Title from item.
Lettered "Attic Miscellany" at head of sheet.
From the "Attic Miscellany", ii, page 194, where it appeared as an illustration to verses entitled "A Parisian Tale" alleging that a nest of aristocrats, working in secret, having been denounced in the National Assembly, troops were dispatched headed by Lafayette, only to discover a group of artists ("meagre sons of paint") copying paintings of religious subjects identified as "Originals for Desenfans to puff, / Assisted by an English auctioneer, / Right Raffaele, Angelo and Titian stuff!"
French soldiers with fixed bayonets and drawn swords have entered an artist's studio. Of five terror-stricken painters one lies beneath a fallen canvas; a soldier tramples on an overturned easel and canvas which he is about to pierce with his bayonet. On the canvas is a Madonna and Child. Quasi-antique busts and statues are on a high shelf. Cf. British Museum online catalog.