Special Artist Henri Durand-Brager had made a name for himself with an opulent documentation of the return of the remains of Napoleon I from foreign, British occupied soil to his homeland. Brager´s expedition report Sainte-Hélène was published in an impressive folio format in 1844. What is remarkable, is that the cycle completely disregards the actual subject-matter, the emperor´s coffin and the pivotal act of transporting it back. In the lithographic accordion-fold in which the befriended illustrator Charles Nicolas Lemercier recorded the subsequent procession of the corpse from the Champs-Élysées to the new grave at Les Invalides this coffin quite naturally forms the magnetic centre.