CHAUDET, Antoine-Denis
(b. 1763, Paris, d. 1810, Paris)

Belisarius and his Guide

1794
Bronze, height 48 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

After Jean-Francois Marmontel's 1767 novel, the theme of Belisarius was much in vogue from the 1770s. The story of Belisarius was that of a loyal and successful general in the service of the Byzantine emperor Justinian. He had won major victories against the Vandals, Goths and Bulgarians, but he then became implicated in political intrigues, was accused of treason and disgraced. He became an outcast and was even reduced to begging; one version of the story also said that his eyes were put out.

Chadet followed Jacques-Louis David's painting of the subject which had won acclaim at the Salon of 1781. This painting shows the blind warrior seated beside his guide, who, hoping for alms, proffers a helmet to a soldier startled by the reduced condition of his former commander. In Chadet's bronze, Belisarius gently supports the exhausted guide's head on his lap. His blind-man's staff is prominently held. Belisarius's left arm is slung inside his robe which falls in front of the block on which he sits.