APPIANI, Andrea

In Appiani, Napoleon commissioned the premier court painter of Italy within the country itself. The Lombardy master had become famous with a ceiling painting in the palace of Monza and was celebrated as the “pittor delle Grazie”. The painter used a very much softer application of paint than his Italian contemporaries, as is evident in this painting. In Appiani, Napoleon commissioned the premier court painter of Italy within the country itself. The Lombardy master had become famous with a ceiling painting in the palace of Monza and was celebrated as the “pittor delle Grazie”. The painter used a very much softer application of paint than his Italian contemporaries, as is evident in this painting.

This painting is a variant of a fresco now in the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan.

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. Rather than Italy, it is his former service in Egypt, where he had earned his nickname of ‘Just Sultan’, that is acknowledged by the two turbaned Mamluks, and he appears in a peaceful role, with sword sheathed and in civilian clothes.