Crossing the Mincio, General Gardanne, Antique Madou Lithograph, 1827

An original antique lithograph from Madou's Vie de Napoléon, published at Brussels in 1827. The sheet is lettered "PASSAGE DU MINCIO." in open capitals above the image. Bonaparte, cloaked, stands at the center beneath a great spreading tree and points to the left, with his staff gathered around him and a tall standard behind them at the right. An officer at the left waves his hat toward the fighting, a horse and rider go down before him and a fallen soldier lies at his feet, and the battle goes on in the smoke of the left distance. A seated officer watches at the right.

The caption below the image reads: "Une cinquantaine de soldats commandés par le général Gardanne, se jettent dans le Mincio. Les Autrichiens, croyant voir la terrible colonne de Lodi, n'osent pas l'attendre." In English: Some fifty soldiers commanded by General Gardanne throw themselves into the Mincio. The Austrians, believing they see the terrible column of Lodi, do not dare to wait for it.

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.

The French forced the line of the Mincio at Borghetto on 30 May 1796. With the bridge there broken, grenadiers under General Gaspard Amédée Gardanne waded the river, and Beaulieu's Austrian army withdrew up the Adige valley toward the Tyrol, leaving the fortress of Mantua to be besieged.

The great tree that fills the upper half of the image carries the composition as much as the figures do.

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