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.
I guess by now everybody has seen it before me, but just in case somebody has not: Joachim Murat takes the stage in the “Napoleon Blown Apart!” series.
The arts awaken the imagination, elevate the soul; what sublime talent to be able to revive on canvas one who is no longer, or whose absence we mourn, to retrace on paper the places we have loved.
-Murat to his daughter Letitia, 24 May 1812
(Translated from Quarante lettres de Joachim Murat à sa fille Laetitia. Revue Napoléonienne, Vol 1, June 1908)
