Reception by the Directory, Campo Formio, Antique Madou Lithograph, 1827

An original antique lithograph from Jean-Baptiste Madou's Vie de Napoléon, published at Brussels in 1827, lettered "RÉCEPTION PAR LE DIRECTOIRE" in open capitals above the image. Under a heavy fringed canopy at the left the Directors sit in plumed hats and embroidered cloaks, and one of them has risen to take a paper from Bonaparte, who stands before him in uniform with his saber at his side. Officers in sashes crowd behind Bonaparte, and at the right two women in white dresses, one seated with a veil and one standing with a plumed hat, watch from beside their chairs. Behind a tall column the facade of a palace rises across a courtyard filled with onlookers and a forest of flags.

The caption below the image, in lithographic script, reads: "Bonaparte remet aux cinq Directeurs le traité de Campo-formio." In English: Bonaparte hands the treaty of Campo Formio to the five Directors.

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 treaty of Campo Formio, signed on 17 October 1797, ended the war of the First Coalition between France and Austria; Austria recognized French possession of the Austrian Netherlands, today's Belgium, and received Venice in return. On 10 December 1797 the Directory gave Bonaparte a formal public reception in the courtyard of the Luxembourg Palace in Paris, where the five Directors appeared in their official costume.

The plumed hats and embroidered cloaks give the plate a strong period character on a wall.

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