He rose from obscurity, joined a revolution, became an emperor, tried to conquer Europe, failed, spent his last days in exile — and changed the world forever.
This is the life of Napoleon, told in 19 paintings:
1. Bonaparte at the Pont d'Arcole by Antoine-Jean Gros (1796)
Napoleon's life during the French Revolution was complicated, but by the age of 24 he was already a General.
Here, aged just 27, he led the armies of the French Republic to victory in Italy — his star was rising.
2. The Battle of the Pyramids by François-Louis-Joseph Watteau (1799)
Two years later Napoleon oversaw the invasion of Egypt as part of an attempt to undermine British trade.
At the Battle of the Pyramids he led the French to a crushing victory over the Ottomans and Mamluks.
This painting has no brush strokes — it is made from over 2,000,000 individual dots of colour.
And although it looks like nothing more than a sunny afternoon in Paris, it has a much darker hidden meaning...
In the 1870s the Impressionists, led by Claude Monet, burst onto the French art scene.
Rather than painting classical themes in studios according to the principles of the Renaissance, as they had been taught in the Academy, the Impressionists took art outside...
And there they painted the world as they actually saw it, with all the changing light, shadow, blur, and movement of real life — rather than how they were "supposed" to see it.
And instead of the grand subjects of Academic art, they painted scenes from ordinary life.