Josephine’s ‘corbeille de mariage’ [wedding basket]

Throughout the 18th century there was a tradition whereby a husband would offer his wife-to-be a wedding basket (also known in French as a “Sultan”). On the occasion of her marriage to the young General Bonaparte, in March, 1796, the Widow Beauharnais found amongst her wedding gifts this basket filled with jewelry and and fripperies.

Oval in form, comprising six cut panels, the basket is completed by a cover upon which the letter J was once embroidered in silver thread. Set on a stand, itself supported by a rectangular base, the basket is entirely covered in white silk, today yellowed by time, and decorated with silver thread, pearls, foliage, an ovolo motif and fluting. Two brass rings form the handles. Once part of the Imperial Family’s collection, Josephine’s wedding basket was given to the Chateau de Malmaison museum by the Prince and Princess Napoleon in 1979.

This fine object is one of the few left which relates directly to this marriage “made in haste”: the bans were published less than four months after the couple’s first meeting in the Autumn of 1795! Whilst Napoleon was madly in love with the beautiful creole, she also embodied for him access to the upper echelons of the Directorial government. As for Josephine, the union was for her much more one of reason – the young general represented for her an insurance policy for the future and support for the education of her two children, Eugène and Hortense. The simple (almost illegal) ceremony took place on 19 Ventôse An IV (9 March 1796) in the wedding hall of the ex-Mairie [town hall] of the Second Arrondissement in Paris, part of the Hôtel de Mondragon. As for a religious ceremony, that was not to take place until the day before the coronation in December 1804, performed in the chapel of the Tuileries by Cardinal Fesch, under orders from Pius VII, who refused to crown and consecrate Napoleon and Josephine unless they were religiously married.

Karine Huguenaud (tr. P.H.)

April 2003