He also wears an ermine hood under the great collar of the Légion d'honneur, a gold-embroidered satin tunic and an ermine-lined purple velvet cloak decorated with gold bees.

At the top right of the painting (and much more visibly on the preparatory drawing), cut off halfway across its width, can be seen a shield with the arms of the Papal States, Este, Lombardy, Venice and Savoy, all surmounted with the crown of Italy.

From this Sébastien Allard hypothesizes that the painting was commissioned by an Italian institution to show Napoleon as king of Italy not as emperor, but, due to its innovative iconography, the original commissioners refused it and that was why it was acquired by the Corps législatif.

At first, the first viewing warned against the painting, some cry out, some mock its composition and arrangement; but then, when they approach it, they admired its precious finish, and the exact truth of the [depiction of the] fabrics; but one then returns to it again discontented, regretting that the artist had researched the most bizarre effects.

As for the emperor's head, it is too heavy, a poor resemblance, of a colour that is false and too : despite the fineness of the brush, the preciousness of the finish, the melting hues, it is dry in manner, makes no effect, and does not leap off the canvas.

[6] David (who finished his own The Coronation of Napoleon the following year) delivered a severe judgement,[7] and the critics were uniformly hostile, finding fault with the strange discordances of colour, the want of sculptural relief, the chilly precision of contour, and the self-consciously archaic quality.

"[8] The Louvre, newly filled with booty seized by Napoleon in his campaigns in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy, provided French artists of the early nineteenth century with an unprecedented opportunity to study, compare, and copy masterworks from antiquity and from the entire history of European painting.

[9] From the beginning of his career, Ingres freely borrowed from earlier art, adopting the historical style appropriate to his subject, leading critics to charge him with plundering the past.