Reception du Corps de Napoleon from Retour en France by Victor Adam 1840

[BONAPARTE, Napoleon] ADAM, Victor. Reception du Corps de Napoleon a l'Hotel des Invalides, dans la Cour Royale, le 15 Decembre 1840. Paris, Jeannin, [1840].
 
Large folio lithograph, 510 x 355 mm. Blind-stamped. Dessine d'apres nature par Arnout, figures par V. Adam. Printed by Lemercier, Bernard et Cie. Occasional light spotting, chiefly marginal, with faint central fold; dirt marks to the margins a clean, a good example overall.
 
One of the principal plates from Adam's suite documenting the exhumation, return, and state funeral of Napoleon in 1840. The plate depicts the solemn reception of Napoleon's remains within the Cour Royale of the Hotel des Invalides, the vast military and civic ceremonial staged beneath the dome that would ultimately become the Emperor's resting place. The composition emphasises both the scale of the public spectacle and the heavy symbolism of Napoleon's return to the military shrine of France. The plate forms part of Victor Adam's Retour en France des Depouilles Mortelles de Napoleon, a suite of twenty lithographs documenting the Retour des Cendres ceremonies.