cahn | Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 45

You're viewing

cahn's journal
Create a Dreamwidth Account Learn More

Reload page in style: site light

Unfortunately, there was then at Berlin a King who pursued one policy only, who deceived his enemies, but not his servants, and who lied without scruple, but never without necessity.

(from The King's Secret - by Duke de Broglie, grand-nephew of the subject of the book, Comte de Broglie, and grandfather of the physicist) )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

luzula

To each their own kink, Wellington.
Heh.

But yeah, that at least shows some humility/connection to reality on Napoleon's part. Or maybe it says something about the development of art styles, and the expectation of paintings/sculptures to actually look like their subjects, and not abstractly glorify them?

From:

selenak

Yes and no, I mean, earlier portraits were supposed to have some resemblance and glorify/prettify their subjects, too, and Napoleon wasn't immune to being put on a dashing horse in Alpine scenery by David, which presumably is also a scene that didn't happen thusly, but with David you can rely on some actual resemblance, with added horsemanship but minus super athletic looks. (His Napoleon portraits are pretty consistent and highly recognizable, forming our idea of what Napoleon looked like to this day. (The death mask shows very similar features, admittedly.) But I think what counted as a tolerable resemblance started to change with the 19th century, not least because the wigs went completely away. (It's much harder to differentiate people when they're wearing wigs.)

I mean: contemporary to Napoleon, there's Goya's famously unflattering portrait of the Spanish Bourbons, and he was the court painter. Nor was the unflattering realism a once off. Some months ago I linked a traditional portrait of the Queen which was pointed shortly after her wedding (very Rokoko like depiction of pretty girl) to a portrait of hers by Goya, and the difference is shocking. Given Goya was paid repeatedly for the realistic stuff, as opposed to fired, clearly what at least some royals wanted of their portrait had changed.

Reminder, Goya's portrait of the Spanish Royals:

close-up of the woman paying for this, the Queen (the King was an amiable nonetity, the Queen was the younger sister of Joseph II's wife Isabella of Parma)