La Liberte En Italie – Vue Par Les Artistes Du Depot De La Guerre 1796-1797 (French Edition) – Art Books – Army Historical Service from Army Historical Service

Description

This is a French language item and contains no English components unless noted in the condition note.

“We have traversed together and we have occupied consecutively all the sites which have offered some interest in the campaign of the year IV, beginning with that where the general of the army of Italy entered the city of Nice and came to take command of the army of the Var to march from there to the victories which led him to the first throne of Europe and to the unparalleled influence he now has on this part of the world. Then going through in order all those that formed an episode and could be interesting to make known. (..) The instructions of these various tables have always contained as many historical and statistical notions as we have been able to gather, all have been drawn on nature before my eyes, and the instruction has been almost always done on the spot itself.”

So said Captain Martinel, the section chief in charge of surveying the battlefields of the 27th Military Division (Northern Italy) in a letter addressed to Bagetti, one of its best artists, in 1806. This is how he sums up one of the most ambitious artistic campaigns ordered by Bonaparte at the Depot de la Guerre. The success of these paintings was such that all the battle painters of the nineteenth century were inspired by them to design their own. Forgotten in the twentieth century, these unpublished beauties from the collection of the Minister of Defense deserved to be brought out of the shadows; It is the purpose of this album to present some of the most beautiful samples.