This is Napoleon Bonaparte.
He's cool, he's confident, he's hot, he's...
What?
This piece is called "Napoleon Crossing the Alps"
by Jacques-Louis David.
It's the most famous portrait of the brutal French military leader
turned Emperor
but in reality this painting is a giant lie
and just another reason, the artist is considered a sellout.
It's so pretty though, it can't be that bad, right?
Settle in and grab some chicken Marengo.
Things are about to get wild.
Napoleon emerges front and center mounted on a wild stallion.
He's cool as a cucumber, bathed in an Angelic light
that seems to come from the heavens.
His bright red cloak bubbles up around him
as a brisk wind thrusts his brown hair across his face,
framing his deep set eyes.
His left hand grips the rains,
his right hand points toward the steep snowy mountaintops,
as if he's commanded them into their present form.
The weather is terrible.
His horse is practically foaming at the mouth.
Soldiers are scaling the treacherous cliffs in the distance
and Napoleon is just like
"Hold my beer!"
Maybe you know Napoleon as a short hot headed man
with an ego the size of Europe,
but maybe you didn't know he was so hot.
"Oh my!"
And that's because he wasn't.
But, to be fair, he also wasn't that short either.
He was 5'7" which was around average height for his time,
a little short for a general though.
Napoleon thought that posing for this portrait wasn't worth his time
even telling Jacques-Louis-David
"Nobody knows if the portraits of great men resemble them.
"It's enough that their genius lives there."
So, David made do with what he had.
The artist asked his son to pose for the portrait on a ladder
wearing Napoleon's uniform
which is probably why he looks so young and so full of shark
Napoleon wasn't just a genius military commander,
he was also a master propagandist
and this painting is no exception.
Here's the key.
Napoleon didn't ride up the Alps on a horse,
he rode up on a mule.
He also didn't even lead his troops over the Alps at all,
he followed them a couple of days later
and the weather was apparently nice, not treacherous as the painting suggests.
This painting by Paul Delaroche
created around half a century after David's piece
is a much more accurate depiction
of what Napoleon's voyage actually looked like.
So, how did we get here?
Let's take a trip back to the time and place of Napoleon's birth
The island of Corsica in the year 1769...
(Cough) Oh, sorry.
...it's actually over here.
The island of Corsica is off the coast of France and Italy.
Though Napoleon was still born a French citizen,
since the island had been seized by France
just a year before he was born,
when he was sent to boarding school in France.
at the age f nine,
all the kids made fun of his accent and thought he was weird.
But the bullying didn't stop him
and Napoleon graduated went to military school
and then became an artillery officer.
So, what was France even like during this time?
Imagine a world where the king, the queen and the super rich
pay nothing in taxes
and throw lavish parties every night
while the poor are literally starving to death
and working all the time.
Welcome to France in the 18th century.
What's more the government had accumulated a lot of debt
and decided that in order to pay for it
they would tax the poor even more.
I think it goes without saying that the poor were peeved, really peeved
and they even started to question whether they needed a king at all.
In the 18th century you couldn't come into a position of power
unless you were born into it.
This harsh reality started to sink in for Napoleon
as he attempted to climb the ranks in the military.
He realized that nobody gave a frantic feline about his talent and hard work,
Meritocracy who? We don't know her.
The only chance he had of climbing the ranks
was a shakeup to the entire system,
a revolution perhaps.
And as fate would have it,
that's exactly what he got
In May 1789 the French Revolution began.
Napolean fought for the Revolution
and through the combination of a volatile political climate,
some impressive military leadership
and opportunistic political maneuvering,
he climbed all the way to the top
and in 1799 he was granted the title of First Consul,
making him the most powerful man in France.
But as Napoleon got busy reforming the government,
the French army was struggling
trying to fight the austrians in Italy.
This was simply unacceptable for Napoleon, who said:
"A newly born government must dazzle and astonish.
"When it ceases to do that, it fails."
So, Napoleon left France to dazzle and astonish,
as a military commander once more.
Napoleon was a successful military leader for a few reasons.
For one, his men respected him
because he not only believed in them,
he fought alongside them
but also because he was clever and innovative in his tactics
and capitalized on the element of surprise.
There are two ways to get into Italy from France
the Piemonte region, which is easy
and where any sane commander would cross with their troops
or the northern route through Switzerland, through the Alps,
Crossing through the Alps with an army was a very risky thing to do.
For one thing, the mountains are steep and treacherous
and a single snowstorm or landslide can be devastating .
Maybe you can guess the route that Napoleon took.
Only two commanders in history
had successfully led their forces across the Alps
and Napoleon wanted to make sure everyone knew that.
So, he told David to include the names of the other two great commanders,
Charlemagne and Hannibal
which appear to be carved into the rocks,
to the bottom left of the painting.
And you'll notice the position slightly above both of them
is Napoleon's nam.
This painting depicts this event, formerly known as the Battle of Marengo,
where the French took the Austrians by surprise and won.
In celebration of his recent victory and becoming First Consul,
an exchange of gifts took place between Charles IV of Spain and Napoleon
to reestablish diplomatic relations
and this portrait was actually commissioned by King Charles
and gifted to Napoleon.
Maybe you noticed that this piece is slightly different
from the painting we've been looking at the whole video.
Napoleon requested David to make him three more versions of this portrait
and this is technically the third version
but I like it better than the original.
What do you think?
It turns out that David was kind of obsessed with Napoleon,
so, he made a fifth version to keep in his studio.
Jacques-Louis-David was a super talented artist.
I mean, look at this.
Are you serious?
But how could anyone look at art like this and called David a sellout?
David hated the French monarchy
and was a staunt supporter of the Revolution.
He was among the hundreds of men
who voted to send King Louis XVI to the guillotine.
He was a member of the extremist Jacobian group
and created political propaganda paintings on their behalf.
David was even arrested at one point
for his alignment with the group during the Revolution.
What's confusing is that the artist remained loyal to Napoleon
throughout his rise
and after he became emperor, David was made first court painter
and the propaganda pieces just kept coming,
like this painting of Napoleon's coronation
and this painting titled
"The Emperor Napoleon in his Study at the Tuileries".
The candles have almost burned out,
the clock reads 4:13 in the morning,
Emperor Napoleon stayed up all night
working on the Napoleonic Code.
That's what he wants us to think anyway.
David held his allegiance to Napoleon until the bitter end
and when the former Emperor was exiled from France,
David was exiled as well.
Many have raised doubts about David's motives,
questioning how he could oppose the monarchy so strongly
only to later endorse someone like Napoleon
who forcefully rose to power
and made himself a tyrannical dictator.
Though his revolutionary paintings were so raw and intense
which makes it difficult to believe
that he didn't genuinely believe in it.
Napoleon Bonaparte was one of the most controversial figures that ever lived.
and rightfully so, he reinstated slavery
after it was already abolished,
he stripped away the few rights women had been able to obtain
during the Revolution.
He died with a lot of blood on his hands
in his quest to conquer Europe and take over the world
but he also introduced legal reforms
such as the presumption of innocence until proven guilty,
freedom of religion and educational advancements,
including the integration of science into curricula,
all of which remain cornerstones of modern society.
For better or for worse we see the signs
of Napoleon's presence in the world even today.
Napoleon may not have set for this portrait
but David's painting portrayed him exactly as he wanted to be seen,
the ideal savior for a nation
that was desperate and in the trenches,
in Napoleon's own words:
"I found the crown of France lying in the gutter
"and I picked it up with my sword
"but it was the people who placed it on my head."
Napoleon is immortalized in David's painting
as a man who urges us to follow him,
a man who remains calm on a fiery steed,
a man who leads his soldiers even in the worst of conditions,
a man with the power to command the mountains
and perhaps more importantly the power to command those boots too.