The Ashes of Turenne Borne to the Invalides, Antique Madou Lithograph, 1827

An original antique lithograph from Madou's Vie de Napoléon, published at Brussels in 1827, lettered "LES CENDRES DE TURENNE" in open capitals above the image. A tall funeral car, its plinth inscribed "AUX MANES DE TURENNE." and crowned by a draped urn among standards, is drawn by a team of white horses toward the domed church of the Invalides, which rises at the right. Old soldiers in bicornes walk beside the car, a crowd and troops line the square, and in the right foreground spectators bare their heads while one man kneels.

The caption below the image reads: "Les cendres du plus grand capitaine qui ait existé sous l'ancienne monarchie sont solennellement transportées dans le temple de l'honneur et confiées aux vétérans de la gloire française." In English: The ashes of the greatest captain who lived under the old monarchy are solemnly carried into the temple of honor and entrusted to the veterans of French glory.

Vie de Napoléon was 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 new documents dictated and corrected by Napoleon at Saint Helena, with plates lithographed by the Belgian artist Jean-Baptiste Madou (1796 to 1877) after the first painters of the French school. This plate comes from the first volume, which runs from Brienne to the camp of Boulogne.

Marshal Turenne was killed at Sasbach in 1675 and buried among the kings at Saint-Denis. His remains survived the desecration of the royal tombs in 1793 and were later kept in Alexandre Lenoir's Museum of French Monuments. By order of the First Consul they were moved to the church of the Invalides in a ceremony in September 1800, during the celebration of the anniversary of the founding of the Republic.

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