Napoleon Crossing the Alps

This Napoleon Crossing the Alps (Napoleon at the Great St Bernard Pass) is the version Jacques-Louis David painted for the Royal Palace in Milan, an oil on canvas measuring 275 × 232 cm that the Belvedere in Vienna dates to 1801 and holds as inventory number 2089.

The composition began as a diplomatic gift. In 1800, as France and Spain restored relations after Napoleon became First Consul, King Charles IV of Spain commissioned a portrait from David for the Royal Palace of Madrid. Napoleon then ordered three more versions, for the Château de Saint-Cloud, Les Invalides and Milan, capital of the Cisalpine Republic, and David kept a fifth himself. The commission had asked for a standing portrait, but David wanted an equestrian one, and Napoleon chose to be shown crossing the Alps; he asked to appear calm on a fiery horse and refused to sit, so David worked from a bust, had his son pose on a ladder and borrowed the uniform and bicorne worn at Marengo. The landscape was taken from engravings.

The scene idealises the real crossing of the Great St Bernard Pass in May 1800, made in fine weather with Napoleon led by a guide on a mule. Here he rides a rearing horse, cloak whipped by the wind, pointing to the summit, while soldiers and artillery climb behind him, and the rocks bear the names Bonaparte, Hannibal and Charlemagne. In this version the horse is a dappled grey based on Napoleon's horse Marengo, the cloak is red and the girth carries the signature J. L. DAVID with the date in the year X of the Republic.

The painting was delivered to Milan in 1803. The Austrians confiscated it in 1816, but the people of Milan would not let it go and it stayed in the city until 1825; it was installed at the Belvedere in 1834 and now hangs in the Upper Belvedere.