What’s missing from “Symbols of Power” is the most powerful symbol of all: Napoleon himself. We see him in coronation portraits by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Robert Lefèvre, a boyish face surrounded by symbols and subsumed in his robes. Was this the Napoleon that launched campaign after campaign? More likely it was Jacques-Louis David’s iconic 1801 painting of Napoleon Crossing the Alps on his first invasion of Northern Italy — he’s seated on a charger (white in the best-known version, but there were four others) that rears like the Lone Ranger’s Silver. Napoleon in fact crossed the Alps on a donkey, but David too knew how to use symbols and transform reality. So did Antoine-Jean Gros, whose Napoleon Visiting the Plague Victims at Jaffa (1804), which is in the show, puts a positive spin on the failure in Syria. Gros’s Napoleon at the Bridge of the Arcole (1801) and The Surrender of Madrid (1810) and David’s Napoleon in His Study (1812) depict the military leader who was able to return from Elba and take up where he’d left off the year before. After Waterloo, the British government had no choice but to exile him (execution of so popular a figure was out of the question) to St. Helena, thousands of miles away in the South Atlantic. The man lasted just another six years. The myth is still with us.
Related:
The Empire strikes back, Turn on the bright lights, Gods and monsters — and David Hasselhoff, More 
- The Empire strikes back
Napoleon himself was well aware of the force that iconic images can have on the public imagination.
- Turn on the bright lights
Art this fall grapples with issues like gender and journalism, personal space and human survival, and what to have for lunch.
- Gods and monsters — and David Hasselhoff
The Museum of Fine Arts did big things with Napoleon and Edward Hopper, pictures of prostitutes graced the walls of Boston’s two biggest art museums, and all hell broke loose when the Mooninites invaded.
- Carry on
In Mexico, a woven textile that has long been used by women for carrying children and bundles, as well as for warmth and cover, is the focus of “The Rebozo: A Traditional Mexican Women’s Garment.”
- Voice of regeneration
Havens, who comes to the MFA this Sunday, has been following his muse since he was a child.
- Wandering star
Cleaning the kitchen of her Brooklyn apartment a few weeks ago — shortly before hitting the road in support of her fourth full-length, The Living and the Dead (Anti-) — singer-songwriter Jolie Holland was struck by an idea for her fifth album.
- Song of herself
"Listen, I will go on record saying I love Feist, I love Neko Case. I love that music. But that shit's easy listening for the twentysomethings. It fucking is. It's not hard to listen to any of that stuff."
- Visions of isolation
In Edward Hopper’s world, everyone is lost in an unending rut of office overtime, rattling El trains, cheap fluorescent diners, and bad dates.
- Cinema of suffering
Film, like most arts, tries to turn misery into entertainment.
- When worlds collide
We humans are quick to anthropomorphize the non-human.
- Your history
For a building, inclusion on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s 11 Most Endangered list is a mixed blessing.
- Less
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Museum And Gallery
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, Culture and Lifestyle, Religion, Christianity, Adolf Hitler, Nazi Party, Cultural Institutions and Parks, Museums, Museum of Fine Arts, King George III, Roman Catholicism, Less
