Napoleon is famous for posing with one hand stuck into his vest, but that pose is in a lot of portraits of military men in the 18th and early 19th century. My daughter just found a Revolutionary War portrait of General Washington posing like that and asked me why they did that.
I’ve heard plenty of jokes about this – like on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In (“If I take my hand out, my pants fall down”) – but does anyone know the “straight dope” on it?
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_023a.html answers your question.
It was to keep the man’s sword/pistol hand warm in preparation for sudden, violent usage.
That sounds quite plausible . . . but the bit about women always breastfeeding with the left breast? What nonsense. Anybody who knows anything about breastfeeding will know that women always alternate breasts; how could they use just one?
That’s where he hid his cheese. 
I hate being this late to a thread. I need to start lurking on weekends.
I heard a different explanation; I have no idea how true it is.
Napoleon was from a part of france very close to italy. At least back in Napoleon’s time, the closer you were to italy, the more “italian” you acted. This includes using a lot of gestures when one speaks. Napoleon had a habit of gesturing a lot when he spoke, which was not conidered very dignified behavior. He got in the habit of sticking his hand into his shirt so that he wouldn’t gesture when he spoke.
The reason that this gesture is widespread is simple: Napoleon did it. He was the idol, military-skill-wise, of just about every professional soldier from about 1815 until 1899 or so, so when they posed for portraits, they copied his pose.
The rumor has it that Napoleon was trying to ease an attack of indigestion, but I dunno about that…
I heard somewhere that it was because he claimed his stomach itched when he had to stand still for too long—like when he was having his portrait painted, for example. Somewhere else I heard it was because he had some sort of skin rash that he constantly scratched. If we had photographs or films of Buonaparte, we might have a better notion of what he really did. Of course, what I wrote, I’ve never heard substantiated anywhere else, so what do I know?
Maybe after Titian did the Man With Gloves, nobody dared mess with depicting hands again and risk being compared with that master.
Resting the hand in one’s vest is probably a great way of holding a pose for hours on end, and if it struck a gentleman’s at-the-ready note as well, so much the better.
I also wouldn’t be suprised if artists charged by the hand, or encouraged busy people who wanted their portraits done quickly to conceal at least one hand. They can be difficult and time consuming to depict.
Artists hired models to pose for the body—famous sitters only had to come in to have their heads done. Maybe it was just a trendy, fashionable pose? Like the “debutante slouch” of the 1920s?
By the way, according to the American Psychiatric Association, you are not “certifiably insane” unless you stand like that and wear a big Napoleon hat with a backwards “N” on it.
I thought he was hiding his lame arm.
Um, last time I was in France, people “spoke with their hands” very fluently, and I was not in the south . . . but maybe these folks were viewed by the elite as low-class.
Napoleon was from Corsica, and spoke Italian as his native tongue. Corsica was taken over in the 1760’s, around the time he was born, so he grew up a French citizen.
As to whether or not he kept his hand in his vest to keep it from moving around too much when he talked, no idea.
I was informed, on good authority (i.e. a kid during my high school years) that he was caught in the act of reaching for a TicTac.
**pugluvr—**I lived in northeastern France for a year and I never noticed this bit with talking with the hands there. I met a number of people from northern France from Brittany to Alsace and they didn’t do this. Come to think of it, I met a few people from southern France, and they didn’t really do this, either.
I did meet a few Corsicans, though, and they did speak with their hands. This was a good thing for me, since their French sounded so much like Italian that I had great trouble hacking through their accents. As for the rest of southern France, I guess it could be that the Niçoise and others close to the Italian border might be more prone to handspeaking; I don’t feel qualified to give an opinion on that.
I just injured my shoulder and discovered that sticking my hand in my coat took the weight off, like an improvised sling, and relieved the pain. I bet the soldiers of yore carried heavy muskets and other things over their shoulders and also had a great deal of battlefield shoulder stress, from gunfire, gun kickbacks, etc. So I am guessing that this started out as a way to alleviate pain and then became a symbol of courage…if you kept your hand in your vest it meant you had been a solider who had seen a lot of action. Just a guess…
That is not going to account for why George Washington was doing it, at the time of the Revolutionary War though, is it. At that time, no-one had ever heard of Napoleon.
Zombie Napoleon!
I hope you all realize that in the old days zombie portraits were painted, and the result didn’t have to be based on the way the subject actually posed. Painting was a technique similar to PhotoShopping a photograph, but the technology may be to difficult to explain here.:rolleyes:
That’s the name I wanted to use initially when I registered.
Closing this one down. It’s been done to death over the years. Search for newer threads explaining it all.
samclem, Moderator