to suggest that there are limits to a reader's interpretive rights: surely the note meant something, and just as surely it cannot be taken to mean "everything" - or anything - that a textual interpreter might want.

I thought about Eco's remarks as I began to consider the books to be reviewed in this article, because the constraints that he identified seem equally relevant for the analysis of visual works. Though the criticisms against art history have become deeply familiar in recent years - that the documented narrative often treats facts with a positivist and single-minded regard and often shapes arguments that strain toward closure, determinism, and totalization - I found Eco's arguments helpful in their attempt to set boundaries on the seemingly limitless freedom offered by theoretical analysis. In a sense, the weaknesses of theory reflect in reverse the shortcomings of the tightly plotted historical account, and the extremely viewer-oriented analysis often seems relativist and chaotically unmotivated and often shapes arguments that drift toward obscurity, solipsism, and meaninglessness. Thus, despite the appeal of its rigor, inventiveness, and salutary criticality, theory remains a prescription with serious side effects of its own. Not surprisingly, increasing numbers of writers today have refused to accept the discursive extremes and have staked out positions that lie somewhere between the smothering safety of the overdetermined history and the tenuous thrill of interpretative jouissance.

Each of the books to be considered in this review approaches the subject of art and politics in 19th-century France and endeavors both to tell a coherent history and to move the analysis beyond a monocular discourse or an anemic rehearsal of archival "facts." The books differ greatly from one another, however, in the type of subject chosen for analysis, in the author's relation to his material, and in the way in which artworks and documentation are interrelated.

Michael Driskel's As Befits a Legend centers around a fairly straightforward history of the French government's attempt to construct a monument to Napoleon I. It was in 1840 that a proposal was introduced to return Napoleon's body to France and to erect a tomb to house the remains. The repatriation was accomplished by December 1840, and his casket was brought through the streets of Paris in an elaborately staged procession that ended at the Invalides. In the months preceding the retour des cendres, the issue of the tomb had become the subject of national debate, the main issues concerning where the monument would be built, how prominent a visual role it would play, and whether it would be placed in an existing structure or given a new and independent architectural site (p. 36).

Concurrently, the further question arose of how the designer would be chosen - whether he would be designated by the government or selected by a jury from an open field of competitors. In a decision typical of the government of the juste milieu, an open competition was ultimately held, but the regulations neglected to specify how the judging would be accomplished. When the deadline for the concours had closed (October 1841), a committee was appointed by the government, which narrowed the field of possibilities from eighty-one entries to two. Though the committee members refrained from selecting a winner, they managed to phrase their recommendations for the monument in a way that gave the architect Louis Visconti the edge (p. 133). He received the commission in March 1842.

Visconti's design centered upon a sarcophagus that would be set in the crypt of the Invalides, directly below the building's celebrated dome. A large circular opening would be created in the floor, so that the tomb could be viewed from the church proper. At the entrance to the crypt would be two large figures in bronze, and surrounding the tomb would be a peristyle against which twelve marble victories were to be positioned. Also in the crypt, a mosaic would depict scenes from Napoleon's life, while in the courtyard an equestrian monument of Napoleon would be linked to the crypt via an underground passage. Among the sculptors given commissions for the works were Francisque Duret, James Pradier, Augustin Dumont, and Francois Jouffroy; Henri de Triqueti was to design the mosaics and Charles Marochetti the equestrian monument.

As Befits a Legend: Building a Tomb for Napoleon, 1840-1861. - book reviews

Art Bulletin, The, March, 1996 by Jane Mayo Roos

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