There is so much more to Napoleon Bonaparte than the brilliant military general and nemesis of the Duke of Wellington. This lecture by Sylvia Sagona – Napoleon Bonaparte and the Fine Art of Propaganda – will look beneath the counter-propaganda so skillfully established by the English.
Before photography and the internet, Napoleon knew that image was crucial to his grip on power and so took the best artists of the time with him on military campaigns and created the Musée Napoleon (Louvre] to exhibit the paintings. The city of Paris itself became his canvas with triumphal arches, Trajan-like columns, and avenues named after his victories.
Sylvia Sagona completed her post graduate studies of a Maitrise ès Lettres at the University of Aix en Provence where she lived and lectured at the university of Aix-Marseilles before taking up a lectureship in the Department of French and Italian studies at the University of Melbourne.