In an allegorical portrait, the Emperor Napoleon (1769-1821) is here presented as ruler of the world. Luigi Calamatta has had the death mask (see inv. no. L652), a plaster mask cast on the head of the dead Napoleon, as his model. Before the death mask lie a rapier and the order of the Legion of Honour, established by Napoleon himself in 1802. The death mask is adorned with a laurel wreath. Like the eagle in the lower corner of the frame, this had a symbolical value in its reference to the ancient Roman emperors. The eagle with the lightning is Jupiter’s eagle. Jupiter was the supreme god in Roman mythology, ruling over both gods and mortals.
At the bottom of the sheet, Calamatta has written about the death mask, saying that it was the work of the Corsican anatomist and pathologist François Carlo Antommarchi (1780-1838). Antommarchi attempted in the years 1833-34 to convince the world outside that this was true. However, there is much to suggest that Antommarchi merely made a large number of death masks with a view to sale, but that the original mask was made by the Irish military doctor Francis Burton (1784-1828).
