Siege of a City

Date

1795

Creator

Produced at the height of the French Revolutionary Wars (1793–95), this is one of twenty drawings Vien made depicting the consequences of armed conflicts. Contemporary events are disguised as ancient history. With the archaeological excavations that had begun in the 1740s and ’50s in Herculaneum and Pompeii, among other sites, an interest in details of armor, costume, and buildings grew. Vien has not yet simplified his composition in the frieze-like arrangement characteristic of neoclassicism; his figures overlap one another in a confused jumble, although the pyramidal platform in the center serves to organize the space. Light is spread fairly evenly across the surface. from Snay, The Epic and the Intimate: French Drawings from the John D. Reilly Collection (Notre Dame, 2011)