Great Paintings Explained: Napoleon Crossing the Alps by Jacques-Louis David
A perfectly exuberant painting that immortalises a leader
This is a remarkable image. The French military leader Napoleon Bonaparte sits astride a rearing steed, his arm raised into the air, his finger pointing onwards to the Alps mountain range which his soldiers are about to cross.
I wonder how many paintings in the history of Western art have managed to distil their message so clearly, so precisely — so stubbornly — as this painting does.
It is above all a picture about confidence. Napoleon Crossing the Alps gives us the leader in a moment of utter self-assurance. No matter what perils lie ahead — and crossing the Alps in the early 19th century certainly was an undertaking full of peril — the commander on his horse shows absolutely no hint of discouragement.
The sky leans in at an angle, brewing with an incoming storm. In the middle distance, a line of soldiers paces up the slopes of the mountain, carrying swords and pushing wheeled cannons.
However, the painting was a lie. In reality, Napoleon’s crossing had been made in fine weather, not during pulsating storms as the painting suggests. Moreover, his troops had gone ahead several days before him and Napoleon actually made the crossing mounted on a mule.
Yet nothing can detract from the unshakeable swagger of the scene depicted, which is what makes this painting such a powerful and interesting image: it shows just what art is capable of.
A Potent Depiction
Painted by the French artist Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), the image is at once a propaganda billboard and magnetic work of art.
David was a preeminent painter of the Neoclassical school. This was a style of painting that left behind the frippery of Rococo and turned instead to a more austere and intense means of depiction.
Just look at the face of the painting’s hero. Framed by his embroidered collar, Napoleon’s eyes are steadfast, his brow sufficiently rigid. And never before in art has a wind-swept curl of hair been made to stand for so much.
What makes Napoleon Crossing the Alps so different from most other history paintings is the fact that it registers so powerfully as a single gesture.
For whilst the title of the painting suggests a narrative — a story that might have taken days or weeks to unfold — the painting itself is forged in a single moment of time.
Napoleon’s bicorne (the style of hat worn) is gold-trimmed. He is armed with a Mamluk-style sabre. Perhaps most of all, it is the billowing red cloak around his shoulders that acts as the political sign par excellence: the red flag of the revolutionary movement, the colour of assertion, vitality and physical power, perhaps even a sign of danger.
And then there is the gust of wind that animates everything into movement, from the red cloak to the flaxen mane of the horse.
It can be no coincidence that the wind is billowing in the direction of Napoleon’s onward journey. Kings and leaders have often sought to depict themselves as divinely chosen rulers, as if their powers were not claimed but ordained from above.
The wind in this painting suggests something similar: that the greater forces of nature are not competing with the French leader but actually working in his favour, pushing him on to inevitable glory.
Napoleon Crossing the Alps
Napoleon’s crossing of the Alps took place in 1800 after his troops seized power in France during the previous winter. His intention now was to return to Italy to reclaim territories lost in the preceding years.
In the spring of 1800, Napoleon led the Reserve Army across the Alps through the St. Bernard Pass — the favoured route of most who crossed the mountain range.
Back in the 18th and 19th centuries, long before the mountaineer Sir Leslie Stephen described the Alps as “Europe’s playground“, the highest mountains in Europe were stocked with mortal dangers. Bandits lurked in the crevices, avalanches and rockfalls were an ever-present threat, and the sheer cold made the peaks a life-threatening prospect. There was even a morgue built at the monastery at the St. Bernard Pass to store the frozen corpses, since not everyone who attempted the crossing made it.
Charles Dickens also happened to pass through the St. Bernard Pass in 1846, and later included a scene set in the mortuary in his novel Little Dorrit. In a letter to a friend, he described the setting in typically flavoursome tones:
“I wish to God you could see that place. A great hollow on the top of a range of dreadful mountains, fenced in by riven rocks of every shape and colour: and in the midst, a black lake, with phantom clouds perpetually stalking over it. Peaks, and points, and plains of eternal ice and snow, bounding the view, and shutting out the world on every side: the lake reflecting nothing: and no human figure in the scene.”
And it was in this dramatic location that David chose to set his painted portrait of Napoleon.
Commission
This image of Napoleon Crossing the Alps was in fact one of five versions that David painted between 1801 and 1805 – which in itself demonstrates how successful the painting was.
The first of these, in which Napoleon is shown in a slightly less persuasive yellow cloak, was commissioned by Charles IV, the King of Spain, with whom Napoleon had established cordial relations.
Napoleon was consulted on how he would like to be depicted, to which he asked David to portray him as “calm, mounted on a fiery steed”.
All five versions follow this pattern; otherwise, only minor variances differentiate the five versions, mainly in the colouring of the cloak and horse.
Of particular note are the names engraved on rocks in the foreground, which read “BONAPARTE”, “HANNIBAL” and “KAROLVS MAGNVS IMP”. These names refer to the other great generals who had led their forces across the Alps: Hannibal and Charlemagne (his name is Latinised in the inscription) along with Napoleon’s own family name, Bonaparte.
Finally, it is worth taking a moment to compare the David painting with a later image of Napoleon crossing the Alps, in this one painted by Paul Delaroche in 1850.
In this later painting, made nearly 30 years after Napoleon’s death, the military leader has little of the noble vigour of the earlier work. Here, the crossing is undertaken by a mule and Napoleon’s bearing is reflective, perhaps even a little world-weary.
It feels like an altogether more truthful image. But which of the two paintings is more memorable?
The answer can perhaps be gleaned from the fact that the earlier version painted by David was quickly reproduced by illustrators and began appearing on posters, pamphlets and on postage stamps across France, establishing itself as the defining image of the French leader. It has since become the most reproduced depiction of Napoleon.
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