Napoleon Crossing the Alps by Jacques-Louis David

Napoleon Crossing the Alps by Jacques-Louis David

Calm on a fiery horse

Bonaparte sits a rearing grey stallion on a steep mountain track, turns his head to look out of the picture, and points up towards the summit. His red cloak and the horse’s mane and tail stream out in the same wind that drives the storm clouds. Behind him, small and far below, soldiers haul a cannon up the slope. Cut into the rocks in the foreground are three names: Bonaparte, and the two generals who had led armies over the Alps before him, Hannibal and Karolus Magnus — Charlemagne.

The picture and the crossing

The painting marks Bonaparte’s crossing of the Great St Bernard Pass with his army in May 1800, on the way to his victory at Marengo. In fact he made the crossing on a mule. He would not sit for the portrait, so David idealised the face and invented the drama. The first version was commissioned by King Charles IV of Spain; David and his studio went on to paint four more, and the image became the standard picture of Napoleon the conqueror.

Where it hangs

This version, painted in 1802, is the first of the two at the Palace of Versailles, and measures 272 by 232 centimetres. The first version, with an orange cloak and a piebald horse, is at the Château de Malmaison.

About this print

Made from a 4,695-pixel photograph of the original, enough to print sharply at up to about 31 inches on its longest side.

Sources: Palace of Versailles · Wikidata Q19801150 · Wikimedia Commons