Joseph Fesch

Who was Joseph Fesch?

Joseph Fesch, Prince of France was a French cardinal and diplomat, Prince of France and a member of the Imperial House of the First French Empire, Peer of France, Roman Prince, and the uncle of Napoleon Bonaparte. He was also one of the most famous art collectors of his period, and remembered for having established the Musée Fesch in Ajaccio, which remains one of the most important Napoleonic collections of art.

Born in Corsica, he was the son of Swiss-born Franz Faesch and Angela Maria Pietrasanta, and belonged on his father's side to the Faesch family, one of the most prominent patrician families of Basel, who had been ennobled in the Holy Roman Empire in 1562. Like other of Napoleon's family members, he rose to great prominence in France following Napoleon's coup d'état in 1799. Fesch became Archbishop of Lyon in 1802, was named a Cardinal in 1803, became French Ambassador to Rome in 1804, became a French senator and count in 1805, became Grand Almoner of France in 1805, obtained the rank of a sovereign prince in 1806, was named a Prince of France in 1807, became a Peer of France in 1815 and was named a Prince of the Papal States by the Pope. He was a member of the Imperial House as well as the order of succession to the French imperial throne in accordance with the French constitution of 1804.