What’s the True Face of Napoleon Bonaparte?
Napoleon from his official sculpted likeness. Photo of statue by Tetrakys, Public Domain.
Napoleon from Jacques Louis-David’s “Napoleon in his Study”
Napoleon is someone that I’ve done a modern version of in the past, but I wanted to create a few “in his own time” images following the video that we published today about Napoleon and Josephine.
There was repeated sentiment from Napoleon’s contemporaries that portraits never seemed to quite capture his true likeness. A friend once wrote that “Probably no one that ever lived had so many likenesses…which generally bear some resemblance of feature and form. But it was extremely difficult to portray or delineate Napoleon’s look.”
We do have a lot of physical descriptions: It was said that he was very thin in his youth, to the point of looking emaciated, but that he gained weight throughout his life. Others remarked that he always had an odd haircut and that he had delicate features. And of course, although Napoleon is often mocked for being a small man, he stood around 5’7”, which was an average height for the time.
Napoleon was also a master of propaganda, and he was very careful about which images of himself were released. His main concern was not portraying a true likeness, but portraying his power.
For one of my recreations, I’ve used the bust of Napoleon by Antoine-Denis Chaudet. This bust was created as the official sculpted likeness of Napoleon - there were over twelve hundred copies from the original plaster model, that were disseminated throughout the empire as the official likeness of Napoleon. Now of course, he’s depicting himself as essentially a Roman Emperor, and although some said this was the most faithful image of Napoleon, I do suspect that there has been some beautification.
I’ve also created a version based off of the famous Napoleon in his study image. While Napoleon himself quite liked this image, his valet stated that it “has something heavy about it that the Emperor did not have.” He also added that he thought the Chaudet bust to be the most accurate.