Treaty of Tolentino, Papal Art Handed to France, Antique Madou Lithograph, 1827

An original antique lithograph from Jean-Baptiste Madou's Vie de Napoléon, published at Brussels in 1827, lettered "EXÉCUTION DU TRAITÉ DE TOLLENTINO" in open capitals above the image (the book's spelling of Tolentino). In a vaulted, arcaded sculpture gallery, clergy in surplices and a halberdier in Renaissance costume meet a group of French commissioners at the center, one of them in a long cloak gesturing as he speaks. At the left two porters bend over a crated panel beside a great stone basin; at the right soldiers point toward a sculptural group lit in its niche, a dog stands in the open floor, and a toppled column with its capital lies in the foreground. A standing statue is lit in a niche at the left.

The caption below the image, in lithographic script, reads: "Les agens du pape remettent aux commissaires français cent chef-d'œuvres des arts et cinq cents manuscrits." In English: The Pope's agents hand over to the French commissioners one hundred masterpieces of art and five hundred manuscripts.

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 by Jean-Baptiste Madou (1796 to 1877) after painters of the French school. Madou, a Belgian, later became known as a painter of genre scenes.

The treaty of Tolentino was signed on 19 February 1797 between the French republic and Pope Pius VI, after Bonaparte's march into the Papal States. Besides territory and a heavy payment in money, the Pope undertook to deliver a hundred works of art and five hundred manuscripts chosen by French commissioners, and the convoys that carried them reached Paris in 1798. Many of the works were returned after 1815.

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