Napoleon Bonaparte

life size
(The Emperor was 154cm tall)

2005

5 weeks

The seated position is modelled after a contemporary painting of Napoleon . The hands are life casts made from Mr. Anton Verhage. I thank him for his help. The clothes are made by Barbara Painter, a specialist in military clothing; I must say that the clothing helps a lot to make this model look alive. Thank you Barbara.

For building this model we needed a lot of information about Napoleon that was as objective a possible. We used descriptions of people that knew him well and of the autopsyreport (that was made after his death,off course.) The measurements of his clothes gave a good idea of the way his body was built. We tried to get a lot of pictures of paintings that where made in his time and tried to find the first ones. Not the copies of copies. Because Napoleon was an idolized person the tendency in idolizing the portraits of Napoleon do not always give a good impression of the persons face.