Alexandre Menjaud (1768–1832) - Study for "The coronation of Tasso"

Alexandre Toussaint MENJAUD (Paris, 1768 – Paris, 1832)
Study for The coronation of Tasso

Oil on paper mounted on canvas
37.5 x 29.5 cm
Around 1819

Related work: Painting exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1819 under number 819

The scene represents the death of Tasso (1544-1595) at the convent of Saint-Onuphre, the same day on which the famous author of Jerusalem delivered was to be crowned at the Capitol.
The definitive version of this painting was exhibited at the Salon of 1819, n°819, with the following description:
Tasso died in Rome, in the convent of Saint-Onuphre, while preparations for his coronation were being made in the Capitol. The pope had welcomed him a few days having with the greatest destination and had addressed him these memorable words announcing his triumph: You will honor this laurel, which, until now, has honored those who received it. Deeply affected by the loss of this great poet, he instructed Cardinal Cinthio to carry him, on his funeral bed, the crown that he was to receive at the Capitol.
The life of Tasso, a famous poet whose most famous work is Jerusalem delivered, aroused much interest among artists at the beginning of the 19th century. It was the dramatic dimension of Tasso's life that interested the Romantics. For them he embodied the misunderstood artist, the genius persecuted by the mediocre and unjustly accused of madness. Lord Byron's poem The Lament of Tasso dates from 1817, Goethe's play Torquato Tasso was translated into French in 1823. In 1819, Ducis exhibited The death of Tasso at the convent of Saint-Onuphre. The Lyon painter Fleury-Richard presented a Montaigne visiting Tasso in the hospital at the salon of 1822 (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon). Eugène Delacroix painted two paintings on the subject of Tasso in the madhouse, one exhibited at the salon of 1824 (private collection), the other dated 1839 (Oskar Reinhart collection, Winterthur). It is also the 1839 version which inspired Baudelaire's poem The Poet in the dungeon... published in 1844.

Alexandre Toussaint Menjaud was born on November 24, 1768, in Paris. He is the fruit of the union between Jean Menjaud (1745-after 1796), advisor to the king, lawyer in Parliament, notary at the Châtelet de Paris from 1770 to 1787, judge of peace in 1791 and 1792, and Madeleine Dupré (1753- after 1792). His half-brother was Jean Adolphe Menjaud (1795-1864), actor at the Comédie-Française.
Alexandre was a student of Baron Regnault at the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris. He exhibited at the Salon from 1796 until 1834 (posthumous exhibition). Received the first Grand Prix de Rome in 1802 with Éponine and Sabinus ahead of Vespasien, he was also a medalist on two other occasions in 1806 and 1819. The artist died on September 6, 1832, in Paris and was buried in the Montparnasse cemetery.

Museums: Bordeaux, Draguignan, Bayeux, Saint-Germain, Chambord, La Fère, Versailles, Lavaur, Pau, Fontainebleau, Marseille, Montargis…