Prússia Oriental, Atualmente Bagrationovsk no Óblast de Kaliningrado, Rússia
Museu do Louvre Paris França
OST - 521x784 - 1808
Antoine-Jean Gros is celebrating
Napoleon I's compassion when he visited the battlefield of Eylau the day after
the carnage that took place there in February 1807. Although complying with
offical instructions, Gros depicts the scene with a degree of realism never
attained in any other Napoleonic history painting. The eye is immediately drawn
to the enormous corpses in the foreground. Here, Gros breaks with the
neoclasssicism of his master David.
The picture depicts Napoleon I
visiting the battlefield of Eylau in eastern Prussia on February 9, 1807, the
day after the French army's bloody victory over the Prussians. The emperor, on
a light-colored horse and surrounded by doctors and marshals, surveys the scene
with great compassion, his arm outstretched as if blessing the wounded. A
Lithuanian soldier, leaning against the surgeon Percy, has raised himself to
say to him, "Caesar, if you want me to live, then heal me. I will serve
you faithfully as I did Alexander." Another enemy soldier embraces the
emperor's leg. Marshal Murat on his prancing horse at Napoleon's side seems a
personification of war. In the foreground is a heap of dead soldiers half-covered
in snow and one of the wounded, who was gone mad, struggling. The scene's
horror is accentuated by the snowy landscape bathed in a wan light.
Gros painted this canvas during
the winter of 1807-08, after winning the competition for the commission. Vivant
Denon, the director of the Musée Napoléon, stipulated most of the painting's
content: the moment to be depicted, the number of "extras," the
cadavers in the foreground, and the large format. The realism of the figures in
the foreground, however, undoubtedly surpassed his recommendations. Gros
exhibited the picture at the 1808 Salon. Police spies present at the Salon
suspected the painting of rendering the war unpopular. However, Napoleon
himself appreciated the work and at the artists' awards ceremony presented the
painter with his own cross of the Légion d'honneur.
Napoléon on the Battlefield of
Eylau (French: Napoléon sur le champ de bataille d'Eylau) is an oil painting of 1808 by
French Romantic painter Antoine-Jean Gros. Completed during the winter of 1807–1808, the work
became an icon of the emerging style of French Romanticism. It depicts
a moment from the aftermath of the bloody Battle of Eylau (7–8 February 1807) in which Napoléon Bonaparte surveys
the battlefield where his Grande Armée secured a
costly victory against the Russians. Although Napoleon on the Battlefield
of Eylau retains elements of history painting, it is by far Gros's most realistic work depicting
Napoleon and breaks from the subtlety of Neoclassicism. The painting's influence can be seen in the works of
artists like Théodore Géricault and Eugène Delacroix.
In early February 1807, the Russian army, under the
command of Levin August von Bennigsen, was in full retreat while being
pursued by Napoléon
Bonaparte's Grande Armée. The
field armies of Russia's ally, the Kingdom
of Prussia, had been decisively defeated by the Grande
Armée at the double Battle
of Jena–Auerstedt on 14 October 1806. This left the Russian
army as the only major land force opposing Napoléon in the War of the Fourth Coalition. After some failed attempts to
disrupt the French advance, Bennigsen decided to regroup his retreating forces
at the Prussian village of Eylau (now Bagrationovsk, Kaliningrad
Oblast).
Fighting began in the afternoon of 7 February when
Napoleon's baggage section arrived at Eylau in preparation for the Emperor's
arrival, unaware of the Russian presence still in the village. Thinking the
French were attempting to capture the village, Bennigsen sent reinforcements to
Eylau; Napoléon reciprocated with his own fighting force. Intense engagements
followed, especially around the village's church and cemetery, but the French
held control of Eylau by the end of the day.
The Russians countered in the early morning of 8
February with a massive artillery bombardment.
On the brink of a disastrous defeat, Napoléon called upon the Reserve Cavalry Corps to charge the Russian
columns approaching Eylau. It disrupted the Russian offensive long enough
for the French lines to stabilize. By nightfall, Bennigsen ordered his forces
to withdraw: the French, though able to declare a victory, were left with a
snowy battlefield riddled with blood and frozen corpses.
Napoléon sought to ensure that the
victory at Eylau, though costly, would not be forgotten, entrusting the
director of the Louvre Vivant Denon with commissioning an artist as a part of a much
larger propaganda campaign. One month after the battle, Denon announced a
public competition for the commission: 26 artists sent in their sketches which
were exhibited at the Louvre. Antoine-Jean Gros was declared the winner on 13 June, and
completed Napoléon on the Battlefield of Eylau during the winter of
1807–1808. According to François de Vergnette, Denon stipulated much of
what was to be featured in the painting, including "the moment to be
depicted, the number of 'extras', the cadavers in the foreground, and the large
format".
The painting portrays Napoleon arriving outside
Eylau to survey the battlefield on 9 February 1807, the day after the fighting
ended. The painting is on a monumental scale of 521 x 784 cm, such that
most of the central figures are rendered life-sized. Some of the figures
on the edges of the painting are intentionally cut off to instil a feeling of
the work being an actual fragment of a real-life scene. The viewer's attention
is immediately drawn to the large pile of corpses in the foreground whose faces
are twice life-sized; another soldier, wounded, cries out in a state of madness. According to
the 64th Grande Armée Bulletin, the scene was designed "to instil in
princes a love of peace and a horror of war".
In the center of the painting Napoléon is seen
mounted on a light bay horse surveying the treatment of the wounded, his hand
outstretched in a pose reminiscent of blessing the soldiers.
"The consoling expression of the great man", wrote Denon, "seems
to soften the horrors of death and spread a softer light on this scene of
carnage". He is surrounded by members of his staff: Marshal Berthier, Marshal
Bessières, and General Caulaincourt are to the left,
while Marshal
Soult, Marshal
Davout and Marshal Murat flank on
the right. A wounded Lithuanian soldier, taken aback by the compassion of
the Emperor, pledges his allegiance to Napoléon while another former combatant
embraces his leg.
Napoléon on the Battlefield of
Eylau was first shown at the Paris Salon in 1808. Initially, some politicians suspected
the painting aimed to portray the Emperor unfavorably, but Napoléon himself
approved of Gros's work and presented him with the Légion d'honneur at
the painter's award ceremony. Gros's depiction of Napoléon displayed a
degree of realism not present in his earlier painting of the Emperor, Bonaparte Visiting the Plague Victims of Jaffa (1804),
nor those by any other artist. In its portrayal of the unpleasant truth of
war, Napoléon on the Battlefield of Eylau breaks with the prevailing
style of Neoclassicism and was an early landmark in the emerging Romantic movement. Its influence is apparent in the works of
French artists like Théodore Géricault and Eugène Delacroix,
themselves both pioneers of Romanticism.
A batalha de Eylau ou Batalha de Preussisch
Eylau ocorreu em 7 de fevereiro de 1807, próxima à cidade de Preußisch Eylau, na Prússia Oriental,
atualmente no Óblast de Kaliningrado, na Rússia. Nesta batalha sangrenta, opuseram-se, com resultados
indefinidos, o exército de Napoleão Bonaparte e
o exército russo sob o comando do general Benningsen.
Depois de Napoleão derrotar a Prússia, o
Czar Alexandre I decidiu
confrontá-lo. O exército russo avançou para a Polônia.
Franceses e russos se encontraram na Polônia, que fora repartida
entre Prússia, Áustria e Rússia, no fim de 1806. Com o tempo frio e chuvoso e o solo
lamacento, nenhuma batalha foi travada. Os russos recuaram para o leste.
Acostumado a lutar sob condições climáticas extremas, o exército russo retomou
a iniciativa no ano seguinte, no auge do Inverno. Como sempre, Napoleão respondeu com
um contra-ataque agressivo. Seus planos, no entanto, foram descobertos pelo
general russo Benningsen, que decidiu tomar uma posição defensiva a leste do
vilarejo de Preußisch Eylau, na Prússia
Oriental. Ali, 80 mil russos, com 400 canhões, aguardavam 46 mil franceses
e 300 peças de artilharia que
rumavam para Eylau.
Na manhã do dia 8 de fevereiro, sob uma tempestade
de neve a -15°C, os combates tiveram início. Napoleão confiou seu ataque ao
flanco direito, comandado pelo eficiente Davout, enquanto Benningsen tentava
cercar o lado esquerdo do exército francês. Às 10 horas, os Russos reagiram.
Napoleão respondeu com a infantaria de
Augereau, que, com a visibilidade prejudicada, foi massacrada pela artilharia.
Bonaparte decidiu então solicitar o avanço de Murat com seus 10 mil cavaleiros.
Começava uma das maiores cargas de cavalaria já registradas. Custou a vida de
1,5 mil cavaleiros franceses e 4 mil soldados russos. Às 15 horas, já sem
reservas, Napoleão soube da chegada de 8 mil prussianos para socorrer os
russos.
As tropas de Davout começaram
a ser repelidas. Porém, ao cair da noite e com sete horas de atraso, 8 mil
homens sob o comando do marechal Ney reforçaram
os franceses, permitindo que Dvout retomasse a ofensiva. Vendo sua principal
rota de retirada ameaçada, Benningsen ordenou a retirada dos russos. A batalha
custou 20 mil homens aos franceses, mais de um terço do exército, e os russos
perderam 30 mil.
A batalha foi uma verdadeira carnificina, mas não produziu resultado decisivo algum. A vitória
esmagadora de Napoleão teria de esperar a primavera.
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