| Italian Brigands Surprised by Papal Troops | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Horace Vernet |
| Year | 1831 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 86.7 cm× 131.5 cm× 19 cm(34.1 in× 51.8 in× 7.5 in) |
| Location | Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
Italian Brigands Surprised by Papal Troops is an 1831 painting produced in Rome by Horace Vernet. It is kept at the Walters Art Museum, in Baltimore.
The painter Horace Vernet came to Italy in 1829, when he was already a well-known artist. He remained there until 1834 and worked as the director of the French Academy in Rome.
During his travels, he made around 20 paintings with the same colorful subjects and episodes of local life in the Roman countryside. They were works comparable to other painters who traveled Italy and mixed artistic classicism with research into color and local costumes. [1] Vernet was considered a leader among these French painters, making him the juste milieu between the traditions of Romanticism and Neoclassicism. [2]
The painting was recorded in the "John T. Johnston Collection", which was sold by its owner to William T. Walters of Baltimore on 20 December 1876 for $10,110, the most expensive work in Johnston's collection. In 1894, it passed to Henry Walters. In 1931, one of Walters' heirs left it to its current owner, the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. [3] The painting underwent conservation treatments in 1938, 1969, 1981, and 1991. [2]
The painting depicts a battle along a road by the side of a cliff between a band of brigands surprised by a patrol of papal dragoons. They had been robbing a carriage, which is visible in the background of the street in the painting. Beyond the carriage, a strip of sea is visible. [2]
In the foreground, two brigands are in the combat against two cavalry soldiers. The first is being grabbed by the handkerchief around his neck is about to receive a pistol blow, after having wounded the soldier's horse with the dagger in his right hand. The second has grabbed the bridle of the other soldier's horse and is about to be struck by the soldier's saber. A third brigand flees while holding in his hands two bags stolen from travelers, abandoning a third in the road. A fourth brigand fires a rifle at the soldiers, covering his companion's flight. Two women, depicted in typical local costumes, despair and implore in front of a small religious chapel at the side of the road.
Further back on the right side of the painting, other brigands stand along the slope of the hill, some fleeing and pulling with them a feminine figure in a long blue dress—probably a passenger of the captured carriage. Others stand behind boulders, looking at the scene below. Along the road, a third cavalry soldier and some on foot fire at the fleeing brigands with muskets. The carriage in the background is empty, and a person and horse lie dead on the ground near its wheels.
The scene is realized in dramatic tones, following academic visual traditions with particular attention to the details of shades of color. [2] The rocks in the background and the grey clouds in the sky magnify the drama of the action illuminated by the sun. The attention to the military subjects and the cavalry comes from the pictorial interest of Vernet's father, Carle Vernet. The unlikely palm tree depicted behind the chapel, amid the wild vegetation, add a touch of exoticism to the painting. Vernet made many paintings with Orientalist themes.
Critics have observed how the scene represents a single moment of action: the hat of the cavalry soldier in the foreground has not yet fallen to the ground, and the brigand is lifted from the ground as the soldier is about to shoot him. All the painting's details are meticulously painting, giving it the feeling of a "a pre-photographic, photographic painting". [4]
The fountain of water in the foreground recalls a classical sarcophagus, a common feature in the neoclassical themes of the French school in Rome at that time.
Brigands that lived in the Roman countryside, despite being a serious menace to travelers, were a preferred Romantic figure of numerous Roman painters and artists of the time, like Bartolomeo Pinelli, Louis Léopold Robert, Léon Cogniet, and Luigi Rocco. They took up the same themes as the Roman Bamboccianti painters and mixed them with Neo-classical influences.
Vernet, probably due to the success of those works, began to compose paintings on the topic in 1820 with his Route de Naples, which represented a group of bandits ready for an ambush and hiding behind a group of boulders near a seaside road by Terracina. [5] The success of the painting was immediate and was reproduced as a lithography by Francois Saeraphin Delpech. [6]
After Italian Brigands Surprised by Papal Troops, Vernet made a third painting on the subject of brigands, Confession of an Italian Bandit, in 1834. It was destroyed in the sacking of the Château de Neuilly during the Revolution of 1848. [7] The painting, which was reproduced several times, showed a dying bandit lying on an ox-driven cart receiving absolution by a monk kneeling by his side. The background landscape largely depicts neo-classical motifs like temple ruins and the arches of a Roman aqueduct. [8] The capture of the repentance of the bandit and his absolution closes Vernet's trilogy of brigand paintings (that is, Route de Naples, Italian Brigands Surprised by Papal Troops, and Confession of an Italian Bandit).
Also in the theme, Vernet painted The Bandit Betrayed in 1828, a scene of a brigand being captured by soldiers thanks to the betrayal of a woman with whom he had made an appointment. Again, it was a painting that mixed realism with a dramatic scene depicting a single, instantaneous moment. [9]
Italian Brigands Surprised by Papal Troops was copied by Vernet's students and reproduced by Henry Dowe and David Lucas in two large aquatints. [6]
Émile Jean-Horace Vernet more commonly known as simply Horace Vernet, was a French painter of battles, portraits, and Orientalist subjects.
Military art is art with a military subject matter, regardless of its style or medium. The battle scene is one of the oldest types of art in developed civilizations, as rulers have always been keen to celebrate their victories and intimidate potential opponents. The depiction of other aspects of warfare, especially the suffering of casualties and civilians, has taken much longer to develop. As well as portraits of military figures, depictions of anonymous soldiers on the battlefield have been very common; since the introduction of military uniforms such works often concentrate on showing the variety of these.
Jacques Courtois or Giacomo Cortese, called il Borgognone or le Bourguignon was a Franche-Comtois–Italian painter, draughtsman, and etcher. He was mainly active in Rome and Florence and became known as the leading battle painter of his age. He also created history paintings and portraits. He became a Jesuit later in life but continued to paint.
Claude-Joseph Vernet was a French painter. His son, Antoine Charles Horace Vernet, was also a painter.
Antoine Charles Horace Vernet, better known as Carle Vernet, was a French painter, the youngest child of Claude-Joseph Vernet and the father of Horace Vernet.
Ernest Crofts was a British painter of historical and military scenes.
Eugène Louis Lami was a French painter and lithographer. He was a painter of fashionable Paris during the period of the July Monarchy and the Second French Empire and also made history paintings and illustrations for books such as Gil Blas and Manon Lescaut.
The Gate of Calais or O, the Roast Beef of Old England is a 1748 painting by William Hogarth, reproduced as a print from an engraving the next year. Hogarth produced the painting directly after his return from France, where he had been arrested as a spy while sketching in Calais. The scene depicts a side of beef being transported from the harbour to an English tavern in the port, while a group of undernourished, ragged French soldiers and a fat friar look on hungrily. Hogarth painted himself in the left corner with a "soldier's hand upon my shoulder."
Alfred Jacob Miller was an American artist best known for his paintings of trappers and Native Americans in the fur trade of the western United States. He also painted numerous portraits and genre paintings in and around Baltimore during the mid-nineteenth century.
The Laocoön is an oil painting created between 1610 and 1614 by Greek painter El Greco. It is part of a collection at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C..
Jacob Isaacszoon van Swanenburg was a Dutch painter, draftsman and art dealer. He was known for his city views, history paintings, Christian religious scenes and portraits. He spent a substantial part of his early career in Italy before returning to his native Leiden. He was the teacher of the young Rembrandt.
Four Times of the Day is a series of four paintings depicting four times of the day: Morning, Midday, Evening, and Night by the French landscape painter Claude Joseph Vernet (1714–1789).
The Slave Market is an 1866 painting by the French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme. It depicts a Middle Eastern or North African setting where a man inspects the teeth of a nude, female Abyssinian slave in the context of the Barbary slave trade.
A Mediterranean Port or A Sea Port by Moonlight refers to two 1771 paintings of the same subject by the French painter Claude Joseph Vernet. They are now in the Museo Soumaya in Mexico City and the Louvre in Paris.
Brigand and His Wife in Prayer is an early 19th century painting by Léopold Robert. Done in oil paint on canvas, the work depicts a brigand and his wife in prayer before a cross in the mountains of central Italy. The painting is currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and is part of the museum's Whitney Collection, mostly French works from the 18th and 19th centuries collected and given by Wheelock Whitney III.
The First Mass in Brazil is an oil painting of the historical genre by Brazilian painter Victor Meirelles. It is considered Meirelles' first major work. The painting was created between 1859 and 1861, in Paris, during the period when the artist lived in Europe on a scholarship granted by the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts. Covering an area of 9 m2, The First Mass in Brazil was inspired by the letter written by Pero Vaz de Caminha to the king of Portugal describing the first mass held in the country.
The Barrière de Clichy. Defence of Paris, 30 March 1814 is an oil-on-canvas painting by Horace Vernet from 1820. It shows a battle against Russian cossacks at the barrière de Clichy, highlighting the soldiers present but not engaged in fighting. Vernet's participation in this battle marked his only experience in active combat, which influenced his choice of subject matter for the remainder of his career.
The Battle of Fontenoy is an 1828 history painting by the French artist Horace Vernet.
The Salon of 1831 was an art exhibition held at the Louvre in Paris between June and August 1831. It was the first Salon during the July Monarchy and the first to be held since the Salon of 1827, as a planned exhibition of 1830 was cancelled due to the French Revolution of 1830.
The Italian Brigand's Wife is an 1826 genre painting by the French artist Léon Cogniet. It depicts the wife a brigand in the hills of Southern Italy, examining the plundered goods of a traveller including a length of silk which she holds up for inspection. Depictions of Italian outlaws were a common theme in romantic art of the era. Cogniet produced it as a pendant piece for a painting by his friend Achille-Etna Michallon depicting a brigand chief.
{{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help){{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)