Napoleon Crossing the Alps (Jacques-Louis David)

Jacques-Louis David's Napoleon Crossing the Alps, painted in five versions between 1801 and 1805, commemorates Napoleon Bonaparte's May 1800 crossing of the Great St Bernard Pass into Italy. Napoleon appears mounted on a rearing horse in a general's uniform with a gold-trimmed bicorne hat, gesturing toward the mountain summit as a windswept cloak billows around him and soldiers haul artillery through the pass behind him. The rocks in the foreground bear the carved names Bonaparte, Hannibal and Karolus Magnus, placing Napoleon in a line of great Alpine conquerors. Napoleon refused to sit for the painting; David worked from his own son as a stand-in and borrowed the general's actual campaign uniform. The five versions are held at the Chateau de Malmaison, Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin, twice at the Palace of Versailles, and the Osterreichische Galerie Belvedere in Vienna. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/