Jean-François-Pierre Peyron, 'Belisarius receiving Hospitality from a Peasant', 1779

The painting represents an episode in Belisaire, a novel by Jean-François Marmontel, published in 1767. The novel is based on the legend of Belisarius, the Byzantine general (about 505–565) who according to this account was blinded and unjustly impoverished by the Roman emperor Justinian. Marmontel’s novel was widely seen at the time as a condemnation of the unjust execution in 1766 of the French general Lally-Tollendal for the French defeat in India. During the years 1767–1800 a total of 13 paintings and sculptures based on the Belisarius legend were exhibited at the Salon.

Unlike most images of the story, which show Belisarius begging in the streets outside Rome, this painting by Peyron depicts the episode when Belisarius is given hospitality at the home of a peasant who recognises the hero fallen on hard times. The two women of the family place their infants on his knee to give him thanks and receive his blessing.

Peyron gives Belisarius a more active role than in the usual depictions that show him as passively receiving alms. He seems to have intended the elderly hero to be regarded with admiration rather than with pity. Seated on a throne-like but plain chair, Belisarius is Marmontel’s model of the virtuous king who rejects luxury in favour of a life of modest simplicity.

Peyron includes the peasant’s son, who once served under Belisarius, at the left. The son’s importance in the story is emphasised by the arch above his head and the lines of the architecture, which intersect just to the left of it. The sharply contrasting red and green of his costume stands out from the more muted colours worn by the other figures. He looks away from his wife and his infant child as he contemplates his former general, his shadowed face contrasting with Belisarius’s strongly lit face. He raises his arm, concealed by his cloak, perhaps to swear an oath of vengeance for the unfair treatment of Belisarius.

Peyron uses light and shade and different spaces within the picture to underline the emotional conflict and to contrast the tender scene on the right with the barely contained rage on the left. Jacques-Louis David had used a similar compositional technique in his famous Oath of the Horatii of 1784 and in his Lictors bringing Brutus the Bodies of his Sons of 1789 (both in the Louvre, Paris).

This picture is the modello (finished sketch) for the painting of the same subject now in the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse. The painting, like its pendant, Cornelia Mother of the Gracci (for which we also have the modello), was commissioned by the abbé François de Pierre de Bernis. Both modelli were exhibited at the 1785 Salon. There are also two known drawings relating to the composition (Albertina, Vienna, and Louvre, Paris), which show how Peyron evolved the picture by a series of small adjustments. The underdrawing shows typical characteristics of Peyron’s drawing style – for example his idiosyncratic approach to representing finger joints and knuckles.