[1] [2] It depicts Joseph Bonaparte, recently created King of Spain, in his coronation robes.

[3] Joseph, the elder brother of Napoleon, had been King of Naples until he had been placed on the throne of Spain which triggered the Peninsular War.

Gérard, a neoclassical painter and pupil of Jacques-Louis David, produced a number of depictions of the extended Bonaparte dynasty.

Today the painting is in the collection of the Palace of Fontainebleau outside Paris, having been acquired in 1981.

[4] This article about a nineteenth-century painting is a stub.