Abstract
Napoleon and Antoine-Jean Gros first met in 1796 in Italy, where young French painter was working as a portraitist and attempting to recover from upheavals of French Revolution. The meeting changed Gros's life. Soon thereafter, he was making paintings-Napoleon Visiting Battlefield of Eylau, Napoleon Visiting Plague-Stricken in Jaffa, and others-that commemorated great deeds of the Corsican upstart and have come to be regarded as masterpieces of both art and propaganda. After Revolution by David O'Brien is first account in over a century to trace Gros's meteoric career, from its beginnings in Paris in David's studio to its Napoleonic successes and its end in a mysterious suicide. Drawing on letters from artist to his mother, many of which O'Brien discovered, this book gives reader a compelling account of opportunities and conflicts faced by a brilliant, sensitive artist working for an increasingly autocratic regime. O'Brien's highly original book weaves a comprehensive biography of Gros together with a history of institutional machinery through which Napoleon encouraged but also regulated arts. Here again, O'Brien introduces
Published Version
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