The Convalescence of Bayard
Pierre Révoil (1776-1842) · 1817
The knight Bayard, wounded in the thigh by a lance at the storming of Brescia, lies recovering in the house where two archers carried him. His protection has saved the lady of the house and her two daughters from the sack of the town, and every day the grateful girls come to sing and play the lute at his bedside while their mother listens. The faithful servant who would later write Bayard's life holds a fan of peacock feathers and keeps his eyes on his hero. At the right are the knight's arms; at the left his lance and a banner captured from the Venetians, with a label reading conquered in the love of the king our lord Louis the Twelfth. Look at the polished detail of the furnishings and costumes.
Pierre Révoil, a painter from Lyon and a passionate collector of medieval objects, led the troubadour style, which told sentimental tales of chivalry in jewel-like pictures. He showed this canvas at the Salon of eighteen seventeen, and the royal household bought it on the twentieth of June that year for six thousand francs. It hung at the Luxembourg from eighteen eighteen to eighteen forty-nine before entering the Louvre.
Did You Know? The painter collected real medieval objects, and the Louvre bought his collection in 1828; the room's furniture and this picture share a taste.
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