General Desaix

1800 · Musée National du Château, Versailles

portrait

Crucial in securing Napoleon's success in Italy had been the 'lion of Marengo', General Desaix, who had turned the battle by a surprise attack on the Austrians during which he lost his life. Napoleon commissioned the Lombard painter Andrea Appiani who like many liberals in Milan had welcomed the French - to create a suitable memorial. In Appiani's subtle conception, the general is still very much alive, reading a service order; only his profile pose (a convention for pictures of the dead) and the distant allegorical figures of Time pursued by Death suggest a posthumous portrait.

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About the Artist

Andrea Appiani

1754 – 1817

Italian painter. He was the leading Italian painter of the Neoclassical period, but more on account of the lack of native competition than because of the quality of his work, which generally looks like a rather tired imitation of David. Most of his career was spent in his native Milan, where he did large decorative schemes at Sta Maria presso S. Celso (1792-98) and the Palazzo Reale (1808). He also painted numerous portraits, which are generally more accomplished than his decorative work.

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