Choir in the Capuchin Church in Rome (1808)

François-Marius Granet: Choir in the Capuchin Church in Rome

We saw Ingres's portrait of Granet earlier. Here is one of Granet's paintings. The context for the painting is a combination of Granet's great piety reacting against Napoleon's anticlericalism. The French authorities banished the Capuchin order from the church of the Immaculate Conception, near the Piazza Barberini, even billeting troops there for a time. Nevertheless, this painting of the church's interior was purchased by the emperor's sister Caroline Murat, queen of Naples, for her brother Louis Bonaparte, who had seen it exhibited in the painter's studio, where it created a sensation at the end of 1814. Pius VII, the same pope who had been forced to preside over Napoleon's coronation a decade earlier, asked to meet the artist as a result of the exhibition. Granet went on to paint perhaps a dozen or more versions of this subject, most on commission. It is without doubt his most famous composition. [preceding summary from The Met]