Study for "The Revolt of Cairo" (1810): Art, History and Details

Study for "The Revolt of Cairo" (1810) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucy-Trioson (French, 1767–1824).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Girodet made this linear study early on in the process of planning his Revolt of Cairo (see photo), which today hangs in the National Museum of the Château of Versailles. The composition shows French soldiers crushing a rebellion in Cairo prompted by Napoleon's invasion and occupation of the city in 1798. The very thin support of the drawing and its even contour lines indicate that the artist might have produced it by tracing an earlier version of the composition. The museum owns a rough oil sketch for The Revolt of Cairo that is about half the size of the present drawing.

Object facts

• Title: Study for "The Revolt of Cairo"
• Date: 1810
• Creator attribution: Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucy-Trioson (French, 1767–1824)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: pen and brown ink; framing lines in pen and brown ink
• Dimensions: Sheet: 28.1 x 43 cm (11 1/16 x 16 15/16 in.); Secondary Support: 29.8 x 44.4 cm (11 3/4 x 17 1/2 in.)
• Collection: DR - French
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2008.372

Collection credit

Bequest of Muriel Butkin

Further reading listed by the museum

• Heim Gallery. Exhibition of French Drawings: Neo-Classicism, 20 February - 27 March 1975. London: Heim Gallery, 1975.
• Shepherd Gallery. Non-Dissenters : One Hundred and Seventy French Nineteenth Century Drawings, Pastels and Watercolors. New York: Shepherd Gallery, 1976.
• Brown University. All the Banners Wave: Art and War in the Romantic Era, 1792-1851 : an Exhibition by the Department of Art, Brown University, Bell Gallery, List Art Center, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, February 26 Through March 28, 1982. Providence, R.I.: The Dept, 1982.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.