Chocolate Cup and Saucer (Tasse de chocolate et soucoupe)

This cup and saucer would have been used to consume drinking chocolate. The set features a portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte donning the uniform of the President of the Cisalpine Republic, a sister republic of France in Northern Italy that existed from 1797-1802 and Napoleon ruled as President and, later, as King of Italy. The chief painter at the Manufacture of Sèvres, Claude-Charles Gerard, rendered this portrait after a miniature painting (now lost) done in the early 1800s by the popular painter, Jean-Baptiste Isabey. It is possible that this cup and saucer set were part of the Emperor’s porcelain service used at the Tuileries Palace in Paris.

Napoleon surrounded himself with objects that referenced ancient Rome as a way to align himself and the Empire of France with the Roman Empire. Not only does this chocolate cup and saucer assume a neoclassical form inspired by Greco-Roman archeological discoveries, but classical Roman motifs are also integrated into the set’s ornamentation. A frame of stars and boughs of laurel leafs, ancient symbols of victory, frame the portrait, while oak leaves, a symbol of endurance, encircle the upper rim and lower edge of the vessel. The same branches appear on the saucer; a ring of oak leaves frames the saucer and vines of laurel leaves weave around a shield and pair of spears rendered on the saucer’s center. There are three other known examples of this particular cup and saucer set, two in private collections and one in the Museum of Sèvres, Cité de la céramique; each set features gilt images, on either side of Napoleon’s portrait, that depict various ancient Roman tools and technologies. The Walters’s cup features a gilt chariot and trireme ship.

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