A personification of the River Volga fleeing before the French Imperial standard: Design for a medal

Drawn in preparation for Michaut's medal (see Fig. 1) issued as part of a series celebrating Napoleon's Russian campaign of 1812 (Bramsen 1166, Essling 1375, Julius 2537-2538). The series was designed by Dominique Vivant Denon in his capacity as Director of the Monnaie des Médailles, and illustrated major events in the campaign from the Fall of Vilnius in June of 1812 to the Retreat from Moscow in November of that year. As befitted the propagandistic intent of the series, these events were treated in a decidedly positive light, notably with the catastrophic Retreat shown as a temporary withdrawal caused by the weather. The subject of the present drawing echoes the series of medals issued to celebrate Napoleon's armies reaching significant rivers which dated back to the First Italian campaign. However, in this instance the arrival of French scouts at the Volga was significant only in indicating the length of Napoleon's over-extended lines of supply.
Michaut was a pupil of the sculptors François-Fréderic Lemot and Jean-Guillaume Moitte and of the medallist André Galle, who also contributed to the sequence of Russian campaign medals including the Retreat from Moscow. In 1812 Michaut came second in the medallist section of the Prix de Rome, which he attempted to win outright the following year, again without success. He was also well known for his coin-dies, notably the five franc piece of 1815, and worked extensively under King Louis XVIII and King Charles X, as well as King William I of Holland for whom he designed a number of medals.