I’m going for maximum contrast here. My wife has a Ph.D. in French Literature, so we’ve spent a decent amount of time in Paris over the years, and one Louvre painting I try to see as often as possible is Jacques-Louis David’s The Coronation Of Napoleon. It hangs in an upper gallery, around the corner from the always-mobbed (and honestly not that great) Mona Lisa, and it’s absolutely bonkers: a 32-foot-wide, 20-foot-tall depiction of Napoleon crowning himself Emperor in the cathedral of Notre Dame.
Think about the audacity it takes to tell the Pope that you’d rather crown yourself than have him do it. “Nah, Pius VII, I got this.” Shrinking this down to fit on a one-and-a-half-inch watch dial is probably impossible, but I’d like to see the masters at Vacheron Constantin try. And it’d save me money on redeye tickets to Paris if they could pull it off too.
– Stephen Pulvirent