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Fig. 2
tribute the other 500 ducats to plundered nunneries. Fig. 3
The moment represented is Bayard bidding farewell
to the family.’ François Pupil points out in his essay ‘A Survey of
National Historical and Literary Themes in French
One of the most remarkable French commanders of Painting’4 it is unsurprising that Bayard should con-
his or any other age, Pierre Terrail LeVieux (1473- tinue to enjoy popularity as a subject during the
1524), better known as the Chevalier de Bayard, Restoration, given the regime’s deliberate commis-
commanded the French forces with valour and sioning of overblown evocations of France’s monar-
genius in all the important battles of the ItalianWars, chical past. In the Salons between 1808 and 1822
from his initial victory at Fornovo (1495) to his spec- fourteen pictures based on Bayard subjects were
tacularly unequal defence of Mézières (1521) which exhibited.
saved central France from an imperial invasion up
until 1524 when he was killed by arquebus fire at the
passage of the Sesia.
A man of flesh and blood, accomplishment and
merit, the Chevalier de Bayard nevertheless came to
symbolise for later generations of Frenchmen a
romantic ideal which was almost Quixotic. As
4. New Orleans and Cincinnati, op. cit, pp.174-175.
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