It was probably the need for clarity and order that impelled David - as in The Tennis Court Oath - to adopt a horizontal composition rather than an axial view or a view from above. His success is dazzling. The arrangement is spacious and perfectly balanced. He provides some space in the foreground, which he fills with the large green velvet rug dotted with the imperial bees. He lowers the group of dignitaries on the right to avoid having the composision look as if it were poised on an artificial stage. While, in reality, the figures could only have been distributed equally on either side of the axis of the nave, we see how bold and felicitous his choice was - he sweeps the static line of subjects slightly upward in a supple, almost gentle movement, that seems to place the major characters on an oblique plane without imparting to them an eminence that might seem artificial. There is something like an ascending movement, starting slowly on the left, more pronounced on the steps to the altar, and soaring upward on the right toward the large crucifix and the candles without, however, giving the religous elements of the scene any preeminence over the Emperor and Empress. These figures remain the focal points and are sufficiently distanced from each other so that our attention fixes on each in turn.
He leaves two-thirds of the space in his canvas free; the galleries can be glimpsed through the archways. The sumptuous decorations of the interior of the cathedral, faithfully reproduced, add to the solemnity of the spectacle.
For the colors, David borrowed certain formulas from Rubens and Veronese, but the tones are characteriscally his: the whites, reds, golds, and blacks dominate, but the colors are still sober and they serve, above all, to enhance the natural brilliance of the materials: velvets and golds, damasks and satins, ermines and plumes. The light is golden with a honeyed hue; it is luminous and soft, warm and sacred. It reighns supreme over the scene with, as almost the only dark element, the broad, oblique band of shadow cast from the upper left portion of the canvas and extendin in the direction of the Emperor.
