Read the following passage from the Encydopdie article Hero, considering what qualities identify the hero as opposed to the great man. Photo: Bridgeman Art Library, Plate 7 Hyacinthe Rigaud, Marshal Charles Auguste de Matignon, 1704, 147 x 113 cm, National Arts Centre, Karlsruhe, Plate 8 Thomas Piroli, after Gros, General Bonaparte at the Bridge of Arcole, 1797, etching with aquatint, 72 x 59 cm, Bibliothque Nationale de France, Paris, Plate 9 Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Marat, 1793, oil on canvas, 160.7 x 124.8cm, Muses royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels. 1. Napoleon Leading the Army over the Alps. Nor did this present too great a problem in the case of official portraits, the purpose of which was not simply to record an individual likeness but also to embody the authority of the office (as king, general, minister, etc.). The question then arises: how do we account for these differences? Click to view a larger version of Figure 1, View of the Salon, 1799. The work was commissioned by Napoleon orally in September 1804, and Jaques-Louis started work on it on 21 December 1805 in the former chapel of the College of Cluny, near the Sorbonne, which served as a workshop. A former pupil of David, Gros turned to the depiction of current political and military events in a lively, colouristic fashion in response to the propaganda demands of the Napoleonic regime. For one thing, it was not commissioned by means of the democratic system of the competition, which had become the standard method of distributing official patronage during the Revolution. It was in the face of this kind of scepticism and, more specifically, in the face of widespread rumours that French losses were far higher than was admitted in the Bulletin that the imperial propaganda machine launched a campaign to persuade the French people that Eylau had been a great victory. Portraits of the emperor in his ceremonial robes were commissioned from several established artists; these all revived a traditional type of royal portraiture from the eighteenth century. It did however give rise to the creation of one of the most remarkable portraits of the period. Boyd painted it in late fall, in Tennessee. All eyes are turned towards Napoleon, who is the center of the composition. The portrait includes a bust of Napoleon towards which Pauline looks and gestures. Interactive feature not available in single page view (. The novel titled ' Clisson et Eugnie' tells a fictional story of the young soldiers relationship with Bernardine Eugnie Dsire Clary. Her sister-in-law, Caroline, was less lucky, her husband Marrot was executed by anti-Napoleonic forces in 1815 and she died in excile Florence in 1839. Using the Personal framework, we explore the artists personal situation how their history, beliefs and influences may be evident in the art work. Photo: Bridgeman Art Library, Click to see plate 19 Pierre-Narcisse Gurin, Bonaparte Pardoning the Rebels of Cairo, 1808, oil on canvas, 365 x 500 cm, Chteaux de Versailles et de Trianon. LOOK CLOSELY. She was a court lady of Josephine. The subject of insurgents resisting Napoleonic rule during the ill-fated Egyptian campaign was disturbing and potentially subversive. A painting of a person or a group of people is called a portrait. By contrast, Gros shows Bonaparte in the thick of battle, striding ahead while simultaneously looking back to rally his troops on. (274.3 x 274.3 cm). It was subsequently bought by Francis Howard, who then donated it to the Muse de l'Arme in 1954. Photo: Bridgeman Art Library. Photo: Bridgeman Art Library, Plate 21 Antonio Canova, Napoleon, 1802, marble. Photo: Bridgeman Art Library, Plate 18 Franois Grard, The battle of Austerlitz, 1810, oil on canvas, 510 x 958 cm, Chteaux de Versailles et de Trianon. In it, David wholly abandons the visual austerity and sculptural simplicity of his earlier work in order to capture the magnificence of the ceremony in a riot of colour and a mass of detail. This effect is reinforced by the smoothness of the highly finished manner used for the equestrian group, which contrasts with Gros's looser, livelier handling. It's the famous painting which shows Napoleon Bonaparte crossing the Swiss Alps with his army on a magnificent horse. In this respect, it is important to note the tricolour flag being carried by the artillery men struggling up the mountainside; it identifies them with the nation, just as Napoleon appears here less as an individual than as the embodiment of military glory. One of the most opulent rooms in the Chateau is her bedroom which is decorated to look like a tent. Photo: Bridgeman Art Library, Plate 12 Franois Grard, Napoleon in his Imperial Robes, 1805, oil on canvas, 227 x 145 cm, Chteaux de Versailles et de Trianon. From 7 February to 22 March 1808, the work was exhibited at the Salon annual painting display in 1808, and it was presented to the Salon decennial prize competition in 1810. This conception of artistic creation as self-expression in fact crystallized during the period that we are considering, and is one of the defining features of Romanticism as a broad cultural movement. In fact, the painting originated as a commission from the King of Spain for a gallery of famous military leaders, but a copy was immediately ordered by Bonaparte himself (this is the version illustrated here). By comparison, The Battle of Nazareth is more democratic not simply in terms of equalizing soldiers of different ranks but also in allowing the viewer's eye to wander over it freely. In doing so, we illuminate the broad cultural shift from the Enlightenment to Romanticism as it played out in Napoleonic painting. However, the terms of the competition were extremely tight; not only did the announcement include an account of the subject, but the letter also informed artists that a sketch of the site was available for consultation in Denon's offices. They were too committed to this belief to be able to be explicit about the nature of their anxiety in their criticism, but it is not at all difficult to read between the lines. Another difference is the much greater prominence that Gros gives to Murat, on a rearing horse and sumptuously dressed; the contrast with this bold and assertive figure highlights Napoleon's saintly compassion and further distances him from responsibility for the horrors on view. The painting is a nice little piece called "Side Step" (below). If so, the gamble did not entirely pay off; although Ingres did succeed in selling the picture, the critical reception was almost unrelievedly hostile. Also, his equestrian pose means that he looks down on everyone (soldiers and viewers alike) from a great height, whereas Gros's figure is roughly on a level with his men. However, it also helps to distinguish this portrayal from those produced once Napoleon had embarked on a political career. O'Brien, D. (1995) Antoine-Jean Gros in Italy, O'Brien, D. (2003) Propaganda and the republic of the arts in Antoine-Jean Gros's, Shelton, A.C. (1999) The critical reception of Ingres's portraits (18221855), in G. Tinterow and P. Conisbee (eds), Siegfried, S. (1980) The politics of criticism at the Salon of 1806: Ingres's, Printable page generated Saturday, 1 July 2023, 8:28 AM. This statement at once draws on the classical tradition of idealized representation (such as we have seen in David's Marat) and expresses a typically Napoleonic faith in the charisma of the heroic leader. Compare Gros's portrait of Bonaparte (Plate 5) to Rigaud's of a French marshal (Plate 7). In reality, Arcole bridge was not crossed. The latter uses iconography in an entirely literal-minded fashion, as if its former meanings still automatically applied and as if Napoleon's claim to the throne was undisputed. Napoleonic propaganda painting was very tightly controlled. Part of the logic behind the emphasis on military painting, therefore, was the assumption that feats of arms and works of art both testified to the glory of Napoleonic rule. Click to see plate 8 Thomas Piroli, after Gros, General Bonaparte at the Bridge of Arcole, 1797, etching with aquatint, 72 x 59 cm, Bibliothque Nationale de France, Paris. The hand of justice, which had supposedly belonged to Charlemagne, was in fact fabricated for Napoleon's coronation. We begin with relatively simple single-figure portraits and moving on to elaborate narrative compositions such as Jaffa and Eylau As you saw in the introduction to the course, we have three key aims. Rather than sharing the dynamism of the earlier painting, David's has a strangely frozen quality, despite depicting energetic action. The commission marked the occasion of Napoleon's coronation. The only problem with such an interpretation is that it is a bit too neat and fails to account for the sheer abundance of religious allusions. Napoleon played a huge role in the fight against the revolutionary government. Photo: Bridgeman Art Library. The painting remained the property of David until 1819, when it was transferred to the Royal Museums, where it was stored in the reserves until 1837. Since the tricolour can be seen flying from the top of the city, the painting also appeals to patriotic pride in French victories and thus endorses a colonialist agenda, while also conveniently skirting round the fact that the French did not hold Jaffa. But following a renovation of the Adolphus in 2018, the work's been given a prominent position, overlooking the City Hall Bar. Now read Denon's account of the subject and consider the following questions. Whether he is depicted in his iconic bicorne hat or dressed in regal finery, each painting is a celebration of Napoleon's remarkable life and career. The exhibition titled, No color in the pages, will open to the public on Saturday, June 5 and will continue through July 10, 2021.Join us on Saturday, July 10 at Noon for a conversation between Samuel Levi Jones and Chicago-based artist Kellie Romany. He is captivated by her but as they talk as they get to know each other as they proceed through a trawl of Italy's artistic treasures, he's increasingly worried by the sense that there's something not quite proper about Corrine, that she's too interesting to be safe, and crucially that she's not a demure enough character. Let us now consider another relatively early portrait, David's Bonaparte Crossing the Alps, in which the then First Consul is shown at the Great Saint Bernard at the start of the campaign which led to the defeat of the Austrians at Marengo in June 1800 (see Plate 10). As we look to his clothing he is dressed. In a 1760 painting of the family of Count Nikolaus Plffy von Erdd by Martin van Meytens the Younger (famous for his court and aristocratic portraits), the family appear to have alarmingly-similar faces. It was this incident that was the most shocking from a contemporary European point of view, and the story rapidly gained currency in the British press (see Figure 5), some of the victims having survived to tell it to the British, who entered Jaffa after the French left. Madamme Benoists career was brought to an end by her husband s official promotion. She was dressed like Domenichino Sybil. In the end, the whole Decennial Competition collapsed and no prizes were awarded. The original portrait smacks of propaganda. Photo: Bridgeman Art Library. As we have seen, Napoleonic reality involved extensive editing, both in terms of the selection of a particular moment and of the personages and actions to be included. In fact, Gros was so thrilled when the emperor gave him the Legion of Honour at the Salon that he proposed to celebrate the moment in a painting (see Figure 8). The crucial point is that it symbolized divine power and, when used for an earthly ruler, signified a divine right to rule. She shows that women can find a kind of fulfilment that is quite apart from the fulfilment that a domestic life and the love of a man can procure but what is perhaps to a feminist, disappointing, what is perhaps, old-fashioned, to the modern reader, is that ultimately that kind of fulfilment is set above the fulfilment that artistic genius can procure. The great man is something very different -he joins the majority of moral virtues to talent and genius; he has only lofty and noble motives for his behaviour The title of hero depends upon success, that of the great man does not always depend upon it. What elicited the comparison was the stiffness of the pose, meticulous attention to detail, and bright but restricted colour scheme (red, gold and white, essentially). The irony of this is that he never had such authority over his wife herself, as he did over the statue of her. A further example of this process is David's Distribution of the Eagle Standards (see Plate 30), exhibited at the Salon of 1810, which shows Napoleon accepting the army's oath of allegiance after his coronation; it was to have included Josephine seated on a throne behind Napoleon, but she had to be edited out after their divorce. Her dress was white, with a blue stole fastened beneath her breasts. This turn of events confirms that competitions were inherently problematic for the regime because they did not allow for the degree of control that it required. His awareness of the value of good publicity is also evident from the fact that he paid to have Gros's portrait engraved (see Plate 8), thereby ensuring that it would reach a wide audience. Other critics of the time were even more disturbed by the painting. This is the first full-length standing portrait we have looked at, and, for the first time, we see Bonaparte in an interior setting, which gives the image a more civilian character than the previous portraits where he is shown first and foremost as a military leader. Napoleon is one of the most painted and sculpted persons in history. Staels father, Jacques Necker, Finance Minister to Louis 16th, had no objections to his wife's salon, but he forbade her to pursue a literary career by publishing her works. Here her mouth is slightly open as if she is about to speak. The logic behind it was that, if Eylau was indeed the victory that the regime claimed it was, then it must be capable of pictorial representation like the battle of Austerlitz. Her principal concern was not so much with the oppression of women in general, but rather the particular plight of the woman writer. The text refers to his benevolent orders and calls him a great man. In Meynier's composition, the dead and dying in the foreground are (somewhat grotesquely) naked, but they do not dominate the space as much as those depicted by Gros, which lie in a confused heap, snow-sprinkled and blood-spattered, right across the front of the picture; there is even a corpse lying virtually beneath Napoleon's horse. Caroline is clad entirely in black and standing very upright in front of a desk. The incident with the Lithuanian was apparently Denon's invention. The same might be said of another Napoleonic painting, Girodet's Revolt at Cairo (see Plate 31), also exhibited in 1810, the idea for which came from Napoleon himself and caused Denon some anxiety; he wrote that he wished the emperor had specified which moment of the revolt should be depicted. Napoleon contemplated retreat but, when the Russians did so first, he declared victory even though the French had suffered immense losses. Photo: Bridgeman Art Library. As you will see, the fundamental problem driving Napoleonic propaganda was one of political legitimation: how to provide ideological justification for a leader who had seized power and whose rule rested ultimately on force. Madame de Stael died in 1817 after having seen her political ideas triumph over Napoleon. Not for normies Sorry, this post was deleted by the person who originally posted it. This painting is an equestrian portrait representing Napoleon Bonaparte, then first Consul, on his horse, while he was crossing the Saint Bernard. It succeeded neither as propaganda nor as a work of art. The twist in his body (torso facing to the right, head to the left) serves to animate the whole image. Note: the uppermost paper on the table is headed by the word traits (treaties) followed by a list of names, concluding with Amiens; below this are three further entries, which read 18 Brumaire, Concordat, Comices de Lyon. The countryside was entirely covered with thick snow over which were scattered dead bodies, wounded men and the remnants of arms of all kind; traces of blood contrasted with the whiteness of the snow; the places in which cavalry charges had taken place stood out on account of the numbers of dead, dying and abandoned horses; French detachments and Russian prisoners traversed this vast field of carnage in all directions, and removed the wounded in order to take them to the hospitals set up in the town. The Treaty of Amiens established a (temporary) peace with England in 1802; the Comices de Lyon was the election of Bonaparte as president of the Cisalpine Republic (northern Italy, effectively) in the same year. Advertisement Photo: Bridgeman Art Library, Click to see plate 6 Antoine-Jean Gros Bonaparte at the Bridge of Arcole, 1796, oil sketch, 72 x 59 cm, Louvre, Paris. Of course, Boilly's painting does not correspond to the scepticism that we know actually characterised popular attitudes to reports in the Bulletin. Choose your favorite Napoleon Bonaparte paintings from 1,849 available designs. By contrast, the first group of works commissioned by Denon (in 1806) virtually excluded scenes of French soldiers actually engaged in combat, even though all but one had a military subject. The kind of icon figure of the late 1790s turn of the century was Madame Recamier by David and there she sits on her chez long, looking very neo-classical, in beautiful white Indian muslin. Although the nudity and generalized drapery are conventional enough, the scene is not based on a literary text, as history paintings were supposed to be. As we will see, the image that he cultivated as ruler shifted away from the personal qualities of the hero towards the moral virtues of the great man. When Napoleon Bonaparte led his army across the Alps, he ordered the Italian states he conquered to hand . Given the institutional circumstances sketched out in the introduction to this course, the most effective way to use art as propaganda was with large-scale history paintings that would attract the attention and excite the interest of a large audience when they were exhibited in the Salon. In the painting she is dressed in a simple antique tunic, of the kind that Stael herself did in fact wear, and is accompanying herself on a lire. Photo: Victoria and Albert Picture Library, London/ Daniel McGrath/ Sara Hodges. His composure is heightened by contrast with the men on either side of him, one of whom covers his face with a handkerchief while the one kneeling on the right seems to want to protect him from infection. The plague-stricken are mostly naked and slumped on the ground in poses expressive of mental and physical anguish (cowering in a corner, tearing their hair, desperately reaching out, etc.). The oil painting has imposing dimensions it is almost 10 metres (33ft) wide by a little over 6 metres (20ft) tall. Although there may well have been other reasons, the decision must have been largely determined by the increasingly exclusive propaganda cult of Napoleon. Josephine's sister in law, Pauline, had a similarly elaborate bed in the grand Parisian house that she bought for herself in 1803, at which time she was a young widow. Photo: Bridgeman Art Library, Click to see plate 7 Hyacinthe Rigaud, Marshal Charles-Auguste de Matignon. As such, they can be seen as willing collaborators in the French colonial campaign. and our After the sculpture was placed in the Villa Borghese in 1814, visitors to Rome flocked to see it. Whereas, in the latter painting, Bonaparte's gaze is directed towards his soldiers, somewhere within the imaginary space that extends beyond the picture frame, David shows him looking outwards towards the viewer. Its important, however, to note that some of the austerity of David's painting comes from the fact that the painting is unfinished. Millet's painting, for all its sympathy for these poor figures, could still be read as "art" by viewers at an exhibition in Paris. Photo: Bridgeman Art Library, Plate 14 Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Bonaparte as First Consul, 1804, oil on canvas, 227.5 x 147 cm cm, Muse dArt Moderne et dArte Contemporain de la Ville de Lige. She was apparently his favourite sister, even though her scandalous behaviour was completely at odds with his expectations of proper feminine conduct. Click to see plate 17 Antoine-Jean Gros, The Battle of Aboukir, 1806, oil on canvas, 578 x 968 cm, Chteaux de Versailles et de Trianon. What kinds of claims does David make here on Napoleon's behalf, and how do they differ from those made by Ingres's portrait of Napoleon enthroned? Jacques Louis David's "Napoleon Crossing the Alps" is one of five near-identical versions of an equestrian reproduction of the likeness of Napoleon. Figure 3 Comte de Caylus, Jupiter, 175267, engraving, 8.3 5.6 cm, Bibliotheque nationale de France, Paris, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence. Sorry, this post was deleted by the person who originally posted it. Another Carolingian (the Frankish dynasty founded by Charlemagne (d.814)) (and ancient Roman) symbol of power appropriated by Napoleon was the imperial eagle, which appears carved on to the throne and woven into the carpet in Ingres's painting. Photo: Bridgeman Art Library, Plate 13 Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Napoleon on the Imperial Throne, 1806, oil on canvas, 260 x 163 cm, Muse de lArme, Paris. How might this contribute to the propagandist function of the painting? Scan this QR code to download the app now. Click to see plate 1 Jacques-Louis David, The Oath of the Horatii, oil on canvas, 329.9 x 428.8 cm, Louvre, Paris. Are the qualities required for leadership today the same as in the past?How are the leaders of our time represented?How does this compare to the way Napoleon has been depicted by David. In Eylau, therefore, the suffering caused by war is acknowledged (though displaced on to the enemy's soldiers), but the admission is counterbalanced by the portrayal of Napoleon as a humane leader. We can see that the bodice has got seams at the back, its a very taught, very tight, manages to hold the bust in place, so its really not a loose tube of fabric as we see in de Henriette Verninacs portrait. However, he also criticized the way that, as he saw it, the overall order of the composition is disrupted by the chaos and carnage of the scene. Ingres was thus out-of-step with official propaganda imagery. The work is on display at the Louvre Museum in Paris. The overall result is a painting that is not a conventional portrait but has something of the character of a history painting, in so far as it depicts a decisive moment of military action. This is a portrait of her supposedly by Gerard, which shows her just about at this time 1799/1800, and she does indeed look very attractive very plump, curly hair, a really rather unpleasant contrast, between her, her beauty, her status in society, and that of the sitter. This meant that the viewers whose attention was attracted by such a picture would be likely to absorb the version of reality that it presented without being aware of being manipulated. First, both paintings rely on a notion of France's civilizing mission, in which enlightened ideals are harnessed to a new nationalistic and also colonialist agenda. In this respect, Gros's use of traditional religious imagery differs fundamentally from that in David's painting of Marat. The great advantage of the early medieval monarchs as a source of legitimation was their remoteness from the Bourbon dynasty deposed by the Revolution. Renowned for being brave, fierce, proud and beautiful, for their lavish costume and their taste for sodomy, as such, they epitomized both the degradation and the fascination of the East for Europeans. One of them was the battle of Marengo, while the others were all drawn from his Egyptian (in fact, Middle Eastern) campaign of 17989, despite the fact it had ended in failure. It is also important to note that Napoleon in his Study was another unofficial portrait, having been commissioned by a Scottish admirer, Alexander Douglas, the future Duke of Hamilton. The dead were heaped on top of the dying in the midst of broken or burnt cases and dismantled cannon. It acknowledges that, without a sacred basis for its authority, power has to keep working to justify itself.