Explore the Genre of this artwork.
Brigands that lived in the Roman countryside, despite being a serious menace to travelers, were a preferred Romantic figure of numerous Roman painters and artists of the time, like Bartolomeo Pinelli, Louis Léopold Robert, Léon Cogniet, and Luigi Rocco. They took up the same themes as the Roman Bamboccianti painters and mixed them with Neo-classical influences.
Vernet, probably due to the success of those works, began to compose paintings on the topic in 1820 with his Route de Naples, which represented a group of bandits ready for an ambush and hiding behind a group of boulders near a seaside road by Terracina. The success of the painting was immediate and was reproduced as a lithography by Francois Saeraphin Delpech.
After Italian Brigands Surprised by Papal Troops, Vernet made a third painting on the subject of brigands, Confession of an Italian Bandit, in 1834. It was destroyed in the sacking of the Château de Neuilly during the Revolution of 1848. The painting, which was reproduced several times, showed a dying bandit lying on an ox-driven cart receiving absolution by a monk kneeling by his side. The background landscape largely depicts neo-classical motifs like temple ruins and the arches of a Roman aqueduct. The capture of the repentance of the bandit and his absolution closes Vernet's trilogy of brigand paintings (that is, Route de Naples, Italian Brigands Surprised by Papal Troops, and Confession of an Italian Bandit).
Also in the theme, Vernet painted The Bandit Betrayed in 1828, a scene of a brigand being captured by soldiers thanks to the betrayal of a woman with whom he had made an appointment. Again, it was a painting that mixed realism with a dramatic scene depicting a single, instantaneous moment.
Bartolomeo Pinelli Revolution of 1848 Louis Léopold Robert Terracina Bamboccianti Léon Cogniet Château de Neuilly