Suspended collectivity: Horace Vernet's "The Crossing of the Arcole Bridge" (1826)

• Autores: Katie Hornstein
• Localización: Art history: journal of the Association of Art Historians, ISSN 0141-6790, Vol. 37, Nº. 3, 2014, págs. 428-453
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This essay examines Horace Vernet's painting and litograph of "The Crossing of the Arcole Bridge" (1826) in terms of its representation of the dynamic and potentially disappointing process of producing consensus within a larger social body; this issue was of crucial importance after 1815, when France faced entrenched social divisions produced by revolution, toppled regimes and decades of unending warfare. The painting began as a litograph commissioned for a multi-volume history of the life of Napoleon and quickly became a touchstone across different realms of official and popular visual culture; in its focus on the deliberations of a motley collective of individuals who must decide whether or not to follow their leader, Vernet's "Arcole" marks an important ideological shift during the middle decades of the nineteenth century, a period when rulers such as King Louis-Philippe justified their legitimacy through the rethoric of popular consent.