Page 37 - Revolution Republique Empire Restauration

Fig. 1 Franco-Italian relations, this work should also be con-
sidered as a portrait of contemporary history.
trade. His portrait of the diplomat and his young fam-
ily intimately set in an interior of their Florentine After the execution of Louis XVI on 21 January 1793,
palazzo is also an example of a conversation piece, a England declared the French government ‘outlawed’
French hybrid of a group portrait and a genre scene. and along with the other European nations refused to
However, given its date of 1797, a critical year in recognise the Republic. Initially defeated, the revolu-
tionary armies eventually succeeded in halting the
advance of the coalition forces of Austria and Prussia,
and invaded Belgium and Italy. For a long time the
outcome on both fronts remained up in the air, until
the arrival of a young general, a certain Napoleon
Bonaparte, who, in launching his Italian campaign,
was soon victorious in flying the French flag. In 1795,
realising that his state was in peril, the Grand Duke of
Tuscany, Ferdinand III, son of the Austrian Emperor,
finally officially recognised the Republic and Tuscany
was declared neutral. The establishment of a legation
in Florence, the only one on the Italian peninsula, at
the Palazzo Ximenes (now the Palazzo della
Meridiana, near the Palzzo Pitti) marked a decisive
stage in Ferdinand’s struggles to save his throne.

It was in the context of these events that André-
François Miot (Versailles, 1762 - Paris, 1841) was
appointed to the strategic post of Foreign Affairs
Commissioner, a title, which under the Directoire was
equivalent in rank to that of Foreign Minister.18 In his
Memoires, the future Count Miot de Melito, confides
that the ‘the strangest rumours had preceded his
arrival in Florence.They expected to see a kind of sav-
age, outlandishly dressed, with the coarsest of tongues

18. The ministeries had been suppressed by 1794 and in their place substituted by twelve commissions. The Ministry for Foreign Affairs had been the
twelfth and Miot had been confirmed as Commissioner on November 8th 1794.
19. See A.-Fr. Miot de Melito, Mémoires du comte Miot de Melito, ancien ministre, ambassadeur, conseiller d’Etat et membre de l’Institut, Paris, M. Lévy frères, 1858,
3 vol. (published by General Fleischmann, the son-in-law of the author), p. 80. See also the file on Miot de Melito’s military career in the Château de
Vincennes (2YG – 1048 and YA- 30); his file in the Archives Nationales (L.H / 1886/ 32); and his correspondence preserved in the archives of the
Ministry for Foreign Affairs, La Courneuve (146 (bis) = microfilm P 07365 ; 147 and 147 (bis) = microfilm P 07364.
20. On this subject see P. Arizzoli-Clémentel ‘Les révolutions du costume‘ in Aux Armes et Aux Arts, Paris, Paris, 1989, pp. 302-311.

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