Napoleon as "Roi Thaumaturge" Walter Friedlaender Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 4, No. 3/4 (Apr., 1941 - Jul, 1942), 139-141. Stable URL: hitp://links,jstor.org/sic?sici=007S-4300% 28 194 104% 2F 194207% 294%3A3%2F4% 3C 139% 3ANA%22T%3E2.0,CO%3B2-I Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes is currently published by The Warburg Institut. ‘Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use, available at hhup:/www.jstororg/about/terms.huml. JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. 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Two thousand four hundred men were shot or, to spare the powder, stabbed to death. Contemporary sources bluntly call this massacre a “froide barbariec.”* ‘At about the same time the bubonic plague broke out in the French army. Attempts to quiet the rumour of the pest were unsuccessful, and the danger of a general panic in the French army became imminent. To counteract the terror among the soldiers at Jaffa, Bonaparte made an official visit to the Greek convent which had been transformed into a hospital. He walked through the different rooms, talked to the sick soldiers, and conferred with Desgenettes, the chief physician. This act of courage was glorified by Gros in his painting, Les Pestiférés de Jaffa (Bl. 34b).? jesgenettes’ report* was the source for the first sketch,® which has the inscription “. . . Ce dessin de Gros est la véritable scéne historique ou la premiére esquisse de son chef d’ccuvre. Il représente le général Bonaparte relevant de son propre mouvement le cadavre d’un pestiféré, pour ranimer e moral abattu de ceux qui l’entourent. Tous semblent effrayés de son action. Lui seul est calme, comme lexprime sa figure, Cette scéne, étant plus digne de la gloire du grand homme que la substitution d’un attribut plus noble en apparence, a P’élan d’un courage sublime.”"* The drawing (Pl. 34a) corre- sponds to this description. In the midst of a narrow room crowded with people (‘‘dans une chambre étroite et trés encombrée,” says Desgenettes’), Bonaparte is standing with his “petit chapeau” on his head, holding in his arms the “‘cadavre hideux” of a soldier whose head and arms hang down to the right. In spite of the sketchiness of the drawing, it is possible to recognize that the right leg of the man is spotted with the pus flowing from an open boil (“souillé par I’ ouverture spontanée d’un enorme bubon abscédé”).* In the painting, as it was executed, the situation is wholly changed. Apart from the new milieu of an oriental, semi-gothic setting, and the totally different arrangement of figures (many of which are reminiscences of Gros’ travels in Italy), the psychological moment has shifted. In the sketch, as in AGE, Deherain, L’Egypte Turgue, 1931, 0p. cit. P. 406 Ibid. ibid, p. 408. Cf, W. Friedlaender, Von David bis Salon of 1804. Cf. Catalogue of the Delacroix, 1930, p. 70 ff. In addition, Mr. exhibition Gros, ses amis, ses déves, Paris, Stanley” Meltzof has observed that the Petit Palais, 1936, No. 28. Now’ in the bearded head of the kneeling man has been Louvre. taken from a figure of a fresco by Pierino AR. Desgenettes, Histoire médicale de del Vaga (Giove fulmina i gigant) inthe Armée d?Oriet (second edition), 1830, p. 50. Palazzo Doria, which Gros must have known SLouvre 4613. The inscription is signed H.E. from his stay in Genoa. co140 WALTER FRIEDLAENDER reality, Bonaparte performs an act of bravado. When his visit to the hospital seemed to have lasted long enough, Desgenettes gave him to understand in a discreet manner that he had minimized the danger sufficiently. His outspoken purpose in exposing himself to the plague was to demonstrate that there was no basis for the fear of contagion which was making the soldiers panicky. ‘The painting, however, shows not simply an act of personal intrepidity. An impersonal, supernatural element has been added.” Instead of the daring, almost hysterical exhibitionism of the original act, we find a well-considered ceremony. Bonaparte, in a calm attitude, contrasting with the excited and frightened figures around him, raises his arm in a reserved, solemn gesture and touches the sore in the armpit of the plague-stricken man who has drawn himself up before him. By this gesture, Bonaparte imitates the behaviour of Christian saints such as S. Roch or S. Garlo Borromeo, who in Italian paint ings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—which Gros, as a kind of official requisitionist for the “musée central,” had studied thoroughly—are seen walking in the midst of the plague-stricken people, bringing’ them comfort and spiritual relief, but also healing miraculously by touching. It is true that in contemporary descriptions of the painting by Gros, the gesture of Bonaparte was not explicitly interpreted as endowed with the power of healing ; but on the other hand the mere sight of the picture suggests the idea that the man touched by the future emperor will not die. We know that Bonaparte liked to have himself represented as a type of saviour.? Perhaps this is the reason why the first sketch of Gros, which gave a literal rendering of the historical event, was rejected in favour of the second version, which introduced the magical gesture. The guise of the saviour effectively covered up the “lfoide barbaric,” the massacre of the two thousand four hundred, which had been coincident with the outbreak of the plague. The gesture of touching the sore, which is not mentioned in the reports, may have been chosen for yet another reason. It would evoke the association Of the so-called ‘king’s touch,’ the touche des éerouelles. ‘This strange custom, based on the belief that the king by touching can heal scrofulous abscesses (the ‘king’s evil’), had been known in France since about the year 1000 and in England since about 1100. As Louis XVI still practiced this rite with reat ceremony at Versailles, the association of Bonaparte’s gesture with ee ing’s touch’ was not very remote at the time when the Pestifirés de was exhibited. ‘The picture made Napoleon appear as a new “roi d re maturge.” Another painting by Gros, Napoléon sur le champ de bataille d? Eylau (Pl. 344), four years later in date, uses a similar mode of glorification. “The emperor laid great stress on a certain eloquent simplicity in his costume and attitude, ACf, Vivant Denon’s report of the Salon of d’espoir, que ces sentiments éloignent déja 1804 ‘to Napoleon (“A l’Empereur A son V’horreur que peut inspirer une scéne oit est quartier général en Allemagne”): “Vous y représenté tout ce que la nature a de plus tes représenté noblement, avec la sécurité affreux.” J. B. Delestre, Gras, 1867, p. 94 f. d'une Ame élevée qui fait une chose par le *See below. sentiment de son utilité. .... Tout ce qui Cf Marc Bloch, Les ris thaumaturges, 1924. vous environne est si ému de confiance et