Bologna, Bonaparte Expels the Foreign Monks, Antique Madou Lithograph, 1827

An original antique lithograph from Madou's Vie de Napoléon, published at Brussels in 1827. The sheet is lettered "EXCÈS PUNIS À BOLOGNE." in open capitals above the image. In a broad paved square closed by a large palace, Bonaparte on a gray horse at the center holds out his hand to a crowd of hooded monks pressing round him. A grenadier with his pack on his back pushes a bearded monk along at the right, a woman kneels in prayer in the right foreground, and a mounted officer seen from behind and a line of soldiers with fixed bayonets stand at the left. A statue on a tall pedestal and a cypress rise behind the crowd.

The caption in script below the image reads: "Bonaparte fait distribuer quelqu'argent aux moines étrangers qui servaient l'ennemi et les oblige à sortir de Bologne." In English: "Bonaparte has some money distributed to the foreign monks who were serving the enemy, and obliges them to leave Bologna." 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.

Bologna was then a city of the Papal States. French troops entered it in June 1796, and the armistice of Bologna between Bonaparte and the envoys of Pope Pius VI was signed there on 23 June 1796. The lettered title, excesses punished at Bologna, presents the expulsion of the foreign monks as a punishment, and the caption adds that they were given money before being sent away.

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