Festival of the Prophet's Birthday, Cairo, Antique Madou Lithograph, 1827

An original antique lithograph from Jean-Baptiste Madou's Vie de Napoléon, published at Brussels in 1827, lettered "FÊTE DE MAHOMET" in open capitals above the image. The view is from a loggia hung with a great curtain at the right, where a bearded man in a tall fur hat and long robe stretches out his hand toward the square below. Bonaparte, in a bicorne and white breeches, stands beside him with French officers in plumed hats, and turbaned dignitaries crowd in at the right. Below the carved balustrade a dense crowd with horsemen and standards fills the street, which runs back between tall houses and minarets toward a mosque with a great arch and stairway at the left. A brazier smokes on the balustrade in the left foreground.

The caption below the image, in lithographic script, reads: "Napoléon fit célébrer au Caire la fête de Mahomet avec la pompe orientale et tout le faste européen." In English: Napoleon had the feast of Mahomet celebrated at Cairo with oriental pomp and all European splendor.

Vie de Napoléon was published at Brussels in 1827 by the Lithographie royale de Jobard, the press of Marcellin Jobard, and this plate belongs to its first volume, which follows Napoleon from his schooldays at Brienne to the camp of Boulogne. The title page names Jean-Baptiste Madou (1796 to 1877), a Belgian lithographer and later a painter of genre scenes, as the author of the plates, drawn after compositions by painters of the French school, and describes the text as written from documents dictated and corrected by Napoleon at Saint Helena.

The Mawlid, the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad, fell in August 1798, a month after the French entered Cairo. Bonaparte encouraged the festival to go ahead with full ceremony and attended it himself, as part of his effort to win over the religious leaders and people of the city; French troops took part in the parades and salutes.

It suits a collection of Orientalist prints as well as Napoleonic ones.

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