G iuseppe P ietro B agetti
Turin 1764 - 1831
25. Fighting in Eckmühl near Regensburg: Napoleon’s Victorious Attack on the Austrians
Watercolour on paper, with pencil preparation
540 x 855 mm
Marked upper left: Soirée de Ratisbonne
Provenance:
Turin, private collection.
Bagetti’s initial training took place in a musical environment with Bernardino Ottani, who was also devoted
to painting. He obtained a degree in civilian and military architecture from the University of Turin in 1782.
He taught topographical drawing at the Accademia dei Nobili starting in 1792. The following year he travelled
in the train of the royal armies to the County of Nice and to Toulon with the task of drawing the military
events of the campaign. He was officially appointed «capitaine ingénieur géographe artiste» for his merits
in 1800. Now a skilled watercolourist, having picked up the technique from Pietro Giacomo Palmieri, he
travelled to Paris in 1806 to follow and depict the great victorious feats of Napoleon’s imperial army right up
to the time of the Russian campaign. His cooperation with the French army began in 1796 with a popular
series of views, drawings and watercolours depicting Napoleon’s victorious battles in Italy in 1796-1797 and
in 1800, which he drew from life. Also working on this task with Bagetti were a geographer and engineer
called Gautier and two topographers, Pasquieri and Bucler d’Albe. He showed his work at the Salon de Paris in
1812 and it won him a gold medal. Returning to Turin after 1815, he was made painter of battles, views and
landscapes by appointment to the royal court. His watercolours are now kept in the Museo Civico in Turin.
The Treaty of Tilsit had redrawn the map of the German states in 1807: Prussia had lost its territories to
the west of the Elbe and it continued to be under French occupation; the Confederation of the Rhine was a
protectorate under Napoleon, who had also set up a new state called the Kingdom of Westphalia and given
it to his brother Jérôme-Napoléon Bonaparte. Austria felt threatened and took up arms against Napoleon in
1809. Moving from allied Bavaria, Napoleon marched on Vienna and, after clashes (some of which he won,
while others he lost) and the bloody battle of Essling, he won a decisive victory at Wagram, which was followed
by the Treaty of Schönbrunn. One of the first feats of arms in this campaign was the Bataille de Ratisbonne,
or Regensburg, an old Bavarian city on the southern bank of the Danube, which took place from 23 to 29
April 1809. From the heights to the southwest of the river, in an area called Eckmühl (or Eggmühl today) and
along the chaussée de Ratisbonne (now State Highway 15), Napoleon’s troops launched a victorious attack on
the Austrians under Arch Duke Charles. The Austrians retreated towards the Danube, crossing it on a bridge
of boats, then they crossed over the famous fifteen-arch bridge built between 1135 and 1146 leading into
Regensburg and shut themselves up in the city, adopting a defensive posture.
The French chased after the enemy but they failed to intercept him, and so they had to attack Regensburg which
fell on 29 April. Napoleon was lightly injured in the foot within sight of the city and had to be medicated on the
battlefield. Bagetti took part in the action, which he recorded in three different views. In this Soirée de Ratisbonne
we see a broad panorama of the landscape around Eckmühl, some 11 kilometres to the south of Regensburg. A
detachment of French troops is moving down the hill to meet up with comrades in arms further down the hill who
have surrounded the enemy, as the latter frantically endeavour, in disorderly fashion, to avoid being surrounded.
While the caption uses the word soirée, it is clear from the shadows cast on the ground that the scene is actually
being played out some time in the early afternoon, because the French soldiers who are travelling in a northwesterly
direction have the sun behind them. The preparatory drawing in ink (440 x 845) for this watercolour, now in
Versailles, has several annotations including: bottom left «vue de Ratisbonne bataille en avant la ville 1809»; in the
centre of the lower margin «Combat de Ratisbonne le 23. avril 1809»; and right «d’après nature par Bagetti».
A watercolour with pencil preparation, of the same size as the one we are examining here, shows a subsequent
moment in the fighting; the panorama is seen from a lower level and is thus less extensive. In the foreground we
see several soldiers who have fallen in battle, with a group of prisoners to the left. The French cavalry chases the
enemy as he withdraws towards the Danube.
The third and last act in the event is recorded by an ink drawing (330 x 790) signed «Bagetti», now in the archives
of the Service Historique de l’Armée de Terre in Vincennes. The artist meticulously reproduces the skyline of
«Ratisbone prise par assaut en 1809 1 ” with the French troops deployed around the burning city. There are no
figures in the foreground. Later Bagetti was to rework the drawing into a watercolour (500 x 805, now at the
Artillery Barracks in Reully) and to add a group on the hill to the right, with Napoleon, wounded in the foot,
receiving medical attention. The same composition provided the inspiration many years later for a watercolour
replica by Pierre-Justin Ouvrié and Victor-Jean Adam, now in Versailles. Bagetti depicts Napoleon’s injury
without any special emphasis, while in a painting by Claude Gautherot shown at the Salon in 1810 and which
enjoyed some popularity at the time, the episode takes on the aura of a heroic example 2 .
To complete this pictorial account of the “Bataille de Ratisbonne”, Bagetti’s three views might be set alongside a
view by Christian-Johann Oldendorp (1810, Regensburg, Museum der Stadt Regensburg), showing the fighting
against the backdrop of the burning city 3 .
A comparison of the various documents recording these same
events highlights Bagetti’s extraordinary talent in conceiving and
expressing such a well-balanced rapport between a harmoniously
unified overall composition and the meticulous definition of
individual details. This is especially noteworthy in the two
scenes describing subsequent events in the battle, where Bagetti
depicts the lively, dynamic pace of the fighting, weaving an
exciting sense of adventure with a vision of tragic violence.
The watercolours are based on drawings made in situ and from life,
“d’après nature”, but Bagetti certainly meditated at some length on
just how he would eventually depict his “established views”:
“In established views, it being extremely unlikely that the
viewpoint, not chosen by the painter, is going to be the best
possible one to encompass all of the advantages desirable to
achieve the greatest effect in the painting, and since it is also
impossible to alter the objects that make up the view in any
way, you will have to have recourse to all of the aspects that
are obliged to enter the picture accidentally, such as the way
the light strikes, the atmosphere, and the figures, placing and
combining all of these things so that they can correct as far as
possible the painterly shortcomings of the given objects, for detail
there is no other choice 4 ”.
( MVF )