Sevres, Manufacture Nationale

Chocolate cup and saucer

Porcelain (hard-paste)

AN XI (1804)

This chocolate cup in the shape of a chalice and its saucer, with a violet background, is decorated with a portrait of Napoleon in his uniform as President of the Cisalpine Republic.

Napoleon was elected as the President of the new Italian Republic on 25 January 1802, later being crowned King of Italy in 1805. The portrait is probably one of the very first portrayals of the effigy of the future Emperor on an object produced by the Manufacture de Sèvres. The portrait of Napoleon was painted in the autumn of 1803 by the chief painter of the Manufacture, Claude-Charles Gérard, after a miniature by the artist Jean-Baptiste Isabey (1767-1855). The cup is decorated with a sword and conicopea, and the saucer is embellished with the cock, a republican symbol.

This cup and two others, one in the collection at the National Ceramic Museum of Sèvres the other in the collection of Malmaison, were delivered to Napoleon on 1st January 1805 for service at the Palais des Tuileries in Paris.