Short answers, pulled from the story.
Antoine-Jean Gros entered the world on the 16th of March 1771 in Paris. His father Jean-Antoine Gros worked as a miniature painter while his mother Pierrette-Madeleine-Cécile Durand also practiced painting.
The young boy began learning to draw at age six under the watchful eye of his own father. By the close of 1785 he made a choice to enter the studio of Jacques-Louis David in Paris.
Joséphine de Beauharnais brought her husband Napoleon Bonaparte into contact with the artist after meeting him in Florence. Napoleon subsequently granted him the post of inspecteur aux revues which allowed him to follow the army on campaign.
The painting depicts Bonaparte reaching out to touch one of the sick soldiers infected with bubonic plague during the Egyptian campaign between 1798 and 1800. Historical accounts confirm that Napoleon did order the poisoning of about fifty plague-infected men using laudanum when his army prepared to withdraw from Syria.
Gros committed suicide by drowning following the failure of Hercules and Diomedes at the Salon of 1835. He died on the 25th of June 1835 after struggling professionally as tastes changed among French patrons.