Art Institute of Chicago
Sketch for The Revolt of Cairo
Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson (French, 1767-1824)
- Date
- c. 1810
- Medium
- Oil and ink on paper, laid down on canvas
- Culture
- France
- Department
- Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Institution
- Art Institute of Chicago
This is a preparatory sketch for a monumental painting depicting one of the bloodiest moments of Napoleon’s 1798 invasion of Egypt: the suppression of an uprising in Cairo. The conflict included a massacre in the Al-Azhar Mosque of Mamelukes, a military class of enslaved men who occupied much of the Middle East at that time. As there were no surviving eyewitness reports, Girodet was free to interpret the event as he wished, and, as a commission from Napoleon, the painting celebrates the French point of view. Throughout the work, Girodet perpetuates European fantasies of the Middle East as simultaneously opulent and brutal, lavishing attention on Arab and Ottoman turbans, luxurious fabrics, bare flesh, and gore.
The authoritative record is held by Art Institute of Chicago. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.
Linked open data
Authority identifiers that link this record into the wider web of cultural data — stable references you can follow to the source.
- Object type
- AAT300033618
Related across collections
Semantically similar works from Art Institute of Chicago and other institutions.
Sketch for "The Revolt at Cairo"
Cleveland Museum of Art
Study for "The Revolt of Cairo"
Cleveland Museum of Art
Head of a Mustachioed Man, Three-Quarter View
Minneapolis Institute of Art
Two Arabs, for "The Revolt of Cairo"
Cleveland Museum of Art
Egyptian Family (Sketch for "The Battle of the Pyramids")
Cleveland Museum of Art
General Jean-Baptiste Kléber and Egyptian Family (Sketches for "The Battle of the Pyramids")
Cleveland Museum of Art
General Jean-Baptiste Kléber (Sketch for "The Battle of the Pyramids")
Cleveland Museum of Art
Egypt and Nubia, Volume III, No. 26, Cairo, Looking West
Cleveland Museum of Art
Egypt and Nubia, Volume III, No. 26, Cairo, Looking West
Cleveland Museum of Art
Napoleon Entering Cairo
Art Institute of Chicago
Egypt and Nubia, Volume III: Interior of the Mosque of the Sultan El Ghoree
Cleveland Museum of Art
Egypt and Nubia: Volume III - No. 36, Interior of the Mosque of the Sultan El Ghoree
Cleveland Museum of Art