By Theresa Rézeau 

He does not climb the mountain. He commands it.

The horse rears at an impossible angle, its front legs suspended in air, its body straining against a force that feels both physical and symbolic. The wind catches his cloak and turns it into a standard carried by the air itself. His hand is steady as it points forward, already certain of what lies beyond what cannot yet be seen. Beneath him, carved into the rock, three names anchor the scene: Hannibal, Karolus Magnus, Bonaparte. Napoleon has been inserted into a lineage of men whose journeys across the Alps became inseparable from conquest and history.

In Napoleon Crossing the Alps, painted in 1801 by the French Neoclassical artist Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), Napoleon Bonaparte is not simply moving through the mountain. He is positioned above its resistance. The terrain does not shape him; David makes him appear to shape the meaning of the terrain itself.

The full essay continues in The Image & Culture Journal membership, exploring the image of power and what it conceals.