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Quelle 1: Boutard über Gros' Skizze Combat de Nazareth (Bild)

J. B. Boutard: Variétés. Salon de l'an IX, Nr. VII, in: Journal des débats et loix du pouvoir législatif, et les actes du gouvernement, 1./2. vendémiaire an X (23./24. September 1801), S. 2-3, hier S. 2, zitiert nach Siegfried 1993, S. 246.

(Gros) has failed to appreciate that there are always more things to leave than to take in a program.
Whoever was charged with furnishing the program (whether he is a painter himself or whether he is not, which is even worse) did not want to cede his share of spirit to those who must execute the work; he spared no details, nothing bothered him, he had a lot of time, the incidents followed one after the other from his pen, because paper can take everything. Unfortunately, it is not the same with canvas: the artist who does not have the courage to do justice to three-quarters of the piece of descriptive eloquence produces a sketch divided by commas, periods, and paragraphs, precisely like a program, and I very much fear that this is the case with the sketch I am talking about.


Ebd., S. 2-3, zitiert nach Siegfried 1993, S. 249.

(Gros's sketch) is composed of five principal groups little tied one to another, of which four are merely accidents of the action … Of these four groups, each one of which would make the subject of an interesting painting, three are given in the program, and no doubt the particular actions they represent would embellish, in history, the narrative of the battle of Nazareth, by appearing as accessories to the principal action, successively and without hindering each other.
On canvas, they all present themselves at the same time and produce nothing but a coup de theatre harmful to the unity of the action. I would be very surprised if this composition does not soon procure us a pantomime of the battle of Nazareth.