Bonaparte Dines with the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Antique Madou Lithograph, 1827

An original antique lithograph from Madou's Vie de Napoléon, published at Brussels in 1827. The sheet is lettered "BONAPARTE CHEZ LE DUC DE TOSCANE" in open capitals above the image. A candlelit dining room with a tall curtained window, where guests in court dress sit at a round table set with candelabra and a bowl of fruit. An elderly man wearing a sash sits beside Bonaparte, who turns toward him in profile. A hussar officer in a fur trimmed pelisse and tall shako stands at the left below a portrait bust, and servants carry in a covered tureen and dishes at the right.

The caption below the image reads: "Pendant le repas on apporte à Napoléon la nouvelle de la reddition du Château de Milan." In English: During the meal the news of the surrender of the castle of Milan is brought to Napoleon.

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.

At the beginning of July 1796 Bonaparte visited Florence, where Grand Duke Ferdinand III of Tuscany received him at his table. The castle of Milan, held by an Austrian garrison since the French entry into the city in May, had capitulated on 29 June, and the news of its surrender reached Bonaparte during the dinner.

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