Considered a model of chivalric behavior, the Chevalier Bayard (1473–1524), a French commander active in the so-called Italian Wars (1494–1559), was wounded during the fall of the city of Brescia in 1512. Bayard is taken to the home of a local noblewoman to recuperate, and she offers him a fortune in ransom money for her family’s protection that he gallantly refuses.
In his drawing, Girodet mingles the emerging French vogue for the Middle Ages with the reigning taste for the antique. Bayard looks like an ancient Roman hero, while at the same time, the dress and trappings of the scene are medieval in a highly romanticized way.