Crossing the Great Saint Bernard, the Hospice, Antique Madou Lithograph, 1827

An original antique lithograph from Jean-Baptiste Madou's Vie de Napoléon, printed at Brussels in 1827. The sheet is lettered "PASSAGE DU MONT S.t BERNARD" in open capitals above the image. The hospice buildings stand in the snow on the saddle of the pass between white peaks, with a long column of troops climbing toward them. At the left soldiers haul on a rope through the snow, and in the middle ground hooded monks carry baskets of bread among the men. Bonaparte stands on foot at the center right in a long coat, pointing, with officers behind him, one turbaned.

The caption below the image reads: "A pied au milieu des troupes, dans les neiges des alpes comme dans les sables de Syrie, Bonaparte allégeait la fatigue du soldat en la partageant, des vivres leur sont distribués par les Cénobites qui desservent l'hospice de S.t Bernard." In English: "On foot among the troops, in the snows of the Alps as in the sands of Syria, Bonaparte lightened the soldier's fatigue by sharing it; food is distributed to them by the monks who serve the hospice of Saint Bernard."

Vie de Napoléon was published at Brussels in 1827 by the Lithographie royale de Jobard, éditeur propriétaire. Its title page describes a text written by a society of men of letters from new documents dictated and corrected by Napoleon himself on Saint Helena, with plates lithographed by Jean-Baptiste Madou (1796 to 1877) after the first painters of the French school. This plate belongs to the first volume.

In May 1800 the Army of the Reserve crossed the Alps from the Swiss Valais into the Aosta valley by the Great Saint Bernard pass, to fall on the rear of the Austrian army in Italy. The guns were dragged over the snow, and the Augustinian canons of the hospice on the pass gave food and wine to the passing troops. Bonaparte himself crossed on 20 May, and within a month the campaign had ended in the victory of Marengo.

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