Kneeling Cuirassier

Pierre Narcisse Guérin

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This study relates to one of Guerin's most important Napoleonic commissions, The Death of the Maréchal Lannes, duc de Montebello (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Valenciennes). After the maréchal was mortally wounded in the battle of Essling on May 19, 1809, the French government commissioned Guérin to create a large painting commemorating the event. Intended to be displayed in the Salon of 1810, the canvas remained unfinished at the fall of the empire in 1814 and was still in Guérin's studio at his death. For this ambitious composition showing Lannes expiring on the battlefield in the arms of Napoleon and surrounded by loyal soldiers, Guérin made individual studies for each figure, including this cuirassier kneeling by the maréchal's side. He wears a helmet in this drawing, a large fur hat in the compositional study, and is bareheaded in the painting.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art