Bourg-Saint-Pierre - Suíça
Castelo de Malmaison, Rueil-Malmaison, França
OST - 261x221 - 1801
Napoleon
Crossing the Alps (also known as Napoleon at the Saint-Bernard Pass or Bonaparte
Crossing the Alps; listed as Le Premier Consul franchissant les Alpes au
col du Grand Saint-Bernard) is any of 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 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. 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.
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.”
— 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.”
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.
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. 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.
In the
original version held at Malmaison (260 × 221 cm; 102⅓ × 87 in),
Bonaparte has an orange cloak, the crispin (cuff) of his gauntlet is
embroidered, the horse is piebald,
black and white, and the tack is
complete and includes a standing martingale.
The girth around
the horse's belly is a dark faded red. The officer holding a sabre in the
background is obscured by the horse's tail. Napoleon's face appears youthful.
The painting is signed in the yoke of the breastplate: L. DAVID YEAR IX.
The
Charlottenburg version (260 × 226 cm; 102⅓ × 89 in) shows Napoleon in
a red cloak mounted on a chestnut horse. The tack is simpler, lacking the
martingale, and the girth is grey-blue. There are traces of snow on the ground.
Napoleon's features are sunken with the faint hint of a smile. The picture is
signed L.DAVID YEAR IX.
In the first
Versailles version (272 × 232 cm; 107 × 91⅓ in), the horse is a
dappled grey, the tack is identical to that of the Charlottenburg version, and
the girth is blue. The embroidery of the gauntlet is simplified with the facing
of the sleeve visible under the glove. The landscape is darker and Napoleon's
expression is sterner. The picture is not signed.
The version
from the Belvedere (264 × 232 cm; 104 × 91⅓ in) is almost identical
to that of Versailles but is signed J.L.DAVID L.ANNO X.
The second
Versailles version (267 × 230 cm; 105 × 90½ in) shows a black and
white horse with complete tack but lacking the martingale. The girth is red.
The cloak is orange-red, the collar is black, and the embroidery of the
gauntlet is very simple and almost unnoticeable. The scarf tied around
Napoleon's waist is light blue. The officer with the sabre is again masked by
the tail of the horse. Napoleon's features are older, he has shorter hair,
and—as in the Charlottenburg version—there is the faint trace of a smile. The
embroidery and the style of the bicorne suggest that the picture was completed
after 1804. The picture is not dated but is signed L.DAVID.
The gesture is
omnipresent in David's painting, from St. Roch Interceding with the Virgin
for the Plague Stricken to Mars disarmed by Venus and the Graces. The
raised hands of the Oath
of the Horatii, the Tennis Court Oath or The
Distribution of the Eagles are rhetorical devices making pleading manifest
in the paintings. In The Death of Socrates, the philosopher—on the point
of drinking hemlock—continues teaching
his disciples with a gesture of reprimand at their emotional displays. In Napoleon
Crossing the Alps, the gesture leaves no doubt as to the will of the commander
to arrive to his goal. It does not indicate the summit, but rather shows
the observer the inevitability of victory and at the same time orders his
soldiers to follow. The bare rather than gloved hand may indicate Napoleon
desiring to appear as a peacemaker rather than a conqueror.
David uses
inscriptions to reinforce the symbolism in eight of his known works: Bélisaire
asking for Alms, Andromache Mourning Hector, The
Death of Marat, The Furrier of Saint-Fargeau (lost), Napoleon
Crossing the Alps, Sappho and Phaon, Napoleon in his Study, and Leonidas
at Thermopylae. In The Death of Marat, the dying revolutionary holds
a page with the name of his assassin, Charlotte Corday. Léonidas
in Thermopyles shows a Spartan engraving details of their sacrifice on
a wall. In this picture, the rocks bear the names of Hannibal and Charlemagne
alongside Bonaparte, linking them by their crossing of the Alps, and portraying
Napoleon as their successor. The inclusion of Charlemagne and the
"IMP" (signifying Imperator, i.e. Emperor) raises doubts as to the
level of Bonaparte's involvement with the addition of the inscriptions. Was it
coincidence or a hint of his ambitions? There is however, the possibility that
it was just an indication of Charlemagne's status as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.
The first two
copies were exhibited in the Louvre in
June 1801 alongside The Intervention of the Sabine Women, and although
there was an outcry in the press over the purchase, the painting quickly became
well known as a result of the numerous reproductions that were produced, the
image appearing everywhere from posters to postage stamps. It quickly became
the most reproduced image of Napoleon.
With this work
David took the genre of the equestrian portraiture to its zenith. No equestrian
portrait made under Napoleon gained such celebrity, perhaps with the exception
of Théodore
Géricault's The
Charging Chasseur of 1812.
With
Bonaparte's exile in 1815 the portraits fell out of fashion, but by the late
1830s they were once again being hung in the art galleries and museums.
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