A new profile on Steve Bannon published yesterday by New York Magazine reveals that the White House Chief Strategist and former executive chair of Breitbart News was gifted his own version of Jacques-Louis David’s famous portrait, The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries (1812), by British Politician and known Trump supporter, Nigel Farage.
David painted two versions of this famed neoclassical painting. One currently hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and the other is at Versailles. The hunt is now on to find an image of Bannon’s version. Green took to Twitter to call onWashington Post reporter and CNN contributor David Fahrenthold to help him find a copy of this masterpiece. Fahrenthold posted a tweet challenging his 434,000 followers to find the painting and Green offered a free copy of his new book, Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency. News of Bannon’s portrait is spreading like wildfire across Twitter, with imaginative Photoshopped versions coming in every hour.
Via The Creators Project.
Interesting that that was the Bonaparte that Farage chose: the dumpy, unhealthy-looking one. Who looks like a flour sack stuffed into his chasseur’s uniform. I wonder if he was trying to tell Bannon something? David’s “Napoleon crossing the alps” would have sent an entirely different message.
Napoleon was an unprepossessing type, to be sure. It’s difficult for me to imagine Bannon’s face there, it’s much the wrong type, he has such a large head. I have to say, I’m about dying with curiosity to see the damn thing.
What makes this even weirder is the disdain that English toffs (like Farage) have for Bonaparte. Backhanded compliment?
:Snort: Farage is no toff. He might wish to be one, but no. Napoleon was widely admired by much of the English aristocracy, though, so I don’t see anything odd there.
The sad thing is that Houdon, if he were alive, would be sculpting Trump and Bannon in marble, and making them look pretty impressive. He was a genius like that. The great marbles of Napoleon as Caesar are really beautiful.
Also, Napoleon did as much for France, by the time he was done, as Hitler did for Germany. #MakeTheFirstEmpireGreatAgain
Napoleon also did it to Germany, Italy, and eastern Europe, eventually causing an advance in the state of the art of graphic representation of numeric information, with what Edwin Tufte calls the best chart ever made.