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while the sitter’s status endowed the image with historical importance. The most renowned eighteenth-century equestrian portrait was Etienne-Maurice Falconet’s bronze Peter the Great (1766–82, Figure 3.4), commissioned by Peter’s successor Catherine the Great for Decemberists’ Square in St Petersburg. Falconet studied privately in Paris with the sculptor Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne (1679–1731), was accepted

Figure 3.4

Etienne-Maurice Falconet, Peter the Great, 1766–82. Bronze, twice life-size. Decemberists’

Square, St Petersburg, Russia.

Find out what political activist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–65) thought about Marat at www.routledge.com/

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into the Académie Royale in 1754, exhibited regularly at the Salon, and frequently received royal commissions. He was the Marquise de Pompadour’s favorite sculptor.

Peter the Great was a titanic project that took more than 12 years for Falconet and his female assistant, Marie-Anne Collot (1748–1821), to complete. Because the aging artist had failing eyesight, Collot’s skill in modeling was indispensable. Surmounting a 1,350–ton granite boulder (“Thunder Rock”) transported from Finland in winter over WKHIUR]HQ%DOWLF6HDWKLVFRPPDQGLQJHTXHVWULDQVWDWXHZDVDÀWWLQJPRQXPHQWWR

the tsar who oriented Russia toward the West by building a new capital, St Petersburg, on the eastern shore of the Baltic (1703). Peter the Great serenely commands a rearing horse, beneath whose hooves the serpent of evil is about to be crushed.

Falconet adopted the equestrian (ruler-on-horseback) formula to equate Peter’s greatness with that of ancient Roman emperors. The status of equestrian portraiture can be traced to the famous second-century Marcus Aurelius monument on Rome’s Capitoline Hill (the only surviving equestrian monument from antiquity, saved only because after the fall of the Roman Empire, people assumed it UHSUHVHQWHGWKHÀUVW&KULVWLDQHPSHURU&RQVWDQWLQH6LQFHWKHQWKHUHZDVDVWHDG\

production of equestrian monuments, with kings, emperors, noblemen, and even important military leaders having their portraits astride a horse either sculpted or painted. Falconet deviated from convention in several ways. He chose an innovative rearing pose for the horse and gave it a naturalistic character by placing it so that it appears to ascend a steep mountain. He also selected a purposely neutral cape in order to avoid associations with Roman emperors, military leaders, or even Russia.

Instead, Falconet wanted to emphasize Peter’s identity as “a builder, a legislator, a benefactor of his country,” an Enlightenment ruler more than an absolutist conqueror (Schenker 2003: 266).

David’s Napoleon at the St Bernard Pass (1800, Figure 3.5) is a pivotal image synthesizing the theatrical staging of Neoclassical history painting and the aggrandizing Baroque tradition of equestrian ruler portraits; its movement and drama indicate a slow shifting toward a Romantic sensibility. Like Greuze, who combined the dignity of history painting with the anonymity of genre painting, David here united two modes intended to provide the French public with a reassuring icon of control after a decade of turmoil. As in Oath of the Horatii'DYLGFUHDWHGDÀFWLRQDO

historical moment during the Italian campaign of 1800, when the 30-year-old general led troops through the treacherous St Bernard Pass from Switzerland to Italy en route to victory over the Austrians at Marengo. With an eye to historical authenticity, 1DSROHRQZHDUVKLVXQLIRUPIURPWKH%DWWOHRI 0DUHQJRDQGULGHVDÀHU\$UDELDQ

horse. Perhaps this is one of the Arabians received as a gift from Carlos IV of Spain, who commissioned this equestrian portrait in an effort to ingratiate himself with the seemingly unstoppable Napoleon.

Through a cleverly manipulated series of national elections, Consul Napoleon Bonaparte secured absolute power in 1802. He created an administration of men with diverse political beliefs and transformed France into a stable state that combined some of the democratic advances of the 1790s with the restitution of status, if not power, for the Catholic Church and the aristocracy and new restrictions for women.

Napoleon, like d’Angiviller, recognized that a common sense of national identity was essential to a harmonious society, and he utilized art, education, and literacy to achieve it. He followed earlier rulers by employing artists to generate propaganda.

Aware of the urgent need to establish the legitimacy of Napoleon’s regime, David created a legacy for the usurper that associated him with the only two SUHYLRXVKLVWRULFDOÀJXUHVFOHYHUHQRXJKWROHDGDUPLHVRYHUWKH6W%HUQDUG3DVV³ Charlemagne, who united Western Europe under the Holy Roman Empire in 800, and the Carthaginian general, Hannibal, who crossed the Alps with elephants during the Punic Wars with Rome in 218 BCE and fought determinedly against Roman legions for 15 years. Their names are inscribed on the rock beneath the rearing hoofs of Napoleon’s steed, which he controls with the “calm grandeur” of a born leader. Here, David suggests that for Napoleon, no obstacle is insurmountable, no goal unattainable.

Truth to historical fact did not really concern artists until the advent of Realism in the 1840s, and it was then that Paul Delaroche (1797–1856) candidly represented Napoleon Crossing the Alps (1850, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) as it actually happened, with the general astride a sure-footed, brown mule led by a local peasant. The contrast in these images demonstrates how propagandistic intentions steered the course of history painting until well into the nineteenth century and the extent to which truth can be manipulated in an image presumed documentary.

The Académie des Beaux-Arts (the post-revolutionary name of the Académie Royale, beginning in 1795) forbade the representation of contemporary history in contemporary dress. David’s Napoleon transgressed this boundary, inaugurating a practice of artistic transgression that undermined the hegemony of the Académie over the next century. Indeed, excesses of revolution—political and industrial—led to transgressions on many fronts. The maverick character of Napoleon becomes clear in

Figure 3.5

Jacques-Louis David, Napoleon at the St Bernard Pass, 1800.

Oil on canvas, 272 × 241 cm (8 ft 11 in × 7 ft 11 in).

Château de Versailles.

the context of the near-contemporary equestrian monument to Emperor Josef II of Austria as well as of earlier depictions of contemporary history in the works of West and Trumbull, who similarly aggrandized events at the expense of historical accuracy.

Austria was one of the great powers of Europe in the late eighteenth century, and its emperor, Josef II (ruled 1765–1790, brother of Marie-Antoinette), was both enlightened (he abolished serfdom in 1781, instituted taxes for the aristocracy, and permitted Christian Orthodox, Jews, and Protestants to practice their religions) and imperialistic (he tried to seize Bavaria in the 1780s). Josef II’s nephew and successor, Franz II, commissioned sculptor Franz Zauner (1746–1822) to design an equestrian monument (Figure 3.6) honoring the popular reformer for the Josefsplatz, a square adjacent to the royal palace (Hofburg) in central Vienna. Zauner studied at the Royal Academy in Vienna and won a scholarship to Rome (1776–81), where he became friends with his compatriot, the painter Heinrich Füger (Figure 2.10). Beginning in 1781 Zauner taught at the Vienna Academy, serving as its director from 1806 to 1815.

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in the guise of a Roman emperor, in contrast to Falconet’s Peter the Great. Josef II’s toga and sandals connected the contemporary Austrian to ancient Roman emperors.

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events from the Emperor’s reign, instructing interested passers-by with historical narratives of Austrian imperial greatness.

Figure 3.6

Franz Zauner, Monument to Josef II, 1790–1806. Bronze, over life-size. Josefsplatz, Vienna.