Everyone knows the 1812 portrait of Napoleon painted by Jacques-Louis David: there he stands, looking like the emperor he is, in his study at the Tuileries Palace-with his hand in his waistcoat. Over the years, lots of people have speculated as to why Napoleon's hand is there:he had a stomach ulcer, a deformed hand , or a itchy skin disease; in his area it was impolite to put your hands in your pockets; painters cannot stand painting hands ; and so on . The first three of those theories, though, would not explain the fact that this 'hand-in-waistcoat' appears all over the place beginning the century before, only starting to disappear subsequent to David's portrait of the French leader. So what about those other theories? Well, whether or not it was impolite to put your hands in your pockets at that time, the fact is that Napoleon has no pockets in the portrait. As for painters not liking to paint hands, that ,too, may or may not be true- but David had painted dozens of hands an his earlier paintings ( not to mention one hand in this pinting ). So, why on earth Napoleon's hands tucked inside his waistcoat like that? The answer is quite simple, though much less interesting than all those wild theories: in those days, the stance was seen as a mark of a mark of well -mannered gentelman. It dated all the way back to classical Greece, when Aeschines, the ounder of a school of rhetoric, stated that speaking with one's arm outside of one's toga was considered bad manners; he thus recommend keeping at least one hand inside the toga while giving a public speech. Much later, when Neoclassicist artists were turning to the ancient Greeks and Romans for ideas, Aeschines ' advice was taken up by portrait painters-with appropriate adjustments for the different style of clothing, of course....
Hiç yorum yok:
Yorum Gönder