“Brussels” Drawing 3 of 3
Vignette, Napoleon (or Wellington?) at the Battle of Waterloo, adapted from Turner, Marengo
Pen and ink, approx. ? × ? cm (image only).The editors of the Library Edition
describe the image as “a sketch of the field of Waterloo; soldiers with cannon in the foreground; a general on his horse”
(Ruskin, Works, 2:347 n. 1).
While Ruskin certainly intends the drawing to depict a scene from the Battle of Waterloo,
which is mentioned in “Brussels”—both in the prose section following
the drawing, and in the poem preceding it—he based his drawing on J. M. W. Turnerʼs vignette,
Marengo,
depicting the Battle of Marengo, which was engraved for
Samuel Rogers, Italy (1830) (p. 17; and
see no. 6 of catalog in Piggott, Turnerʼs Vignettes, 98).
Ruskin omits the left side of Turnerʼs original vignette,
copying only the general on his rearing horse and the group gathered around the cannon on the right.
In order to resituate the scene in Waterloo, Ruskin also omits
the Alps that Turner shows in the north above the Piedmont plain;
instead, he indicates the outline of a town in the distance, intended as Brussels, shown with its two large cathedral towers in silouette.
By adapting Turnerʼs scene to Waterloo,
Ruskin intensifies Turnerʼs irony. The Battle of Marengo
was a decisive victory for Napoleon in his second Italian campaign against the Austrians,
allegedly causing the British prime minister, William Pitt (1759–1806),
to declare with resignation, “Fold up that map”, meaning that the French general had effectively conquered all of Europe
(Piggott, Turnerʼs Vignettes, 38).
In Italy, this victory is undermined by placing
Turnerʼs vignette above Rogersʼs poem,
“The Descent”, referring literally to the descent from the mountains
into Piedmont but figuratively to Napoleonʼs eventual fall.
Ruskin completes Turnerʼs ironic statement by bringing the image
forward in time to Waterloo.
Ruskin may also have meant the viewer to displace Napoleon as the equestrian figure in the foreground
(which Turner based on the portrait by Jacques‐Louis David [1748–1825],
Napoleon Crossing the Alps [1802–5])
and to put the victorious Wellington in the saddle instead. The figure appears to wear his bicorne with the points “fore and aft”
in Wellingtonʼs manner, rather than side to side and
parallel with the shoulders in Napoleonʼs signature manner.