Equestrian Portrait of Joachim Murat, King of Naples
Antoine-Jean Gros (1771-1835) · 1808-1812
Joachim Murat, the cavalry commander who became king of Naples in eighteen hundred and eight, sits on a chestnut horse seen in three quarter view against a landscape by the sea. A tiger skin serves as his saddle cloth. The rider is dressed with the theatrical splendour for which he was famous, plumed hat, embroidered uniform, sabre at his side. To the right in the distance a volcano smokes, Vesuvius above the Bay of Naples, and to the left a column of smoke rises from the plain, a hint of the battles behind the king's throne.
Gros, who had already painted Napoleon at Eylau, worked on the portrait between eighteen hundred and eight and eighteen twelve and signed it at the lower left. It was shown at the Salon of eighteen twelve. Look at the balance between the horse, painted with real anatomical knowledge, and the rider, who seems almost to pose for a fashion plate. The picture passed to the prince of Wagram, then to Murat's descendants, the second and third princes Murat, and stayed in the family until it entered the Louvre in nineteen seventy three through a dation, a payment of inheritance tax in works of art.
Did You Know? The tiger skin under the saddle and the smoking volcano behind are both Murat's props: he was the most flamboyant dresser of Napoleon's marshals and, from eighteen hundred and eight, king of Naples.
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