04 Works, The art of War, Charles de Steuben, Eugène Delacroix and Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld's Bataille de Poitiers, with Footnotes

Charles de Steuben  (1788–1856)

Bataille de Poitiers, en octobre 732, c. 1837

Oil on canvas

height: 4.6 m (15.2 ft); width: 5.4 m (17.7 ft)

Palace of Versailles

Muslim empire reaches its furthest extent. Battle of Tours prevents further advance northwards.

The Battle of Tours followed two decades of Umayyad conquests in Europe which had begun with the invasion of the Christian Visigothic Kingdom of the Iberian Peninsula in 711. These were followed by military expeditions into the Frankish territories of Gaul, former provinces of the Roman Empire. Umayyad military campaigns reached northward into Aquitaine and Burgundy, including a major engagement at Bordeaux and a raid on Autun.

The Battle of Poitiers (Battle of Tours) took place over roughly a week.

Charles Auguste Guillaume Steuben (April 18, 1788 – November 21, 1856), also Charles de Steuben, was a German-born French Romantic painter and lithographer active during the Napoleonic Era.

De Steuben was born the son of the Duke of Württemberg officer Carl Hans Ernst von Steuben. At the age of twelve he moved with his father, who entered Russian service as a captain, to Saint Petersburg, where he studied drawing at the Art Academy classes as a guest student.

The poet Friedrich Schiller was a family friend who at once recognized De Steuben's artistic talent and instilled in him his political ideal of free self-determination regardless of courtly constraints.

In 1803 Steuben traveled with a letter to his friend, painter François Gérard, in Paris. Gerard took in many penniless aspiring artists and students for training. After two years of preparation, in February 1805 Steuben enrolled in the prestigious École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, where he learned from renowned teachers, including Jacques-Louis David and Pierre-Paul Prud'hon.

De Steuben in 1812 debuted at the Salon de Paris with his painting of Peter the Great, which garnered attention in the professional world. Encouraged by this first success, Steuben continued with a number of historical paintings.

De Steuben's Bataille de Poitiers shows the triumphant Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours, also known as the Battle of Poitiers. He painted Jeanne la folle around the same time and he was commissioned by Louis Philippe to paint a series of portraits of past Kings of France.

Steuben became a French citizen in 1823. However, the irregularity of his income as a freelance artist was in contrast to his sense of duty and social responsibility. To secure his family financially, he took a job as an art teacher at the École Polytechnique, where he briefly trained Gustave Courbet.

In 1840 he was awarded a gold medal at the Salon de Paris for his highly acclaimed paintings. More on Charles de Steuben

Unknown artist

Charles Martel, King of the Franks, 7th century, c 19th century

28 x 44.7 cm | 11 x 17.6 inches

Jupiterimages

Charles Martel, 7th century King of the Franks, 19th century. Charles Martel (the Hammer) (c688-741) depicted in a chain mail tunic carrying a mace and shield. Founder of the Carolingian dynasty and grandfather of Charlemagne, he defeated the Moors at the Battle of Poitiers in 732, turning back their expansion north of the Pyrenees. More on this painting

Charles's victory is widely believed to have stopped the northward advance of Umayyad forces from the Iberian Peninsula and to have prevented the Islamization of Western Europe

Eugène Delacroix (French, Charenton-Saint-Maurice 1798–1863 Paris)

The Battle of Poitiers, c. 1830

Oil on canvas

 44 7/8 × 57 1/2 in. (114 × 146 cm)

Musée du Louvre, Paris,

Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix (26 April 1798 – 13 August 1863) was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school.

As a painter and muralist, Delacroix's use of expressive brushstrokes and his study of the optical effects of colour profoundly shaped the work of the Impressionists, while his passion for the exotic inspired the artists of the Symbolist movement. A fine lithographer, Delacroix illustrated various works of William Shakespeare, the Scottish author Walter Scott and the German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Delacroix took for his inspiration the art of Rubens and painters of the Venetian Renaissance, with an attendant emphasis on colour and movement rather than clarity of outline and carefully modelled form. Dramatic and romantic content characterized the central themes of his maturity, and led him not to the classical models of Greek and Roman art, but to travel in North Africa, in search of the exotic. Friend and spiritual heir to Théodore Géricault, Delacroix was also inspired by Lord Byron, with whom he shared a strong identification with the "forces of the sublime", of nature in often violent action.

However, Delacroix was given to neither sentimentality nor bombast, and his Romanticism was that of an individualist. In the words of Baudelaire, "Delacroix was passionately in love with passion, but coldly determined to express passion as clearly as possible." More on Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix

The Battle of Tours, also called the Battle of Poitiers and, by Arab sources, the Battle of the Highway of the Martyrs was fought on 10 October 732, and was an important battle during the Umayyad invasion of Gaul. It resulted in the victory for the Frankish and Aquitanian forces, led by Charles Martel, over the invading forces of the Umayyad Caliphate, led by Abdul Rahman Al-Ghafiqi, governor of al-Andalus.

"About the time of the battle of Tours, internal dissensions broke out within the Arabian Empire, for though the Arabs were united by the bond of Islam they continued to maintain their tribal institutions and with them their old feuds and factions. Of the latter the two most important were the Maadites and the Yemenites…When the Maadites gained the upper hand, the Berbers of Africa refused to obey them, rose in revolt and most of what is now Morocco seceded…But the most important point to note is that, because of the revolt immediately after Abd-al-Rahman’s defeat at Tours, the Arab leaders in Spain were cut off from the Caliph in Damascus, and because of the revolution in Morocco they were no longer able to recruit their Berber armies. (347)" 

Details of the battle, including the number of combatants and its exact location, are unclear from the surviving sources. Most sources agree both armies were roughly the same size, between 20,000 and 30,000 men.. Notably, the Frankish troops apparently fought without heavy cavalry. The battlefield was located somewhere between the cities of Poitiers and Tours, in northern Aquitaine in western France, near the border of the Frankish realm and the then-independent Duchy of Aquitaine under Odo the Great.

Al-Ghafiqi was killed in combat, and the Umayyad army withdrew after the battle. The battle helped lay the foundations of the Carolingian Empire and Frankish domination of western Europe for the next century. Most historians agree that "the establishment of Frankish power in western Europe shaped that continent's destiny and the Battle of Tours confirmed that power."

Debate over this battle questions the significance of Tours as an influential turning point in history. Charles’s victory in 732 did help to deter Umayyad settlement in Frankish territory, at least for that year. However, Tours was not necessarily the decisive conflict it is sometimes portrayed to be. For instance, Arab raids were launched in 734, 736, and their largest invasion occurred in 739 where they almost reached as far as Dijon before being beaten back by Frankish and Lombard forces. These were not the actions of a defeated or even a demoralized force.

Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld  (1794–1872)

The Saracen Army outside Paris, 730-32 AD,  c. 1626

Oil on canvas

57 x 66 cm

Casino Massimo Lancellotti 

The dark exoticism of Saracen invaders is stressed in this detail from The Saracen Army outside Paris, by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, painted 1822-27, which actually depicts a fictional incident from Ariosto (Cassino Massimo, Rome)

Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (26 March 1794 – 24 May 1872) was a German painter, chiefly of Biblical subjects. As a young man he associated with the painters of the Nazarene movement who revived the florid Renaissance style in religious art. He is remembered for his extensive Picture Bible, and his designs for stained glass windows in cathedrals.

At the beginning of his time in Rome, Schnorr was particularly influenced by his close study of fifteenth-century Italian painting, especially the works of Fra Angelico. Soon however, he abandoned this refined simplicity, and began to look towards more elaborate High Renaissance models.

The second period of Schnorr's artistic output began in 1825, when he left Rome, settled in Munich, entered the service of Ludwig I of Bavaria, and transplanted to Germany the art of wall-painting which he had learned in Italy. He showed himself qualified as a sort of poet-painter to the Bavarian court; he organized a staff of trained executants, and covered five halls in the new palace – the "Residenz" – with frescoes illustrating the Nibelungenlied. He also painted a series of scenes from the lives of Charlemagne, Frederick Barbarossa and Rudolph of Habsburg. More on Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld

Through his actions after Tours, Charles helped pave the way for his famous successor Charlemagne (r. 768-814) to rule over a relatively stable and powerful kingdom upon assuming the throne. Charles was so successful in his efforts that he established a new Frankish dynasty replacing the Merovingians with one centered around his family, known as the Carolingian Dynasty (c. 750-887). 

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