Battle of Somosierra 1808
Horace Vernet·1850
Historical Context
Battle of Somosierra 1808 from 1850 at the National Museum in Warsaw is a later treatment of the famous cavalry charge, returning to a subject that Vernet had painted in 1839 with a renewed sense of its historical and patriotic significance. The Polish lancers' charge at Somosierra, which broke the Spanish artillery defending the pass and opened the road to Madrid, remained one of the most celebrated episodes in Polish military history, the moment when Polish soldiers sacrificed themselves in Napoleon's service and earned a permanent place in French military legend. Vernet's mature handling, refined through decades of battle painting, brought even greater documentary assurance to this second treatment of the subject. The National Museum in Warsaw holds this as a major work in its collection, a testament to Polish military valor by France's most celebrated battle painter in a work commissioned specifically for a Polish institution.
Technical Analysis
The cavalry charge is rendered with dramatic energy and documentary precision. Vernet's mature handling captures the violence and heroism of the charge.
Look Closer
- ◆In this 1850 version, Vernet concentrates the charge into an even tighter diagonal than in his 1839 version — the lancers are more compressed, the impact more inevitable.
- ◆The Spanish artillery smoke is denser here, creating a near-total obscuring of the pass above the charging cavalry.
- ◆Individual lancer faces are visible in the foreground — specific men with individual expressions of determination and fear, unlike the anonymized cavalry of the earlier version.
- ◆Fallen horses in the immediate foreground occupy a larger compositional area — the cost of the charge is more explicitly acknowledged.
- ◆The Warsaw setting and the Polish eagle flag reflected in the 1850 composition give it stronger nationalist resonance, painted for a Polish audience.
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