What A Useful As Well As Admirable Art Is The Mosaic To
Perpetuate The Paintings Of The Greatest Masters!
I recollected on
beholding this work that Eustace, in his Tour thro' Italy,[55] relates
with a pious horror that the French soldiers used the original picture as a
target to practise at with ball cartridge, and that Christ's head was
singled out as the mark.
This absurd tale, which had not the least shadow
of truth in it, has, it appears, gained some credit among weak-minded
people; and I therefore beg leave to contradict it in the most formal
manner. It was Buonaparte who, the moment the picture was discovered,
ordered it to be put in mosaic. No! the French were the protectors and
encouragers, and by no means the destroyers of the works of art; and this
ridiculous story of the picture being used as a target was probably
invented by the priesthood, who seemed to have taken great delight in
imposing on poor Eustace's credulity. To me it seems that such a story
could only have been invented by a monk, and believed and repeated by an
old woman or a bigot. The priests and French emigrants have invented and
spread the most shameful and improbable calumnies against the French
republicans and against Napoleon, and that credulous gull John Bull has
been silly enough to give full credence to all these tales, and stand
staring with his eyes and mouth open at the recital, while a vulgar jobbing
ministry (as Cobbet would say) picked his pockets.
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