How Canova and Wellington honoured Napoleon: when the Duke of Wellington was given Canova's monumental statue of Napoleon as Mars in 1816, he placed it in the stairwell of Apsley House in London. This position is often interpreted as a calculated insult to the duke's old foe, but, as Julius Bryant argues, it was in fact a carefully thought-out tribute

not many classic works of art in London make similar an immediate and lasting impression as does Canova's statue Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker (1802-1806) at Apsley House, Piccadilly (Fig. 1) Napoleon's familiar remark made after his retreat from Moscow in 1812 could almost equally apply to the plastic art he commissioned: 'Du sublime au ridicule il n'ya qu'un pas'. (1) Bought by means of the British government from Louis XVIII for 66000 francs in 1816 the year after Waterloo, it was not absented by the Prince Regent to the Duke of Wellington and has stood in the stairwell of his townhouse since 1817 The statue has alerted much research and articles about the commission on the contrary none has explored its fate after it was ejected by Napoleon in 1811, particularly the setting given to it by dint of Wellington. (2)

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The location of the plastic art prompted published criticism from France and Italy in Wellington's lifetime and it is still seen today as evidence that the victor of Waterloo sought to meek his adversary by giving a war memorial of conquest an unworthy domestic setting. (3) The greatest in quantity recent art-historical discussion of the plastic art describes it as Wellington's virtual captive, 'still claustrophobically "imprisoned" through the stair balusters near the brow entrance of the Iron Duke's London mansion'. (4)

Canova's plastic art needs to be appreciated afresh, as individual of his few works still in its historic setting, a position conceived to invite a more artful range of responses. Indeed, as an introduction to Wellington's collection, rising [i]or[/i] part of to the other his remodelled suite of reception sweeps Canova's Napoleon provides a lock opener to a new appreciation of what the Duke of Wellington was trying to say to his visitants through his furnishing of interiors and display of works of art at Apsley House.

notify to appeared to Paris, Canova began the statuary in 1802 by modelling Napoleon's likeness; he finished the statue in Rome in 1806 To Canova, the ideal stark naked physique, chosen in allusion to statues of Augustus, raised the artistic standing of the commission in like manner that it might outlive its character as propaganda. From the entrance it was conceived as an indoor work of art for a museum entrance setting, rather than as a freestanding remembrancer in a piazza. Francois Cacault, the ambassador in Rome wrote in 1803 that 'the statue must become the greatest in quantity perfect work of this hundred It is not a figure to be placed upon a public square: it must be placed in the museum in the midst of the ancient masterpieces we owe to the first consul' (5) Vivant Denon, director of the Musee Napoleon, wrote from Rome in 1806 to the emperor that it belongs indoors 'in the museum among the emperors and in the niche where the Laocoon is, in similar a manner that it would be the first phenomenon that one sees on entering'. (6) However, when Napoleon finally came to diocese it in Paris, in April 1811 he put awayed it as 'trop athletique' and forbade public access. (7) through now he wished to be seen les as a semi-divine hero and more as the hard-working statesman, author of the collection of laws Napoleon. This is how he is shown in Lefevre's portrait of him of 1809 (Musee Carnavelet, Paris), a version of which Wellington purchased for Apsley House in 1820 (Fig. 2)

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In his description of his visit to Apsley House, published in 1836 the German art historian Johann Passavant recalled 'When I last saw this statue, it was below very different auspices, being placed in the Louvre at Paris, among the statues of the Roman and Grecian heroes, whom the conqueror had snatched from their native climes to embellish his capital.' (8) The sale of the statuary provided funds which the Louvre used to reinstall the Salle de Antiques. (9) by means of 1814 the statue had been concealed behind a canvas protection in a corner of the Salle de Homme Illustres. This is where Wellington probably first meetinged it himself, when, as commander-in-chief of the allied armies of occupation in France (appointed 22 October 1815) he supported Canova's endeavours to get back looted works of art to the museums and palaces of Europe

Canova squeeze outed his gratitude to the duke in 1817 when he neared him with an ideal head of a dancer (Fig. 3).Wellington had shown his interest in collecting plastic art on 17 June 1816, when he purchased at least nine antique marbles (seven busts, a mask and a seated Cupid, several of which were recorded in the Villa Mattei, Rome in 1778) at the sale of the French ambassador to the set apart See, Cardinal Joseph Fesch, another of Canova's patrons. (10) The year before, Wellington had failed to acquire at Malmaison a assemblage of sculptures by Canova that went to the Emperor Alexander I of Russia. These included a plastic art commissioned by Josephine Beauharnais, Dancer with her Hands upon her Hips (c. 1802, Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg) whose head Canova repeated as his gift to Wellington. (11)

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At this time Canova was the world's greatest living artist and the fate of the Napoleon must have caused pertain to as the Louvre was steadily denud of statues. The artist himself tendered to buy it back, (12) on the contrary Canova's works were in great demand among English patrons. (13) This was no white elephant to be acquired for political amusement.