Alexandre Toussaint MENJAUD
 (Paris, 1768 – Paris, 1832)

 Study for The Crowned Tasso

 Oil on paper mounted on canvas
 37.5 x 29.5 cm
 Around 1819

 Related work :
  
 Painting exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1819 under number 819

 The scene depicts the death of Tasso (1544-1595) at the convent of Saint Onuphry, on the very day that the famous author of Jerusalem Delivered was to be crowned on the Capitol.
 The final version of this painting was exhibited at the Salon of 1819, no. 819, with the following description:
 Tasso died at Rome, in the convent of Saint Onuphrius, while one was making preparations for his coronation in the Capitol. The Pope had received him a few days with the greatest destination, and had addressed these memorable words to him in announcing his triumph: You will honor this laurel, which, until now, has honored those who have received it. Deeply affected by the loss of this great poet, he charged Cardinal Cinthio to carry to him, on his funeral bed, the crown which he was to receive at the Capitol.
 The life of Tasso, a famous poet whose most famous work is Jerusalem Delivered , aroused much interest among artists at the beginning of the 19th century. It was the dramatic dimension of Tasso's life that interested the Romantics. For them, he embodied the misunderstood artist, the genius persecuted by the mediocre and unjustly accused of madness. Lord Byron's poem The Lament of Tasso dates from 1817, Goethe's play Torquato Tasso was translated into French in 1823. In 1819, Ducis exhibited The Death of Tasso at the Convent of Saint-Onuphre . The Lyon painter Fleury-Richard presented a Montaigne visiting Tasso in hospital at the 1822 salon (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon). Eugène Delacroix painted two paintings on the subject of Tasso in the madhouse , one exhibited at the 1824 Salon (private collection), the other dated 1839 (Oskar Reinhart collection, Winterthur). It was also the 1839 version that inspired Baudelaire's poem Le poète au cachot... published in 1844.

 Alexandre Toussaint Menjaud was born on November 24, 1768 in Paris. He was the child of Jean Menjaud (1745-after 1796), advisor to the king, lawyer in Parliament, notary at the Châtelet in Paris from 1770 to 1787, justice of the peace in 1791 and 1792, and Madeleine Dupré (1753-after 1792). His half-brother was Jean Adolphe Menjaud (1795-1864), an actor at the Comédie-Française.
 Alexandre was a student of Baron Regnault at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He exhibited at the Salon from 1796 until 1834 (posthumous exhibition). Received the first grand prix de Rome in 1802 with Éponine and Sabinus before Vespasian, he was also awarded two other medals in 1806 and 1819.
 The artist died on September 6, 1832 in Paris and was buried in the Montparnasse cemetery.

 Museums : Bordeaux, Draguignan, Bayeux, Saint-Germain, Chambord, La Fère, Versailles, Lavaur, Pau, Fontainebleau, Marseille, Montargis…