If you’ve spent any time at all looking at paintings of historical figures, you may well have seen a painting of Napoleon Bonaparte in all his finery. It’s also very likely that this painting featured the French military leader (and later, emperor) making a distinctive gesture: tucking one hand inside his shirt.
A new video by Coleman Lowndes at Vox ventures into the speculation around this gesture, why Napoleon adopted it and what it means in the larger context of art and political history. Some have speculated that Napoleon was hiding a physical ailment or dealing with stomach pain. Given that stomach cancer is what likely killed Napoleon, the second of these is not a bad guess — but it’s also not correct.
As the video points out, the gesture has roots that date back to hundreds of years before Napoleon’s life. The ancient Greek orator Aeschines advocated for a restrained approach for public gestures, which at the time was represented by tucking one’s hand into their tunic. Over time, this evolved into tucking a hand into a shirt as symbolic of a restrained, statesmanlike persona.
For Napoleon, whose personality is often characterized as mercurial, the more restrained pose found in Jacques-Louis David’s portrait of the emperor in his study offered a different vision. Napoleon’s use of media to hone his public image suggests a savvy approach that was ahead of his time; the same could be said about his adoption of a gesture that was already storied 200 years ago.
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