Official Painter and Tribute to a Great General: Analysis of Andrea Appianis Napoleon Bonaparte - Term Paper Example

An Official Painter and an Official Tribute to a Great General: An Analysis of Andrea Appiani’s Napoleon Bonaparte NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, c 1798, By Andrea Appiani (ITALY, 1754-1817)  Introduction Until recently, the portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte by Andrea Appiani was believed to be lost and celebrated merely through carvings. It was almost definitely created soon after the great commander conquered the Austrian military at Marengo and declared Milan as Cisalpine Republic’s capital (Boime 1993). It is quite similar to the visual rendering of Napoleon as First Consul. Similar to the Melzi work of art, Napoleon is portrayed three-quarter-length, with a speckled backdrop common of Lombard paintings, alongside are the embroidery of his military uniform and the elaborate wrinkles of his sash (Boime 1993). This military uniform, or popularly called the ‘Marengo uniform’, is presently a valuable piece of Paris’s Musée des Invalides (O’Brien 2006). The saber held by Napoleon is also kept by the Invalides. The sabre and the uniform were specially asked for by Jacques-Louis David (Bietoletti 2009). This depiction of the successful Marengo general was in the collected works of the eldest brother of Napoleon, Joseph Bonaparte. When in 1814 the Empire collapsed, he transferred to the United States and his remarkable anthology was dispatched to New Jersey, where he lived (Bietoletti 2009). Andrea Appiani was the official painter of Napoleon in Italy. He applauded the successes of the Emperor in a series of sheets in Milan’s Palazzo Reale (Cronin 1972). As the number of themes increased, his pictographic expression became more and more complicated. He employed strong chiaroscuro effects in the Caravaggio form (Cronin 1972). The King of Italy, in this wall painting, hailed by the Victories and by the Eagle, is enthroned by the Hours (Bordes 2007). This essay will analyze and discuss Appiani’s visual rendering of Napoleon in the context of history painting. If the coronation is a bird’s eye view of the intellectual mayhem of the Napoleonic cosmos, Appiani’s painting celebrating the enthronement looks like the expected preference with which to answer the major question of this essay: how to depict Napoleon in an artistic way, within the wide-ranging terms of the political representation disorder? Analyzing Appiani’s Napoleon Appiani tested a variety of answers to the abovementioned question, in a planned fulfillment of the demands of his new master. For instance, Napoleon disliked all of the answers, discarding entirely, another of Appiani’s regal works of art (Bordes 2007). The reactions of Napoleon, interpreted as aesthetic opinions (O’Brien 2006), fully validate the idea that his artists were not best positioned in the area of art appreciation. He praised Appiani on having painted a picture quite realistic that one felt one could enter into its world. He also commended Appiani for having completely delighted his ‘mind’ in delivering him as a ‘chevalier francais’: this remarkable deed of misrecognition was most probably a thoughtless rendition from the Carolingian suggestions of the ceremony (O’Brien 2006). The portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte is memorial masterpiece on a grand level. It is a depiction of modern history as stunning ceremonial display. However, the pure dazzle of the painting is also attended with a definite opacity, a distortion of its meaning which, yet again, can be linked to the inherently vague political significance of the occasion to which the work of art gives evidence. For the painting, in its full composition, bears witness to a reality beyond its exterior of thorough realism and organized traditional space. Appiani’s painting includes all the suitable symbols of royal inauguration, in the service of an incredibly over-established symbolization of authority: first, the grand material device (military uniform, sash, and sabre); secondly, the attendance of all the entities of the myth of royal union: Notables, Army, Government, Church, and Third Estate. The artistic technique of Appiani is the exact contradiction of the pictorial language recommended for the creation of the King’s representation by the scholars of the seventeenth-century (Bietoletti 2009). For instance, Felibien claimed that outside emblems, the accessories of power and authority are only enrichments, conditional enhancements (O’Brien 2006). The King’s greatness rests in his body and soul, character, and a visual focus on representational adornments could mean that, unembellished, the character of the King is to a certain extent deficient, needing enhancements to compensate for that inadequacy. More fundamentally, symbols can never depict a ‘nature’ fated for personification rather than representation (Boime 1993). The perfect depiction will hence create a deficiency rather than an excess of the emblematic. This is an idea that Appiani might possibly have had in his earlier years. Despite the articulated preferences of Napoleon for ‘plainness’ in his portrayal as warrior-general (Cronin 1972), the ceremonial objects and rituals of state power remained valuable; the dilemma with Appiani’s painting is that the components of his super-saturation of the portrait do not actually collaborate as a possible symbolic suggestion. If all the elements and all the indications of Napoleon’s sanctification are present, it is exactly because all there that they cannot sum up to an integrated dedicatory testimonial. It may be argued that this manifests not on the work of art but on the event which the image basically registers. However, that would be forthrightly reductionist. Appiani’s depiction of the great general suffers, specifically because there is essentially an exaggeration of symbolic device for the visual rendition to deal with, a form of symbolic embellishment which disproves the misleadingly ordered spatial organization of the material. For example, consider Napoleon’s positioning in the picture, spatially dead center. This compositional attribute of the canvas is inherently a task of the core narrative occasion it documents (O’Brien 2006). But, in that case, what is the occasion it documents? More usually, how does it affect the fundamental theme of history painting, the selection of the ‘event’ to be portrayed? With regard to this issue, Appiani’s painting can be illustrated just as opportunistically unpredictable. As we have seen, in truth Napoleon defiantly enthroned himself, in an act of self-legitimation intended partly to tone down post-revolutionary fears of close encounter with the Church (Boime 1993). On the contrary, the self-crowning also had undesirable consequences of usurpation. The original purpose of Appiani was to depict the moment of Napoleon’s self-crowning (Bordes 2007). However, this was probably to ‘remind’ specific observers other, less pleasant reality and ideas ‘universally known’ of a distinct form. The initial purpose of Appiani was shown in his rough drafts, which depict Napoleon daringly and provocatively holding his saber; yet, having been prudently counseled by sources that perhaps ran back to the great general himself—he decided to elude the issue, by portraying the enthronement not of the great general himself, but of Napoleon’s character (Bordes 2007). This, in that case, is a preliminary adjustment of the picture’s connection to the major moment of the occasion. However, it is also a modification made within a composition of avoidance. For instance, take the link between the preference of event and the name of the painting. Traditionally, the name is a sort of standard title; it designates the event and, by generalization and proposition, its meaning (Bietoletti 2009). There is practically no hint of the blessing. From a narrative perspective, it heralded the enthronement in series of occurrences and hence in theory could not be embodied (Bietoletti 2009). But if because of this it could make no outward show as occasion, there was still the issue as to what symbolic position to award the great general, and particularly what, if any, ceremonial act to bestow upon him. The evident preference, since the coronation was mainly sanctification, was to portray the act of approval. In the painting, Napoleon is depicted as making no movement whatsoever; he just stands there against the pearl-gray backdrop with his sabre in his hands. We discern from the narrative of the rough drafts the extent of the political dilemma the embodiment of the great general was for Appiani, and also how the great general himself interfered to instruct Appiani what to do. Appiani, aware of the uncertainty of this instruction, gives spectators an soothed picture of Napoleon, with his eyes disheartened and his countenance gloomy, his character, as it were, half-missing from the entire event. Moreover, there is the vagueness of the own gesture of Napoleon holding the saber. The title affords a narrative message to this act, specifying the approaching crowning of Napoleon. But the painting itself is artistically vague: either Napoleon is getting ready for the coronation or the about to show his accomplishments as a general. With regard to the traditional expressions of the ‘event’ in common history painting, the painting of Appiani is intentionally ambiguous. The moral and intellectual poise of history painting rests crucially on its connection with the ‘event’ it chooses to portray. A detailed explanation of what this entailed in theory is an interesting issue. In a few words, we can identify two means to the occasion of history painting. Its symbolical powers of influence rely on the way in which the spectator’s attention is aimed at it. Either this is performed as a kind of ‘pictorial deixis’ (Bordes 2007, 49), referring to this ‘occasion’, translating symbol into presentation, as an apparent gesture of showing, whose message will communicate directly to the spectator because the premises which guarantee its meaningfulness are very powerful. The ‘occasion’ expresses itself. Or it will speak to the spectator in a more intricate way, affording itself to be interpreted dialectically, as a room for messages in disagreement (Bordes 2007). The moment of Napoleon Bonaparte abides by neither the dialogical nor the monological form. If it can be assumed to contain diverse messages, they are not naturally dialectical; they are more the outcome of trickery and ambivalence (Cronin 1972). For example, if this is the coronation of Napoleon, what is remarkable about the image is that the great general seems disheartened; almost all eyes are on Napoleon’s elaborate sash, saber, and imposing military uniform—could this be the undisclosed, undeclared ‘theme’ of the painting—speculating what, in Napoleon’s hands, the symbol of that saber could possibly be. It was not apparently, for the explanations previously discussed, the saber, itself whatever the case may be a forged imitation, but merely a saber, one initiated by Napoleon’s patrons for the event; it is the preferred item par excellence, appealing but bare, the empty saber indeed. Unquestionably these evasions in the symbolic and narrative substance of the portrayal served somewhat the own propaganda objectives of Napoleon (O’Brien 2006). But they also establish and link it with a bigger uncertainty of the political messages to which the painting is speculatively dedicated. It is as though, in the emptiness of the image, there are components which break out through the lattice of the official brief of the painting and bring it into the path of caricature and imitation (O’Brien 2006). It is somewhat impossible to think that Appiani himself intended the entire thing as a gag, intentionally revealing the emptiness of the narrative even as he evidently commemorates it. We could certainly conclude that by arguing that one of the dilemmas confronted by the painting rests in the ambiguities that emanate from its attempt to integrate the splendor of conventional history painting with the significantly less imposing sorts of reality. The demands of the latter successfully weaken the assertions of the former (Bietoletti 2009). Reality in Appiani’s painting is viewed handing over its secrets: it inelegance, looks raise particularly modern compromises, loyalties, and interests, which to a certain extent threaten the trustworthiness of the painting as an example of the valiantly inspiring expressions conventionally linked to history painting. Appiani depicts pageantry and fact, but as indications rather than essence. To mention history painting is perhaps to speak of several aspects, to progress between a number of levels of messages and sources. One is exterior, history painting in the historical way, albeit here the message will move back and forth between plural and singular (Cronin 1972). Another level is interior and has to do with the moment in history painting, the occasion of action or inaction chosen for depiction. This collection of symbols informs and shapes a good deal of the academic literature on history painting in the period of Napoleon (Bordes 2007). Lengthened involvement in the latter is not the most enticing of possibilities, and it is definitely not the purpose of this essay to analyze the entire body of theoretical literature. In fact the virtual scarcity, academically speaking, of theoretical discussion on art under Napoleon is part of the purpose of speaking of it at all. Generally, the decisive appreciation of Appiani’s painting was ardently inspiring. However, this was only one line in a variedly created representation. What is interesting about the painting is the continuous shift from preliminary eagerness to reluctance (Boime 1993); these shifts constantly require considerations of work of art and are nearly always indicated as a discontent with features of the selection and organization of the center plane, in terms that indicate a form of endangerment to the desired things of univocal understandability and definite visibility (Bordes 2007).This sense of endangerment influenced the perspectives not just of ultra-conservative reviewers but also of open-minded critiques (O’Brien 2006). Appiani’s painting takes spectators to the gist of the theme by means of a persistent focus on a specific concept: the term ‘colossal’. The painting is itself colossal, yet the concern of the reviewers is that it is nonetheless very empty, its components ineptly distributed within the organization of the entirety by virtue of the undue colossal nature of the center icon; the dead is not aware of their ‘place’ in the appropriate market of graphic imagery, and furthermore have not died in accordance to the mandatory rules of ‘nobility’. Conclusions The proportions furnished to the center icon, Napoleon Bonaparte, hamper the proper working of symbols by foreshortening the gap between primary and minor planes, and more particularly, undermine the ‘innate splendor’ of Napoleon. Whether as pessimistic treatment or as reflective vision of a perfect composition of painting, the public arena, and the state, these are the certified elements of Appiani’s masterpiece. These elements blow powerfully in support of the great general. Nevertheless, when we try to take a closer look at Appiani’s Napoleon, the melody changes to a certain extent, becomes more indefinite and dissonant. It is rather that Appiani’s Napoleon Bonaparte narrates a more complicated tale than that meant by the diverse attempts that were immediately made to endow the painting a dazzling place in the cultural and political supremacy everybody was quite prolifically building to justify the war-effort. References Bietoletti, S. Neoclassicism & Romanticism. New York: Sterling, 2009. Boime, A. A Social History of Modern Art: Art in Age of Bonapartism. London: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Bordes, P. Jacques-Louis David: Empire to Exile. New York: Yale University Press, 2007. Cronin, V. Napoleon Bonaparte: An intimate biography. New York: Morrow, 1972. O’Brien, D. After the Revolution: Antoine-Jean Gros, Painting and Propaganda Under Napoleon. USA: Pennsylvania State University, 2006. Read More