Napoleon Visiting the Pest House in Jaffa
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Though known for his warm-color palettes and dabbing brushstrokes, Antoine-Jean Gros developed his style of painting under the guidance of the Neoclassical master Jacques-Louis David. His signature pieces include light brushstrokes, rosy complexions and splitting colors that highlight principal scenes when placed against his customarily blurred backgrounds. To gain influence in French Salons, Gros (falsely) romanticized Napoleon’s non-belligerent nature by commemorating the emperor’s kind deeds through a series of flattering portraits. Of these scenic paintings, Bonaparte Visits the Plague-Ridden of Jaffa portrays the ruler as the sympathetic authoritarian who lovingly visits Jaffa’s plagued populations.
Emphasized by the striking crimson view of his hat’s feathers, Napoleon reaches out and touches an ill man’s bubo, a lump formed in the armpit or groin region as an indicative symptom of the bubonic plague, with his ungloved hand. In obvious disregard of the disease’s contagious nature, Napoleon’s gesture stamps “Napoleon is a benevolent ruler” across Gros’ portraiture campaign. A fallen soldier and imposing doctor from the background move to restrain the ruler from touching the deathly lump while acting as a framing technique that Gros uses to focus his audiences’ attention on Bonaparte’s optimistic gesture.
After watching their immortalized ruler visit the condemned, Bonaparte’s subjects elevated their ruler’s reputation. Unfortunately for them, Gros embellished the scene beyond the situation's reality.
The black plague, now classified as a respiratory disease, travels from sharing air with the victims. Therefore, touching the bubo of a plagued victim does nothing to heighten one’s chances of catching the disease, though it might spread the disease's pus-like discharge on the contact region. Furthermore, the real Napoleon Bonaparte never did that, anyway. The ruler actually fostered contempt for the plague-ridden patients housed in Jaffa. After his first visit to the disease-ridden pest house, he asked doctors to treat the terminally-ill patients with a fatal dosage of opium. When they refused to obey his orders, Napoleon visited the city one more time and paid his final, grand adieu to the almost-dead victims before turning his back on them and resuming his imperialistic wars.
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