Napoleon I on his Imperial Throne (1806)

Jean-August-Dominique Ingres: Napoleon I on his Imperial Throne

Here is Ingres' most famous painting of Napoleon - a triumphalist portrait of the Emperor at the height of his power.  Oddly enough, the painting was criticized on various grounds at its first showing at the Salon of 1806. Jacques-Louis David expressed his disapproval, and critics found fault with the painting's "strange discordances of colour, the want of sculptural relief, the chilly precision of contour, and the self-consciously archaic quality." Regarding the "archaic quality," it is true that Ingres drew inspiration from the past - he was a great admirer of Raphael, for example. The criticism has been explained this way: "Ingres had depicted Napoleon as the embodiment of timeless authority, when what the French wanted was a man of the people." (source: Annenberg Learner)

More can be read about the painting at Napoleonics.