Germany / France: Satirical 'map' portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte, anon., c. 1814

A satirical head and shoulders portrait of Napoleon. Napoleon's hat is an eagle representing Prussia, which has dug its claws into Napoleon by one interpretation, or is the 'discomfited French Eagle, maimed and crouching'.

Napoleon's face is formed of the bodies of the dead amassed during his campaigns; his collar is a sea of blood with a vessel below his ear; his jacket shows the Rhineland states, the dissolved Confederation that had been Napoleon's puppets; the order of the Legion of Honour shows the spider's web in which the Confederations' members had been caught; his epaulette is the 'Hand Of God', which will free Germany from the spider, or is 'an Emblem of the Vigilance of the Allies, who have inflicted on that Hand a deadly Sting'.

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Supplier: CPA Media Co. Ltd.

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Pictures From History