Overall: 21cm (8.2in) x 15cm (6in) x 5.5cm (2.2in)
Gold bullion wire. A piece of pall decoration preserved as a relic of the final buried of Napoleon I’s mortal remains, nearly 40 years after his death, and over 20 years after the ‘Retour des Cendres’ on their from St. Helena, South Atlantic to France; comprising a piece of the fringe decoration
together with a period cardboard box, inscribed to the exterior ‘a piece of the gold fringe attached to the pall of the coffin in which was collected the remains of Napoleon, 1 May 1860’, Bullion length: Accessibly framed and glazed.
When in 1840 the mortal remains of Napoleon I were brought back to Paris from St Helena, the ’Retour des Cendres’, the emperor’s coffin was temporarily placed in the chapel of St Jérôme at Les Invalides, until ‘a monument worthy of the greatest genius of modern times’ could be erected beneath the Dome of Les Invalides, which, by its location, was the place that the deceased had himself chosen for his final resting place: “on the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French people [he] had loved so much”. The final interment on 2 April 1861 was attended by Napoleon III and the imperial family, kneeling on the rostrum on the balcony in the crypt.