I’ve come across something very interesting. Allegedly, this drawing is a self-portrait of Caroline Murat holding an urn containing her husband’s ashes.
This is the first time I’ve ever seen this (and I’ve been digging for art related to Joachim & Caroline Murat regularly for years), so I can’t help but be skeptical? But the source given for this on the Wiki Commons page goes to what looks like a legitimate auction page (see the link below). The description reads:
Autoportrait tenant l’urne contenant les cendres de son époux Joachim Murat, fusillé le 13 octobre 1815 à Pizzo Calabro. Dessin à la pierre noire d’Italie, signé en bas à gauche : Carolina
31,5 x 25 cm
Provenance : Charles-Tristan de Montholon ou/et ? Albine de Montholon, puis Hélène Napoléone Bonaparte ( Sainte-Hélène 18 juin 1816- Aix-en-Provence 1910)
*edit* As @northernmariette notes, if this is legitimate, the urn would be symbolic since Joachim’s remains were never recovered; he still remains interred under the church in Pizzo, where he was buried after his execution.
Also, the auction only occurred in July, and the image was only just uploaded to Wiki Commons at the beginning of this month, which explains why this is the first time I’ve ever seen it.
I think it’s real, because it’s signed in the back, and it looks like it’s authenticated by the auction house– I doubt it was forged. This is tremendously exciting. This makes Caroline and Murat much more immediate– I feel even more emotional thinking about the two.
Caroline Bonaparte Murat, Queen of Naples, by Louis Ducis, circa 1810
Napoleon’s sister Caroline Bonaparte Murat was ambitious and enterprising. Although Caroline and her husband, Joachim Murat, owed their wealth and their crowns to Napoleon, when it looked like Napoleon was going to be defeated in 1814, they allied with Napoleon’s enemies. French Foreign Minister Talleyrand wrote that Caroline “had the head of Cromwell upon the body of a well-shaped woman. Born with much grandeur of character, strong mind, and sublime ideas; possessing a subtle and delicate wit, together with amiability and grace, seductive beyond expression; she was deficient in nothing but in the art of concealing her desire to rule; and when she failed in attaining her end, it was because she sought to reach it too quickly.” For details about this fascinating Bonaparte sibling, see “Caroline Bonapare Murat, Napoleon’s Treasonous Sister.”
