Equestrian portrait of Joachim Murat

Gros painted this in 1812, and the timing is bitter. Joachim Murat, an innkeeper's son who had risen through Napoleon's wars, married Napoleon's sister and been made king of Naples, is shown here as a conqueror: in a tiger skin on a rearing Arabian horse, Vesuvius smoking behind him and cannon fire on the bay recalling his capture of Capri from the British. It is pure propaganda, meant to paper over a failed attempt on Sicily. And in the very year the picture was commissioned, Murat was leading Napoleon's cavalry into Russia, where most of those horses and men would not come back. Three years later he tried to hold on to his throne, failed, and was shot by a firing squad.