.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Pius VII, named Luigi Barnaba Chiaramonti (1742-1823), was Pope from 1800-1823. Rome had been restored to papal authority and by 1801 the French troops were withdrawn from most of the papal territory. Pius restored order in his states and in 1801 concluded a concordat with Napoleon. In 1804 Napoleon ordered Pius to come to Paris to consecrate him as emperor. The French ruler, however, took the crown from the hands of the Pope and crowned himself. This scandalous event is recorded in Jacques-Louis David's famous painting which is now in the Louvre. After Pius's return, the French seized Ancona and entered Rome. This was followed by the annexation of the papal states to the French empire. The Pope retaliated by excommunicating the robbers of the Holy See. He was then removed to Grenoble and finally to Fontainebleau where he was forced to sign a new concordat and sanction the annexation. The fall of Napoleon in 1814 allowed him to return to Rome and the Congress of Vienna restored to him his territory. Vincenzo Verdejo worked at the Vatican Mosaic Workshop during the early 1800s. Another micromosaic of Pius VII and signed by Vincenzo Verdejo is in the Gilbert Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum and illustrated in J. Hanisee Gabriel, The Gilbert Collection. Micromosaics, London, 2000, p. 106, no. 50.