Italy - Battle of Lodi, (Napoleon); Auber - Passage du Pont de Lodi, le 21 Floréal, An 4 - 1806

Technical Sheet

Title: Passage du Pont de Lodi, le 21 Floréal, An 4. Battle of the Bridge of Lodi on the Adda River, Lombardy, Italy.
Author: Jean Duplessi-Bertaux, execution in engravings; Pierre-Philippe Choffard (1730–1809), completion in burin.
Draftsman: Antoine-Charles-Horace, called Carle Vernet (1758–1836).
Publisher: Auber, publisher; Robbe, printer, as indicated at the bottom of the plate.
Place: Paris.
Era: 1806; event depicted: Battle of Lodi, 10 May 1796, corresponding to 21 Floréal of Year IV of the French Republican calendar.
Technique: copper-engraved intaglio, executed in aquatint and refined in burin, with manual colorization applied afterwards, not contemporary to the period.
Support: paper.
Dimensions: image about 25 × 35.5 cm; sheet about 39 × 54.5 cm.
Composition: a single sheet, with a figurative scene, signatures of the artists and title in the lower margin.
Provenance: Tableaux historiques des campagnes d’Italie, depuis l’an IV jusqu’à la bataille de Marengo, Paris, Auber, 1806.

Description

Hand-colored engraving depicting the crossing of the Lodi bridge during Napoleon Bonaparte’s first Italian campaign. The scene portrays the attack of the French troops on the bridge over the Adda, defended by Austrian forces, in the territory of present-day Lombardy. The composition unfolds horizontally, with the bridge at center and the two banks animated by military formations, artillery and moving troops. In the foreground, horsemen, attendants at the cannons, wagons and wounded soldiers lend depth and narrative intensity to the depiction; in the background, buildings and vegetation outline the river landscape, crossed by dense columns of smoke from the fighting. The finesse of the line distinguishes uniforms, horse trappings and bridge structures, while the subsequent coloring highlights the watercourses, architectures and the various components of the action. In the lower margin the French title, the date according to the Republican calendar, and the artists’ indications are provided.

Historical-artistic note

Carle Vernet was among the leading French interpreters of equestrian and military subject painting and drawing in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. His compositions devoted to the Napoleonic campaigns combine attention to troop movements, liveliness of the figures, and a scenographic construction of the landscape. The collaboration between Duplessi-Bertaux and Choffard translates the drawing into a complex intaglio composition, in which the copper-plate etching defines the scene and the burin refines its details and tonal transitions. The plate belongs to the editorial program of Tableaux historiques des campagnes d’Italie, intended to document and celebrate French victories. The Battle of Lodi held particular importance in the construction of Bonaparte’s military fame.

Condition Report

Sheet with wide margins and a clearly visible plate impression. Slight yellowing of the paper, with scattered foxing and small oxidation spots, more present along the margins. Faint halos and traces of superficial deposit; light waves and waviness of the support, more evident on the verso. The figurative part is clearly legible and the verso is free of printed text, with slight traces of dirt and signs of handling.