Combat of Tarvis, Battle Above the Clouds, Antique Madou Lithograph, 1827

An original antique lithograph from Jean-Baptiste Madou's Vie de Napoléon, published at Brussels in 1827, lettered "COMBAT DE TARVIS" in open capitals above the image. A general in a bicorne on a rearing white horse gestures toward the heights at the center, and a rider in a fur cap on a dark horse, seen from behind, faces him. Infantry with a flag push forward at the left beyond a squared stone block, while at the right a soldier with a musket and a dog, a woman in a headscarf with a bundle and more riders follow, all under heavy cloud breaking over the summits where troops are drawn up.

The caption below the image, in lithographic script, reads: "L'engagement eut lieu au milieu des neiges et des glaces, sur le sommet des Alpes. Le champ de bataille était audessus des nuages." In English: The engagement took place amid the snow and ice, on the summit of the Alps. The battlefield was above the clouds.

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 by Jean-Baptiste Madou (1796 to 1877) after painters of the French school. Madou, a Belgian, later became known as a painter of genre scenes.

Tarvis, today Tarvisio in the far northeast of Italy, guards the pass from Friuli into Carinthia. In late March 1797, a few days after the crossing of the Tagliamento, General Masséna's division fought the Austrians for the pass in snow, opening the road over the Alps for the French advance on Vienna.

Framed simply, with a mat wide enough to show the caption, the plate suits a study or a hallway.

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