Firmin Massot Geneva 1766 - 1849

Joséphine Tascher de la Pagerie married Alexandre Vicomte de Beauharnais in 1779, but lost her husband to the guillotine during the Terror in 1794. Two years later in 1796 she married General Napoleon Bonaparte, but their marriage was subsquently dogged by persistent rumours of her infidelity. She was crowned Empress by Napoleon in Nôtre Dame in Paris on 2 December 1804, much against the wishes of her husband's family.  This is one of many variants of Massot's most prestigious portrait commission, which date from 1812 onwards. Another such is that now in the Musée National des châteaux de Malmaison et de Bois-Préau (inv. no. MM.2003.15.1). Massot was the foremost painter of society portraits in his native Geneva in the early 19th century, frequently working in collaboration with his compatriots Wolfgang Adam Töpfer and Jacques-Laurent Agasse.