Battle of Mondovi, Piedmont Routed, Antique Madou Lithograph, 1827

An original antique lithograph of the battle of Mondovi in Piedmont, from Madou's Vie de Napoléon, published at Brussels in 1827. The title "BATAILLE DE MONDOVI" is lettered in open capitals above the image. Seen from behind, Bonaparte on a white horse and his mounted staff, among them a hussar in a tall plumed busby, watch from a hillside at the left as lines of troops and smoke spread across a wide valley toward the hills. On the slope at the right soldiers gather around a standard. In the right foreground a peasant woman in a headscarf sits on the ground beside a fallen soldier, and a drum lies at the lower left, with a saber and a musket on the ground beyond it.

The script caption reads: "Les Piémontais laissèrent à Mondovi trois mille morts, quinze cents prisonniers dont trois généraux huit pièces de canon et dix drapeaux." In English: The Piedmontese left at Mondovi three thousand dead, fifteen hundred prisoners including three generals, eight pieces of cannon and ten flags. There is no scene number or imprint on this sheet.

Vie de Napoléon was published at Brussels in 1827 by the Lithographie royale de Jobard, the press of Marcellin Jobard, as publisher and proprietor. Its title page describes a text written by a society of men of letters from documents dictated and corrected by Napoleon at Saint Helena, with plates lithographed by Jean-Baptiste Madou (1796 to 1877), the Belgian artist, after painters of the French school. This plate belongs to the first volume.

The battle of Mondovi was fought on 21 April 1796, when Bonaparte attacked the Piedmontese army of General Colli and drove it from its positions in front of the town. With the road to Turin open, the king of Sardinia sought terms, and the armistice of Cherasco followed on 28 April 1796, taking Piedmont out of the war within a month of the campaign's opening.

The woman and the fallen soldier in the foreground give the battle scene a human center.

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