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Turner paints an entire landscape of Hannibal crossing the Alps to mock Napoleon.
Turner’s painting showcases the elephant in the room, or rather the lack of one. In 218 BC, the Carthaginian general Hannibal led an army from North Africa to Rome by way of Iberia, culminating in his monumental crossing of the Alps. Hannibal is as famous for this feat as for what he brought with him…not fava beans and a nice chianti, but a herd of some 38 war elephants to ride into battle. One wonders at the advisability of driving sub-Saharan giants across the Mediterranean and over snow-capped peaks (only one of the elephants survived the war), but this fantastical detail has captured artists’ imaginations for centuries.
Indeed, a painting of Hannibal without his famous elephants is like a Venus without conspicuous nudity. In defiance of fanciful depictions by artists such as Nicolas Poussin, Turner plays with the trope of the obligatory elephant. He gives us a tiny, obscured elephant barely visible in the background, and Hannibal is nowhere to be seen, dwarfed by a snowstorm of biblical proportions. This is Turner’s little joke at the viewer’s expense, suggesting his work is as much a parody of Romanticism as an example of it.
Turner also calls upon contemporary events. This painting debuted in 1812 at the height of the Napoleonic wars, with Hannibal’s army standing in for Napoleon’s. Turner alludes to David's iconic Napoleon Crossing the Alps, which showcases Napoleon and his magnificent horse front and center before an incidental mountain backdrop. In contrast, Turner gives us an absent Hannibal, an insignificant army, and the miniscule outline of an elephant lost in the chaos of a catastrophic weather phenomenon. This evokes Turner’s famous preoccupation with natural events over human concerns, but it’s also a political move.
From the British perspective at the time, Napoleon was the Darth Vader of Europe, believed by many to be the literal antichrist. By putting him in the guise of an irrelevant Hannibal in an apocalyptic landscape, Turner mocks David’s ass-kissing vision of the conqueror as hero.
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Here is what Wikipedia says about Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps
Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps is an 1812 oil on canvas landscape painting by the English artist J. M. W. Turner. The painting depicts a black storm, a snow avalanche and an attacking Alpine tribe threatening Hannibal's army during his crossing of the Alps in 218 BC, at the start of the Second Punic War. Accounts of the expedition, written by ancient historians Polybius and Livy, recounted that these difficulties were surmounted by Hannibal during the crossing.
The work constitutes a pivotal moment in Turner's aim to demonstrate that principles of the sublime aesthetic ideal – proposed by Edmund Burke in the 18th century – could be achieved not only in poetry, but also in painting. Snow Storm's composition is notable due to its radical departure from classical traditions, as it uses a vortex and swirling arcs instead of linear perspective.
Snow Storm was also important in Turner's persistent efforts to elevate the status of landscape paintings in the long-established hierarchy of genres.
The painting was first exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts's annual Summer Exhibition in 1812. While contemporary critical opinions were divided, it is now considered one of Turner's most influential works. The painting was donated to the nation in 1856 as part of the Turner Bequest and is now exhibited in the Tate Britain museum in London.
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