Napoleon Crossing the Alps

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Napoleon Crossing the Alps: Jacques-Louis David

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Jacques-Louis David Oil Painting - Napoleon Crossing the Alps

Keywords: Napoleon, Crossing, Alps

Work Overview: Napoleon Crossing the Alps (Napoleon at the Saint-Bernard Pass; Bonaparte Crossing the Alps)
Artist Jacques-Louis David
Year 1801
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 261 cm × 221 cm ( 102 1⁄3 in × 87 in)
Location Château de Malmaison, Rueil-Malmaison

Napoleon Crossing the Alps (also known as Napoleon at the Saint-Bernard Pass or Bonaparte Crossing the Alps) is the title given to the five versions of an oil on canvas equestrian portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte painted by the French artist Jacques-Louis David between 1801 and 1805. Initially commissioned by the King of Spain, the composition shows a strongly idealized view of the real crossing that Napoleon and his army made across the Alps through the Great St. Bernard Pass in May 1800.

Having taken power in France during the 18 Brumaire on 9 November 1799, Napoleon was determined to return to Italy to reinforce the French troops in the country and retake the territory seized by the Austrians in the preceding years. In the spring of 1800 he led the Reserve Army across the Alps through the Great St. Bernard Pass. The Austrian forces, under Michael von Melas, were laying siege to Masséna in Genoa and Napoleon hoped to gain the element of surprise by taking the trans-Alpine route. By the time Napoleon's troops arrived, Genoa had fallen; but he pushed ahead, hoping to engage the Austrians before they could regroup. The Reserve Army fought a battle at Montebello on 9 June before eventually securing a decisive victory at the Battle of Marengo.

The installation of Napoleon as First Consul and the French victory in Italy allowed for a rapprochement with Charles IV of Spain. While talks were underway to re-establish diplomatic relations, a traditional exchange of gifts took place. Charles received Versailles-manufactured pistols, dresses from the best Parisian dressmakers, jewels for the queen, and a fine set of armour for the newly reappointed Prime Minister, Manuel Godoy. In return Napoleon was offered sixteen Spanish horses from the royal stables, portraits of the king and queen by Goya, and the portrait that was to be commissioned from David. The French ambassador to Spain, Charles-Jean-Marie Alquier, requested the original painting from David on Charles' behalf. The portrait was to hang in the Royal Palace of Madrid as a token of the new relationship between the two countries. David, who had been an ardent supporter of the Revolution but had transferred his fervour to the new Consulate, was eager to undertake the commission.

On learning of the request, Bonaparte instructed David to produce three further versions: one for the Château de Saint-Cloud, one for the library of Les Invalides, and a third for the palace of the Cisalpine Republic in Milan. A fifth version was produced by David and remained in his various workshops until his death.

The original painting remained in Madrid until 1812, when it was taken by Joseph Bonaparte after his abdication as King of Spain. He took it with him when he went into exile in the United States, and it hung at his Point Breeze estate near Bordentown, New Jersey. The painting was handed down through his descendants until 1949, when his great grandniece, Eugenie Bonaparte, bequeathed it to the museum of the Château de Malmaison.

The version produced for the Château de Saint-Cloud from 1801 was removed in 1814 by the Prussian soldiers under von Blücher who offered it to Frederick William III King of Prussia. It is now held in the Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin.

The 1802 copy from Les Invalides was taken down and put into storage on the Bourbon Restoration of 1814; but in 1837, under the orders of Louis-Philippe, it was rehung in his newly declared museum at the Palace of Versailles, where it remains to the present day.

The 1803 version was delivered to Milan but confiscated in 1816 by the Austrians. However, the people of Milan refused to give it up and it remained in the city until 1825. It was finally installed at the Belvedere in Vienna in 1834. It remains there today, now part of the collection of the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere.

The version kept by David until his death in 1825 was exhibited at the Bazar Bonne-Nouvelle (fr) in 1846 (where it was remarked upon by Baudelaire). In 1850 it was offered to the future Napoleon III by David's daughter, Pauline Jeanin, and installed at the Tuileries Palace. In 1979, it was given to the museum at the Palace of Versailles.

The commission specified a portrait of Napoleon standing in the uniform of the First Consul, probably in the spirit of the portraits that were later produced by Antoine-Jean Gros, Robert Lefèvre (Napoleon in his coronation robes) and Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (Napoleon I on his Imperial Throne), but David was keen to paint an equestrian scene. The Spanish ambassador, Ignacio Muzquiz, informed Napoleon and asked him how he would like to be represented. Napoleon initially requested to be shown reviewing the troops but eventually decided on a scene showing him crossing the Alps.

In reality the crossing had been made in fine weather and Bonaparte had been led across by a guide a few days after the troops, mounted on a mule.[1] However, from the outset the painting was first and foremost propaganda, and Bonaparte asked David to portray him "calm, mounted on a fiery steed" (Calme sur un cheval fougueux), and it is probable that he also suggested the addition of the names of the other great generals who had led their forces across the Alps: Hannibal and Charlemagne.

Production

David's unfinished portrait of Napoleon from 1798
Few drafts and preparatory studies were made, contrary to David's normal practice. Gros, David's pupil, produced a small oil sketch of a horse being reined in, which was a probable study for Napoleon's mount, and the notebooks of David show some sketches of first thoughts on the position of the rider. The lack of early studies may in part be explained by Bonaparte's refusal to sit for the portrait. He had sat for Gros in 1796 on the insistence of Joséphine de Beauharnais, but Gros had complained that he had not had enough time for the sitting to be of benefit. David had also managed to persuade him to sit for a portrait in 1798, but the three hours that the fidgety and impatient Bonaparte had granted him did not give him sufficient time to produce a decent likeness. On accepting the commission for the Alpine scene, it appears that David expected that he would be sitting for the study, but Bonaparte refused point blank, not only on the basis that he disliked sitting but also because he believed that the painting should be a representation of his character rather than his physical appearance:

— Sit? For what good? Do you think that the great men of Antiquity for whom we have images sat?
— But Citizen First Consul, I am painting you for your century, for the men who have seen you, who know you, they will want to find a resemblance.
— A resemblance? It isn't the exactness of the features, a wart on the nose which gives the resemblance. It is the character that dictates what must be painted...Nobody knows if the portraits of the great men resemble them, it is enough that their genius lives there.[2]

The refusal to attend a sitting marked a break in the portraiture of Napoleon in general, with realism abandoned for political iconography: after this point the portraits become emblematic, capturing an ideal rather than a physical likeness.

Unable to convince Napoleon to sit for the picture, David took a bust as a starting point for his features, and made his son perch on top of a ladder as a model for the posture. The uniform is more accurate, however, as David was able to borrow the uniform and bicorne worn by Bonaparte at Marengo. Two of Napoleon's horses were used as models for the "fiery steed": the mare "la Belle" which features in the version held at Charlottenburg, and the famous grey Marengo which appears in those held at Versailles and Vienna. Engravings from Voyage pittoresque de la Suisse served as models for the landscape.

The first of the five portraits was painted in four months, from October 1800 to January 1801. On completion of the initial version, David immediately began work on the second version which was finished on 25 May, the date of Bonaparte's inspection of the portraits at David's Louvre workshop.

Two of David's pupils assisted him in producing the different versions: Jérôme-Martin Langlois worked primarily on the first two portraits, and George Rouget produced the copy for Les Invalides.

Technique
In contrast to his predecessors François Boucher and Jean-Honoré Fragonard, who employed a red or grey undercoat as a base colour on which to build up the painting, David employed the white background of the canvas directly underneath his colours, as some of his unfinished works show, such as his first attempt at a portrait of Bonaparte or his sketch of the Tennis Court Oath.

David worked using two or three layers. After having captured the basic outline with an ochre drawing, he would flesh out the painting with light touches, using a brush with little paint, and concentrating on the blocks of light and shade rather than the details. The results of this technique are particularly noticeable in the original version of Napoleon Crossing the Alps from Malmaison, especially in the treatment of the rump of the horse. With the second layer, David concentrated on filling out the details and correcting possible defects.

The third and last layer was used for finishing touches: blending of tones and smoothing the surface. David often left this task to his assistants.

All five versions of the picture are of roughly the same large size (2.6 x 2.2 m). Bonaparte appears mounted in the uniform of a general in chief, wearing a gold-trimmed bicorne, and armed with a Mamluk-style sabre. He is wreathed in the folds of a large cloak which billows in the wind. His head is turned towards the viewer, and he gestures with his right hand toward the mountain summit.[1] His left hand grips the reins of his steed. The horse rears up on its back legs, its mane and tail whipped against its body by the same wind that inflates Napoleon's cloak. In background a line of the soldiers interspersed with artillery make their way up the mountain. Dark clouds hang over the picture and in front of Bonaparte the mountains rise up sharply. In the foreground BONAPARTE, HANNIBAL and KAROLVS MAGNVS IMP. are engraved on rocks. On the breastplate yoke of the horse, the picture is signed and dated.

After Napoleon's rise to power and the victory at Marengo, the fashion was for allegorical portraits of Bonaparte, glorifying the new Master of France, such as Antoine-François Callet's Allegory of the Battle of Marengo, featuring Bonaparte dressed in Roman costume and flanked by winged symbols of victory, and Pierre Paul Prud'hon's Triumph of Bonaparte, featuring the First Consul in a chariot accompanied by winged figures. David chose symbolism rather than allegory. His figure of Bonaparte is heroic and idealized but it lacks the concrete symbols of allegorical painting.

Faithful to his desire for a "return to the pure Greek" (retour vers le grec pur), David applied the radical neo-classicism that he had demonstrated in his 1799 The Intervention of the Sabine Women to the portrait of Bonaparte, with the use of contemporary costumes the only concession. The horse from the first version is almost identical in posture and colouring to one featured in the melee of The Intervention of the Sabine Women.

The youthful figure of Bonaparte in the initial painting reflects the aesthetic of the "beautiful ideal" symbolized by the "Apollo Belvedere" and taken to its zenith in The Death of Hyacinthos by Jean Broc, one of David's pupils. The figure of the beautiful young man which David had already painted in La Mort du jeune Bara is also present in The Intervention of the Sabine Women. The youthful posture of David's son, forced into posing for the artist by Bonaparte's refusal to sit, is evident in the attitude of the Napoleon portrayed in the painting; with his legs folded like the Greek riders, the youthful figure evokes the young Alexander the Great mounted on Bucephalus as seen on his sarcophagus (now in the archaeological museum of Istanbul).

For the horse, David takes as a starting point the equestrian statue of Peter the Great, "The Bronze Horseman" by Étienne Maurice Falconet in Saint Petersburg, duplicating the calm handling of a rearing horse on rocky ground. There are also hints of Titus in The Destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem by Nicolas Poussin, a painter who strongly influenced David's work. The horses of the Greek statuary which appear many times in David's notebooks point to the bas-reliefs of the Parthenon as a source of inspiration.

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Some find it stiff and lifeless, proof of David’s ineptness at capturing movement. Some see it not as art, but propaganda, pure and simple. Some snigger at its overblown, action-packed, cliff-hanging momentousness, with shades of “Hi ho Silver, away!” Some have it down as a sort of beginning of the end moment in David’s career, before he officially became Napoleon’s artist-lackey. Whatever one might say, though (and a lot has been said about Napoleon Crossing the Alps), it is still arguably the most successful portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte that was ever made. Personally, I love it.
Background
Completed in four months, from October 1800 to January 1801, it signals the dawning of a new century. After a decade of terror and uncertainty following the Revolution, France was emerging as a great power once more. At the heart of this revival, of course, was General Napoleon Bonaparte who, in 1799, had staged an uprising against the revolutionary government (a coup d’état), installed himself as First Consul, and effectively become the most powerful man in France (a few years later he will declare himself emperor).
In May 1800 he led his troops across the Alps in a military campaign against the Austrians which ended in their defeat in June at the Battle of Marengo. It is this achievement the painting commemorates. The portrait was commissioned by Charles IV, then King of Spain, to be hung in a gallery of paintings of other great military leaders housed in the Royal Palace in Madrid.
Napoleon and the Portrait
Famously, Napoleon offered David little support in executing the painting. Refusing to sit for it, he argued that: “Nobody knows if the portraits of the great men resemble them, it is enough that their genius lives there.” All David had to work from was an earlier portrait and the uniform Napoleon had worn at Marengo. One of David’s sons stood in for him, dressed up in the uniform and perched on top of a ladder. This probably accounts for the youthful physique of the figure.
Napoleon, however, was not entirely divorced from the process. He was the one who settled on the idea of an equestrian portrait: “calme sur un cheval fougueux” (calm on a fiery horse), were his instructions to the artist. And David duly obliged. What better way, after all, to demonstrate Napoleon's ability to wield power with sound judgment and composure. The fact that Napoleon did not actually lead his troops over the Alps but followed a couple of days after them, travelling on a narrow path on the back of a mule is not the point!

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Analytical frameworks are a tool for unpacking and examining an art work using different viewpoints. The VCE Art Study Design describes four frameworks – Formal, Personal, Cultural and Contemporary. When we use the Formal framework, we analyse how the artist has used the elements and principles of art to convey meanings or messages. We examine the use of style, materials and techniques. Using the Personal framework, we explore the artist’s personal situation – how their history, beliefs and influences may be evident in the art work. We can also think about the ways that our own experiences affect how we view the art work. The Cultural framework is the one we use when we are examining the social, cultural and historical factors that surround the artist and that are evident in the art work. When we discuss how current ideas or ways of thinking influence our view of an art work (whether it is a more recent work or one from long in the past) we are using the Contemporary framework. Using the Contemporary framework we also explore how contemporary materials, media and ideas affect our understanding of a work.

In Jacques-Louis David’s Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul, crossing the Alps at Great St. Bernard Pass, 20 May 1800 of 1803, a uniformed Napoleon sits comfortably astride a wild-eyed, rearing horse on a snow-covered mountainside, his bright red cape whipped by the wind. One hand firmly grips the reins while the other points skyward over the peaks. Under the barrel of the horse’s chest the figures of soldiers can be seen pushing equipment upward through the bleak landscape.

The strong use of diagonals gives the painting a sense of dynamism, the highest point of the red cape propelling the eye forward, mirroring the gesture of the mounted soldier and suggesting the direction and momentum of the attack. Wind rakes the horse’s mane and tail and sends the dark clouds sliding across the sky, suggesting the dynamic forces of nature harnessed by the invading army. Horse and rider are illuminated as if in divine affirmation of Napoleon’s power.

Amid the wind and movement, Napoleon’s expression is steady, his eyes focused and intense. The painting’s red, white and blue – the colours of the Republic – lend boldness to the image and mirror the tricolour flag that waves in the corner of the composition, emphasising the force of the nation personified in the heroic figure.

Personal Framework

As a fervent supporter of the Revolution, David was captured by the charismatic power of Napoleon and the victories he brought the Republic. Although Napoleon’s proclamation of himself as Consul for life and then Emperor were in conflict with David’s Republican beliefs in democracy, liberty and equality, David believed in Napoleon as a saviour of France and benefited from many commissions to record the ceremonies and people of the new regime.

After meeting Napoleon, David is said to have spoken to his students of Napoleon’s appearance: ‘What a beautiful head he has! It is pure … beautiful like (the) antique.’1 In a statement that reveals something of David’s desire for recognition also, he said, ‘I shall slide into posterity in the shadow of my hero.’ 2

David’s personal artistic style developed from years spent studying in Italy. His compositions were clear, Classical and somewhat austere. Among his early works were many which drew on allegories from Classical history to comment on events and ideas of his own time, but he was among the first to mythologise contemporary events. His depiction of Napoleon crossing the Alps drew on his knowledge of Classical equestrian sculpture.

Cultural Framework

This painting records the crossing of the Alps by Napoleon’s army into Italy on a campaign that led to a series of military victories for Napoleon’s forces. The painting is an idealised one rather than a depiction of an actual scene. In reality, Napoleon would have worn a greatcoat rather than a cape, was not a confident rider and crossed the pass on a mule rather than a horse.

The treacherous nature of the mountain terrain meant that all equipment and people were transported on foot or by mule, and horses were led. His troops were initially undisciplined, poorly equipped and dispirited, but were roused and rallied by the charismatic power of their leader and the victories they were able to achieve.

Inscribed into the rocks on which the horse rears are the names Karolus Magnus and Hannibal. Bonaparte is newly inscribed alongside them. Karolus Magnus is the Latin for Charles the Great, also known as Charlemagne, King of the Franks and Emperor of the Romans, who created an empire that spanned Central and Western Europe. During his reign he conquered Italy and was named Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III. Hannibal was a Carthaginian military commander who led his forces across the Alps to conquer Italy.

Acutely aware of the power of the image, Napoleon commissioned David to paint him as a successor to the great empire-builders of history. It was one of many images that established the persona of Napoleon as a heroic and extraordinary leader of men.

Though David’s depiction of Napoleon is clearly an image from the past, the painting unmistakably conveys the timeless notion of a man in control, with power over both himself and the natural world, the forces of destiny swirling around him.

The use of aggrandising imagery to improve an audience’s perceptions of the subject is a tactic still much in use: Russian President Vladimir Putin has been known to pose for the media bare-chested astride a horse; deceased North Korean leader Kim Jong Il was said to promote his own legend with stories – that at his birth rainbows spontaneously appeared across the sky, that he never needed to defecate and that on his first attempt at golf, he achieved eleven holes in one.

Today’s leaders frequently use the media of popular culture to manipulate opinion: Twitter and Facebook have joined television, radio and print media as ways to get messages across. Spin doctors are employed to skew the way that events are portrayed.

Today’s political leaders also like to emphasise their connection to the ‘everyman’, removing the boundaries between themselves as the holders of power and the voters. Napoleon understood this too and commissioned images of his visits to the sick and dying.

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The relationship between Napoleon Bonaparte and Jacques-Louis David was tumultuous, but we tend to think rather of the images the latter made of the former, which helped the cause of the general, First Consul then Emperor during fifteen years of power. David started this portrait following the failure of a first monumental portrait which was supposed to commemorate the treaty of Campoformio (18 October, 1797) the famously incomplete version of which remains housed which remains in the Musée du Louvre. It was ordered by the ambassador of Spain for his master, King Charles IV, who wanted to place a figurative representation of the new hero of Europe in his ‘room of the great captains’ in the Royal Palace in Madrid. The commission, which is not well documented, may have come before the represented events, at the end of 1799 or the beginning of 1800. The painting was completed between september 1800 and January 1801. It commemorates the victorious crossing of the St bernard in May 1800 pass by the army reserve under the direction of the First Consul Bonaparte, the first stage of his triumphal reconquest of Italy. With great audacity, Bonaparte shocked everyone in crossing the pass reputed to be unnavigable during spring. With this exploit he recalled the great captains of the past, whose names are inscribed on the rock at the horses feet: Hannibal, who crossed the alps with his elephants in 218 during the second Punic war, and Charlemagne in 773, in the struggle against the Lombards. If one believes the legend, Napoleon wished to be represented ‘calmly seated upon a spirited horse’, even though he actually crossed the pass on a mule. What is more, the First Consul did not even pose for the portrait; David worked in his atelier with models, for the outfit, according to tradition, he took inspiration from a uniform borrowed from the First Consul, which he had worn at the battle of Marengo. The first Spanish version of the composition, later seized by Joseph Bonaparte in Madrid and bequeathed by his descendants to the museum at Chateau Malmaison in 1949, was immediately followed by various copies, all destined for prominent buildings: the first for chateau de St Cloud, the consular residence, from where it was seized by Blücher in 1815, taken triumphantly to Berlin and given to the King of Prussia, before being placed in a museum in 1816 (it is now at Charlottenburg palace); the second was placed in the Hôtel des Invalides (December 1802), then given to the royal museums in 1816, from where it was sent to Versailles under Louis-Philippe; the next was destined for the Palace of the Italian Republic in Milan (Spring 1803), from where it was transported to Vienna in 1834 before being placed in a museum (Kunsthistorisches Museum, presented in the Belvedere). A final example, probably painted at the beginning of 1803, whose destination remains unknown, remained at David’s atelier and was given by his daughter to the nephews of the Emperor, then acquired by the French State from the Prince Napoleon in 1979 and placed at Versailles. The celebrations of the bicentenary of the epic story of Napoleon fifteen years ago confirmed the iconic status of David’s composition, the archetypal representation of the hero of the Revolution and probably the most famous image of Napoleon in the world.

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