| Equestrian Portrait of Joachim Murat, King of Naples | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Antoine-Jean Gros |
| Year | c. 1808-1812 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 343 cm× 280 cm(135 in× 110 in) |
| Location | Louvre, Paris |
The Equestrian Portrait of Joachim Murat, King of Naples is an oil on canvas painting by the French neoclassical and pre-romantic painter Antoine-Jean Gros, created c. 1808-1812. It is held at the Louvre, in Paris. [1]
Marshal Joachim Murat had several equestrian portraits made of his likeness. Gros knew him well, having met in Milan during the first Italian campaign in 1796. Murat commissioned him the large painting The Battle of Aboukir , which was exhibited at the Salon of French Artists of 1806, before being transferred to the Royal Palace of Naples, where Murat moved in the Summer of 1808, when he was made king of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. [2]
The current painting was shown at the Salon in Paris in 1812. [3] Simultaneously with this portrait, Gros was commissioned to paint the Surrender of Capri, but the project remained at the sketch stage after the fall and execution of Murat, in 1815. [4]
Murat is shown in a three-quarters view, riding a harnessed chestnut horse, in a seaside landscape. A tiger skin serves as a saddle cloth. A smoking volcano appears on the right in the distance and a column of smoke on the left.
The King of Naples prances in a colorful uniform where the red cord of the Legion of Honor is superimposed on the blue color of the royal order of Naples.
This portrait reflects the ambiguous position of Murat as king of Naples, since the Bourbons, who had been expelled from Naples, retained control of half of the kingdom, the island of Sicily, defended by the British fleet. Murat was only the head of state of a satellite kingdom of the French Empire, from which he would try to emancipate himself, while maintaining his loyalty to Napoleon. [5]
The tiger skin placed on the purebred Arabian horse raising the dust of a desertic landscape recalls Murat's personal bravery during the Egyptian campaign; the silhouette of the Vesuvius, however, places the painting in the Bay of Naples. The cannonade at the sea on the left in the background certainly represents the attack on Capri, taken back from the British in October 1808. Commissioned from Gros in 1812, the portrait is also a history painting and a vector of political propaganda: it represents Murat as conqueror of his own kingdom, replaying the successful capture of Capri to better mark the failed capture of Sicily in the fall of 1810, due to lack of support from Napoleon. [6]
The portrait was acquired by donation by the Louvre Museum in 1973; it previously belonged to Prince Joachim Murat. [7]
Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, also known as Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson or simply Girodet, was a French painter and pupil of Jacques-Louis David, who participated in the early Romantic movement by including elements of eroticism in his paintings. Girodet is remembered for his precise and clear style and for his paintings of members of the Napoleonic family.
Simon Vouet was a French painter who studied and rose to prominence in Italy before being summoned by Louis XIII to serve as Premier peintre du Roi in France. He and his studio of artists created religious and mythological paintings, portraits, frescoes, tapestries, and massive decorative schemes for the king and for wealthy patrons, including Richelieu. During this time, "Vouet was indisputably the leading artist in Paris," and was immensely influential in introducing the Italian Baroque style of painting to France. He was also, according to Pierre Rosenberg, "without doubt one of the outstanding seventeenth-century draughtsmen, equal to Annibale Carracci and Lanfranco."
Antoine-Jean Gros was a French painter of historical subjects. He was granted the title of Baron Gros in 1824.
François Pascal Simon Gérard, titled as Baron Gérard in 1809, was a prominent French painter. He was born in Rome, where his father occupied a post in the house of the French ambassador, and his mother was Italian. After he was made a baron of the Empire in 1809 by Emperor Napoleon, he was known formally as Baron Gérard.
Francesco de Mura was an Italian painter of the late-Baroque period, active mainly in Naples and Turin. His late work reflects the style of neoclassicism.
Michel Laclotte was a French art historian and museum director, specialising in 14th and 15th century Italian and French painting.
Jacques de Caso is a French-born American historian who specializes in the literature and history of pre-modern art in Europe, principally late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French and German neo-classicism and Romanticism.
Jean-Baptiste Wicar was a French Neoclassical painter and art collector.
The Barque of Dante, also Dante and Virgil in Hell, is the first major painting by the French artist Eugène Delacroix, and is a work signalling the shift in the character of narrative painting, from Neo-Classicism towards Romanticism. The painting loosely depicts events narrated in canto eight of Dante's Inferno; a leaden, smoky mist and the blazing City of the Dead form the backdrop against which the poet Dante fearfully endures his crossing of the River Styx. As his barque ploughs through waters heaving with tormented souls, Dante is steadied by Virgil, the learned poet of Classical antiquity.
Bonaparte at the Pont d’Arcole is an oil-on-canvas painting executed in 1796 by the French artist Antoine-Jean Gros. It depicts an episode during the Battle of Arcole in November 1796, with General Napoleon Bonaparte leading his troops to storm the bridge.
Françoise Cachin was a French art historian and curator. She was the founding director of the Musée d’Orsay and the author of numerous books on 19th-century French painting.
The Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Arras is located in the old Abbey of St. Vaast in Arras, in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France.
La Dormeuse de Naples was an 1809 painting by the French artist Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, now lost. He reused the pose in two later works, Odalisque with Slave (1839) and Jupiter and Antiope (1851).
The Kingdom of Naples was a French client state in southern Italy created in 1806 when the Bourbon Ferdinand IV & III of Naples and Sicily sided with the Third Coalition against Napoleon and was in return ousted from his kingdom by a French invasion. Joseph Bonaparte, elder brother of Napoleon I, was installed in his stead: Joseph conferred the title "Prince of Naples" to be hereditary on his children and grandchildren. When Joseph became King of Spain in 1808, Napoleon appointed his brother-in-law Joachim Murat to take his place. Murat was later deposed by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 after striking at Austria in the Neapolitan War, in which he was decisively defeated at the Battle of Tolentino.
Portrait of Joachim Murat is an oil-on-canvas painting created in 1808 by the French painter François Gérard. It depicts general Joachim Murat. It is held in Room 54 of the National Museum of Capodimonte, in Naples.
The Capture of Capri, also known as the Battle of Capri or Capri Campaign was an attempted invasion by émigré and foreign units of the British Army to establish a foothold in the area of Capri in the Bay of Naples.
The Battle of Aboukir is an oil-on-canvas painting executed in 1806 by the French artist Antoine-Jean Gros. It has the large dimensions of 578 by 968 cm. It is held at the Palace of Versailles.
Scene from a Deluge(Scène du déluge) is an oil-on-canvas painting by Anne-Louis Girodet. It was first exhibited at the Salon of 1806 and is now in the collection of the Louvre in Paris.
Pygmalion and Galatea is an oil-on-canvas painting by the French painter Anne-Louis Girodet. It represents the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea as told by Ovid in the Metamorphoses. The figures Pygmalion and Galatea are shown with Cupid, the god of desire. Girodet began the work in 1813, but it took him eight years to complete. It is Girodet's last work.
Nunzio Otello Francesco Gioaccino was a soldier and servant during the Napoleonic Wars. Born to an Egyptian family in Ottoman Egypt, Otello was taken by French officials during their expedition to Egypt in 1798 under general Napoleon Bonaparte. Otello was a gift to Joachim Murat and became his servant when he was 6 years old. He later became an aide and bodyguard of Murat, and a servant to Caroline Bonaparte, serving as Caroline's personal assistant in the Schloss Frohsdorf estate after her marriage to Francesco MacDonald.
