Why did Napoleon I on the Imperial Throne cause controversy at the 1806 Salon?

At the 1806 Salon, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s monumental portrait Napoleon I on the Imperial Throne sparked controversy due to its stylistic choices, which critics found jarringly unconventional for the time.1

The painting was condemned for its stiffness and flat frontality, qualities that Ingres derived from medieval and Byzantine prototypes. Furthermore, while the work featured meticulous detailing and surface realism reminiscent of 15th-century Flemish masters, these elements were viewed negatively by contemporary critics. Collectively, these stylistic decisions were perceived as a "willfully primitivizing manner," leading critics to unanimously label the work as "Gothic"—a pejorative term that Ingres struggled to shed for two decades.1