Ornamentalism in a European Context? Napoleon’s Italian Coronation, 26 May 1805

Abstract Napoleon’s Italian Coronation has been neglected, or at best consigned to a footnote, in historical scholarship. The ceremony involved immense expenditure and thousands of participants, but its true importance lay in the elusive—and somewhat confused—semiotic claims put forward by its organisers. The manner in which the events of May 1805 were choreographed reveals much about how French imperialists viewed their nascent Empire and their relationship with their northern Italian citizen-subjects. The argument put forward here is inspired by the concept of ‘ornamentalism’. While the realities of imperial brutality, cultural chauvinism and economic exploitation of conquered territories cannot be brushed under the carpet, the reverse side of this coin is also worthy of further investigation. Nowhere more than in the satellite kingdom of Italy did Napoleon seek to promote collaboration and local investment in his supranational empire. He rewarded, honoured and rallied his Lombard and Emilian officials in order to endow them with a sense that they belonged to, and benefited from membership of, the wider imperial community. The coronation in Milan, on 26 May 1805, was an important experiment in the creation of new hierarchies and elite affinities. Its mixed, though significant, legacy was continued, to a certain extent, by Napoleon’s Habsburg successors well into the first half of the nineteenth century.