The Concordat, the First Consul and Prelates, Antique Madou Lithograph, 1827

An original antique lithograph from Madou's Vie de Napoléon, published at Brussels in 1827, lettered "LE CONCORDAT" in open capitals above the image. In a pilastered state room hung with trophies, the First Consul stands at the center left with his arms folded, among officers in plumed bicornes. Before him a man sits at a round table with an inkstand and papers, while a prelate in a lace rochet and cape leans across the table and points to the document. Two more prelates sit at the right, clergy stand at the far right, a priest is seen from behind at the left, and soldiers are seen through a curtained doorway.

The caption below the image reads: "Un concordat conclu entre le pape Pie VII et le premier Consul, réconcilie la France avec le monde chrétien." In English: A concordat concluded between Pope Pius VII and the First Consul reconciles France with the Christian world.

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.

The Concordat was signed in Paris on the night of 15 to 16 July 1801. Joseph Bonaparte, Emmanuel Crétet and the abbé Bernier negotiated for France, and Cardinal Ercole Consalvi, Archbishop Giuseppe Spina and Father Carlo Caselli for the Holy See. It recognized Catholicism as the religion of the great majority of the French, restored public worship and gave the First Consul the nomination of bishops. Pius VII ratified it in August 1801, and it was promulgated in France in April 1802.

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