Battle of Rivoli, Bonaparte Among the Mountains, Antique Madou Lithograph, 1827

An original antique lithograph from Madou's Vie de Napoléon, published at Brussels in 1827. The sheet is lettered "BATAILLE DE RIVOLI" in open capitals above the image. A wide mountain landscape with snow on the peaks fills most of the image. At the left Bonaparte on a white horse rides forward with his mounted staff, one of whom raises his hat. At the center a dismounted officer, hat in hand, leads his horse toward them, and at the lower right a group of horsemen moves off. A town lies on the valley floor below the mountains, and the smoke of the action rises over the slopes at the right.

The caption in script below the image reads: "Quarante mille Autrichiens commandés par le maréchal Alvinzy sont battus par vingt deux mille Français, et leur abandonnent douze pièces de canon, des drapeaux et sept mille prisonniers." In English: "Forty thousand Austrians commanded by Marshal Alvinzy are beaten by twenty two thousand French, and abandon to them twelve pieces of cannon, flags and seven thousand prisoners." No scene number or imprint is lettered on the sheet.

Vie de Napoléon was printed and published at Brussels in 1827 by the Lithographie royale de Jobard, Marcellin Jobard's press. Its title page announces a text compiled by a society of men of letters from the new documents dictated and corrected at Saint Helena by Napoleon himself, illustrated with plates lithographed by Jean-Baptiste Madou (1796 to 1877) after compositions by French painters. The plate belongs to the first volume, whose scenes run from Brienne to the camp of Boulogne.

The battle of Rivoli was fought on 14 and 15 January 1797 on the plateau of Rivoli, above the valley of the Adige between Lake Garda and Verona. It defeated the Austrian army of József Alvinczi, spelled Alvinzy on the sheet, in the last Austrian attempt to relieve Mantua, and the fortress surrendered on 2 February 1797. The figures in the caption are the book's own.

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