Analysis Of Girodets The Revolt At Cairo

Analysis Of Girodets The Revolt At Cairo At first glance, the eye is immediately drawn to the naked Arab man on the right. His sword is raised in defence of the French charge; his left arm cradles a stricken Mamluk warrior in lavish attire. To the left of the painting is a French soldier advancing on the rebels with sword raised in obvious intent, stepping over the body of a fallen native who is dressed in classical white robes. At the centre of the piece is a helmeted hussar, looking up at the Arab warrior with a steely resolve; sword pulled back in anticipation. Underneath him is a turbaned black man in the thick of the melee, with a raised dagger in one hand and the head of a French soldier in the other. The scale of the work is massive (365 x 500 cm), and the brushwork is very fine in the classical style, leaving little evidence of the brush strokes on the canvas. Beyond the highlighted characters, Girodet employs a fairly dark palette of reds and browns, in keeping with the everyday, grubby violence of the scene, and to better accentuate the main players. This combination of light and shade lends the painting a great depth of field. The light falls from the upper-left of the picture plane, but the figures are arranged in such a way that only the Mamluk warrior and his Arab protector are fully illuminated. They are very alluring to the eye, and Girodet seems to have taken great care to invest them with much humanity. The naked warrior is depicted in a classically sculpted pose, a look of sickened horror on his face at the sight of a French offensive in the mosque. The charging Hussar’s face on the other hand, is portrayed in deep shadow under his raised sword arm, obscuring his features and thus demoting his status. Although there is no actual blood depicted in the piece, the flashes of red on the hussar’s trousers and the Mamluk’s cloak provide a striking suggestion. It is important for us not to assume the artist’s thinking or impose our own moral agenda on the piece . However, it is difficult not to come away from the painting with our sympathies leaning towards the exotic figures. This was undoubtedly not the commissioned intent, but Girodet’s subversion seems to be quite evident. The most obvious distinction between the two main protagonists is that the naked warrior is in a defensive stance, and protecting the Mamluk into the bargain, while the French hussar is very much on the attack. In a distortion of French Neoclassicism, Girodet bestows all the desirable attributes of classical tradition: bravery, honour, loyalty, on the indigenous. Their illuminated faces seem to portray the majesty of all human emotion in this moment of high melodrama, while the hussar, lessened by his own shadow, is reduced to a cipher for French military ambition and ignominious cultural disregard. He is violently portrayed, with a single-mindedness of purpose and no compassionate aspect: A whirling automaton in service to the Empire.