San Giorgio, Marmont and the Captured Flags, 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 S.T GEORGE" (Battle of Saint George, that is San Giorgio) in open capitals above the image, and the numeral 17 is drawn in the lower right corner of the image. At the center an officer, Marmont, stands at attention and salutes. Facing him, Bonaparte, hand on hip, raises his arm to point, with a crowd of officers behind him beneath a great tree and a striped marquee at the right. At the left a figure in a long coat binds a large stand of captured flags, and mounted troops wait on the road beyond.

The caption in script below the image reads: "Marmont reçoit l'ordre de porter au Directoire les drapeaux pris sur l'ennemi." In English: "Marmont receives the order to carry to the Directory the flags taken from the enemy." Apart from the numeral 17 within the image, no scene number or imprint is lettered on the sheet.

The plate comes from Vie de Napoléon, published at Brussels in 1827 by the Lithographie royale de Jobard, the press of Marcellin Jobard, who is named on the title page as publisher and proprietor. The 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, and a work illustrated with plates lithographed by Madou after painters of the French school: Jean-Baptiste Madou (1796 to 1877), the Belgian lithographer and later painter. This is the first volume, which follows Napoleon from his schooling at Brienne to the camp of Boulogne.

The action at San Giorgio, the suburb outside the walls of Mantua, was fought on 15 September 1796, a week after Bassano. Wurmser, who had reached Mantua with the remains of his army, was beaten outside the fortress and driven back inside it, where he remained besieged. Auguste Marmont, the future marshal, was then one of Bonaparte's aides de camp, and the caption shows him being sent to the Directory in Paris with the captured flags.

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