In Bonaparte, First Consul, how is the Interpretation discussed?
Ingres was 23 when he received the commission for the painting from the city of Liège. He was unable to get Bonaparte to sit for it and had to base the pose on a portrait of him from 1802 by Antoine-Jean Gros. Ingres' painting shows its subject aged 34 with his right hand about to sign an act titled "Faubourg d’Amercœur rebâti" (Amercœur suburb rebuilt). This decree refers to one signed by Napoleon in 1803 to the prefecture of the Ourthe département to restore this suburb and is an attempt to demonstrate to the newly annexed city the benefits of being part of France and to symbolically take possession of the city.Bonaparte is shown not as a long-haired revolutionary or in the blue uniform he wears in Gros' Bonaparte au pont d'Arcole, but in the red uniform of a consul of the republic, with short hair. Instead of resting his hand on his sword in a martial pose, he assumes a civilian one, placing it inside his jacket. The curtain is open in the background showing St. Lambert's Cathedral, Liège as complete, when in fact it was being demolished at this time during the Liège Revolution. The excesses of the French Revolution and of the counter-revolutionaries were put into perspective by the painting, in a context of détente and reconciliation between the French Republic and the Catholic Church. Official relations between France and the papacy had been poor since civil constitution of the clergy in 1790, but the painting's reconstruction of the then-ruined cathedral symbolised the resumption of good relations between them and the "protection" the First French Republic granted to the Catholic Church in the concordat of 1801.
Liège Napoleon Ourthe First French Republic Antoine-Jean Gros concordat of 1801 Liège Revolution Bonaparte au pont d'Arcole civil constitution of the clergy Gros French Revolution St. Lambert's Cathedral, Liège