Audience to the Savants, Monge and Berthollet, Antique Madou Lithograph, 1827

An original antique lithograph from Madou's Vie de Napoléon, published at Brussels in 1827. The sheet is lettered "AUDIENCE DONNÉE AUX SAVANS." in open capitals above the image. In a columned and vaulted gallery with a statue on a pedestal at the upper left, Bonaparte stands at the center in a bicorne, one hand on his breast and the other arm raised, addressing four men in civilian coats grouped at the left beside a draped table. Officers in bicornes and a hussar in a braided jacket and tall plumed shako stand at the right.

The caption below the image reads: "Monge, Bertholet, Berthelemi et Kreutzer sont chargés de recueillir en Italie tous les objets d'art et de science." In English: Monge, Berthollet, Berthélemy and Kreutzer are charged with collecting in Italy all the objects of art and science.

The plate comes from the first volume of Vie de Napoléon, published at Brussels in 1827 by the Lithographie royale de Jobard, the press of Marcellin Jobard. Its title page describes a text written by a society of men of letters from the new documents dictated and corrected at Saint Helena by Napoleon himself, illustrated with lithographed plates after the first painters of the French school by Jean-Baptiste Madou (1796 to 1877), the Belgian lithographer and painter. This volume follows Napoleon from his schooling at Brienne to the camp of Boulogne.

In May 1796 the Directory appointed a commission to select works of art and science in Italy for removal to Paris under the terms imposed on the Italian states. Its members included the mathematician Gaspard Monge, the chemist Claude Louis Berthollet, and the painter Jean Simon Berthélemy, three of the four men named in the caption. Paintings, sculpture and manuscripts selected by the commission were sent to Paris in 1796 and 1797.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.