Andrea Appiani, first portrait painter in Napoleon

Rueil-Malmaison. In 2022, the reopening exhibition of the Château de Bois-Préau was devoted to Eugène de Beauharnais. The public was able to discover works by Andrea Appiani (1754-1817), portrait painter of the viceroy of Italy and his wife. Who then remembered the exhibition that the Italian Cultural Institute had shown in Paris in Paris, the first in France dedicated to the Milanese artist? Thirty-five years later, he returned to the castle of Bois-Préau to organize, under the police station of Francesco Leone, Fernando Mazzocca and Simone Ferraro, the first great retrospective of that which Napoleon, king of Italy, appointed his “First painter”. He was also a member of the Arts Commission of the Army of Italy then commissioner for the Fine Arts. To these titles, he was responsible for the requisitions of works of art: an essay by Serena Zanaboni details this point in the catalog.

Attracted by the beautiful Portrait of Francesca Ghirardi Lechi (1803) appearing on the poster, visitors first discovered the artist proving himself in Milan under the Habsburg, before his meeting with General Bonaparte after his victory at the Pont de Lodi (May 10, 1796). Church paintings with neo-classicism softened by the influences of Corrège and Raphaël are mentioned by preparatory drawings. Two large barrels on canvas in the mid -1780s focus on the orders of interior sets which already made its reputation, including with the Archduke of Austria.

It is therefore an accomplished painter that Bonaparte met in 1796. As of May 16, Appiani received the order from a portrait of the triumphant general. The small oil on wood, representing the face of a long hair napoleon made from nature and recently rediscovered at Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, is the oldest known portrait of the future emperor. She served as a sketch for allegory General Bonaparte and the genius of victory engraving his exploits at the Battle of the Pont de Lodi (1796). With her is presented the beautiful drawing to the lead mine, Portrait of Bonaparte (1801), preparing another order.

More than the oil portraits for which Napoleon did not pose, these two studies testify to the talent of Appiani to grasp the character of the models, just like a series of portraits of women and men then exposed. However, these are the large sets that give the full measure of its capacities. The vicissitudes of history made that some have disappeared, were very altered or dispersed by the bombing of Milan in 1943: this is the case with Fast of Napoleonthe frieze of a hundred meters from the Palazzo Reale, composed of 35 greyness, which can be reconstructed thanks to the prints that have been drawn from it. The virtuoso designer of preparatory studies and boxes for the Villa Reale de Monza (1792), the Palazzo Sannazzaro de Milan (1795-1796) or the Santa Maria dei Miracoli Church Presso San Celso (around 1812) also suggests the great frescoist that was Appiani, admired in Italy by Antonio Canova and Bertel Thorvald and In Paris, Jacques-Louis David asked for lessons.