Il corazziere ferito

Two years earlier Gericault had shown a dashing cavalry officer charging into battle, all forward motion and Napoleonic swagger. When he returned to the Salon in 1814, the mood of France had collapsed along with its armies. Napoleon was finished, the empire falling, and this time Gericault painted a heavily armoured cuirassier on foot, wounded, backing his nervous horse down a slope away from the fighting. The soldier glances over his shoulder at something we cannot see. Critics disliked it. The huge figure, the murky light and the sense of retreat rather than glory struck a public used to triumphant battle scenes as unfinished and grim. Gericault was 23.