Andrea Appiani, le peintre de Napoléon en Italie

Exhibition at the Musée national des châteaux de Malmaison et de Bois-Préau, 16 March - 28 July 2025

Victorious at the Battle of Lodi on 10 May 1796, General Bonaparte entered Milan on the 15th, where he met Andrea Appiani (1754-1817), whose talent was renowned for his decorations for the theatre, private mansions and churches, as well as his portraits. Three years later, on the return of the French during the Second Italian Campaign, Appiani was entrusted by Napoleon with the task of selecting works of art from churches and convents to enrich and promote museums in the north of the peninsula. Appiani's rise as iconographer to the Republic and then the Kingdom of Italy was confirmed by the large number of public and private commissions he received.

This exhibition catalogue reveals the talent and richness of the work of this neoclassical artist in the service of the Emperor. Through a hundred or so works - paintings, drawings, engravings and medals belonging to European public and private collections - it presents the sensitive, monumental or intimate style of the greatest Milanese artist of his time: the beginnings of a painter trained in the eighteenth century, scenes from the Napoleonic era and the nascent Republic, effigies of Napoleon and Josephine, studies and preparatory drawings for the decorations of private mansions and churches.