Napoleon Crossing the Alps

In May 1800 Napoleon marched an army over the Great St Bernard Pass to fall on the Austrians in Italy, a gamble that paid off weeks later at the battle of Marengo. The crossing itself was slow and miserable. He went over on a mule, wrapped in a grey coat, led by a local guide, days behind his troops. When David painted him the next year he threw all of that out. Napoleon asked only to be shown calm on a spirited horse, and refused to sit, saying nobody checks whether an old portrait is a good likeness. So he rears up on a stallion, cloak snapping, hand pointing to the summit. In the rock at his feet three names are cut, Bonaparte, and above him Hannibal and Charlemagne, the earlier commanders who had crossed these mountains. This is the version made for the palace of Saint-Cloud. After Napoleon fell, Prussian troops under Blucher carried it home, and it hangs today in a Berlin palace.