View of the Brois Field, facing South and View of Saorgio, facing East

Giuseppe Pietro Bagetti (1764-1831)
1793, Watercolour on paper, heightened with gouache

Long overlooked, Bagetti's work is now the focus of renewed interest due to the study, publication and exhibition of his watercolours in Turin, Versailles and Vincennes. Bagetti’s landscapes, in which nature often has the upper hand, are at once topographically precise, grandiose and picturesque. This watercolour from 1793 shows the fields of Brois, in which the tents in the military camp of Napoleon's men are visible. In the foreground, an elevated road, on which a hay wagon passes, winds its way through the valley towards the cliff in the distance. Nature, grandiose and imposing, dominates the human figure. To produce his drawings, Bagetti closely studied topographical maps and usually gathered information from the individuals involved in the events at hand before sketching directly on site.