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# Napoleon thought highly of his own portrait by Jacques-Louis David, which commemorates his Alpine victory at the Battle of Marengo, and ordered three copies of the canvas
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/napoleon-vysoko-otsenil-sobstvennyi-portret-raboty-zhaka-lui-davida-uvekovechivaiushchii-ego-alpiiskuiu-pobedu-v-bitve-pri-marengo-i-zakazal-tri-kopii-etogo-polotna/
- Published: 2023-06-02T17:49:13.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:36:28.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Art, Monarchies, Society, People

Napoleon thought highly of his own portrait by Jacques-Louis David, which commemorates his Alpine victory at the Battle of Marengo, and ordered three copies of the canvas. What could better serve to strengthen Bonaparte's reputation than the image of a dashing horseman, his hair streaming in the mountain wind? He understood this perfectly well. And he always gave propaganda its due: he censored the press severely and personally edited every mention of his own biography. Not everything, however, lay in his hands.

The English stubbornly portrayed Napoleon as small. A comical ruler in a hat larger than himself and with a sword longer than his body, a spiteful little man, a nervous shrimp, a general half the height of his soldiers: this is how the English press depicted him, and exclusively so. And this unflattering stereotype, it seems, ended up as the defining characteristic not merely of Napoleon's appearance but of his personality as a whole.

Was Napoleon in fact small? The records of the condition of his body at the time of his death put his height at 168-170 cm. The average height of Frenchmen of the period is placed within a range of 158-168 cm, while the average height of a soldier in Napoleon's army, judging by an analysis of 20,000 records, was 163 cm. Which makes Napoleon not merely taller than the average person, but taller than the average man in his own army.

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