Portrait of the Empress Josephine of France
by MASSOT, Firmin, Oil on canvas, 32 x 28 cm
Jos�phine Tascher de la Pagerie (1763-1814) 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 N�tre Dame in Paris on 2 December 1804, much against the wishes of her husband’s family.