The Revolt of Cairo

The Revolt of Cairo is an 1810 history painting by the French artist Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson. It shows an episode from October 1798, during Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of Egypt, when residents of French-occupied Cairo rose up. The uprising was crushed after two days of fighting. Girodet built the composition on a large scale around a violent tangle of bodies. In the foreground, a French hussar charges on foot against a group of Mamelukes and Bedouin, while another hussar's severed head is raised aloft. The style blends Romantic energy with the Neoclassical legacy of Jacques-Louis David. Napoleon, by then Emperor of France, commissioned the canvas in 1809 for 12,000 francs, intended for the Tuileries Palace in Paris. It was shown at the Paris Salon of 1810 at the Louvre. It is now held in the collection of the Palace of Versailles.

Painter

Anne-Louis Girodet

Date

1810

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Depicts

sword

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