# Bonaparte Crossing the Alps [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [DELAROCHE, Paul]() - Date: 1801-1850 - Technique: Oil on canvas, 289 x 222 cm ## Commentary Already in 1840 Louis-Philippe had consented to the return of Napoleon's body for a state burial in Les Invalides, thus officially incorporating him into French history. But with this continuing process of rehabilitation came a fresh appreciation of the great man's vulnerable humanity. In 1848 Louis-Philippe's favourite history painter, Paul Delaroche, painted his own account of Napoleon's Saint Bernard crossing. Tired but determined, the guided mule plods on, a bedraggled Napoleon on its back. The contrast with Jacques-Louis David's artifice is extreme, but Delaroche's position was far from hostile. He was fascinated by Napoleon, to whom he bore a strong resemblance, and whose successes and reversals he compared to his own. In his view, the icon would not lose by being revealed as a credible man. ## Related artworks - [Cardinal Mazarin's Last Sickness]() - [Hemicycle \(detail\)]() - [Hemicycle \(detail\)]() - [Portrait of Joseph-Carle-Paul-Horace Delaroche]() - [Resting on the Banks of the Tiber]() - [The Death of Elizabeth I, Queen of England]() - [The Death of the Sons of King Edward in the Tower]() - [The Execution of Lady Jane Grey]() - [The State Barge of Cardinal Richelieu on the Rhone]() - [Young Christian Martyr]() - [Young Christian Martyr]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()