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Fig. 1
the same subject exhibited in the 1808 Salon (Fig. 2), described in the Salon livret : ‘Bayard, having been
which was awarded a 2nd class medal. This latter dangerously wounded at the siege of Brescia , which
painting recently surfaced on the Paris art market the French had attacked, was taken by his soldiers to
and was subsequently acquired by the Louvre.2 In his the house of a nobleman with a wife and two daugh-
review of the 1808 Salon, Landon singled out ters. His presence and his orders saved the house and
Dumet’s work, praising it as one which despite some family from pillage. Bayard, once cured and ready to
minor flaws displayed a natural talent for portraiture return to the camp, asked the nobleman to accept a
and ‘promet un talent très distingué’.3 box containing 2500 ducats of gold. Bayard had the
two daughters come and bade them to each accept
The episode represented in the exhibited picture was 1000 ducats as a dowry. He asked the mother to dis-
1. Paris, Musée de Louvre, inv. no. 740.
2. J.-F. Baroni and Eric Coatalem, Les Tableau Anciens, Paris, 1991, no. 115, p. 20, illus.
3. Landon, op. cit.
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