Gilbert Foliot II. It opened on 4 April 1139, and among other matters heard an appeal from the Empress Matilda concerning her claim to the throne of England. Matilda was the daughter and only surviving legitimate child of King Henry I, but following her father's death in late 1135 her cousin Stephen, the son of Henry's sister, had seized the crown. By 1139 Matilda had gathered supporters and was contesting Stephen's right to the throne. In about 1143 Foliot wrote an account of the proceedings of the council in a letter to one of Matilda's supporters. No action was taken on her
Napoleon I on His Imperial Throne developments." 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. 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. Napoleon I on His Imperial Throne Napoleon I on his Imperial Throne () is an 1806 portrait of Napoleon I of France in his