Bayard Refusing the Presents of His Hostess, in Brescia
Medium
Black and brown chalk, with stumping, and pen and brown ink, heightened with white goauche, on off-white laid paper
Dimensions
36.4 × 51.3 cm (14 3/8 × 20 1/4 in.)
Classification
chalk
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
112039
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Considered a model of chivalric behavior, the Chevalier Bayard (1473–1524), a French commander active in the so-called Italian Wars (1494–1559), was wounded during the fall of the city of Brescia in 1512. Bayard is taken to the home of a local noblewoman to recuperate, and she offers him a fortune in ransom money for her family’s protection that he gallantly refuses. In his drawing, Girodet mingles the emerging French vogue for the Middle Ages with the reigning taste for the antique. Bayard loo...