The Death of Sardanapalus
Artwork by Eugène Delacroix • 1827
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About this artwork - painting analysis
A Flamboyant Representation of Destruction and Fatal Passion, Eugène Delacroix's The Death of Sardanapalus stands as one of the most audacious masterpieces of French Romanticism. Painted in 1827, this monumental canvas of nearly four meters in width recounts the legendary episode of the Assyrian king Sardanapalus who, besieged in his palace, orders the massacre of his concubines, his horses and the destruction of all his treasures before taking his own life. Delacroix draws freely on Byron's tragedy to compose this scene of exacerbated violence and sensuality, in which the sovereign observes with disturbing impassivity the carnage unfolding before his eyes.
The composition unfolds in controlled chaos, where the naked bodies of tortured women intertwine with sumptuous fabrics, glittering jewels and the weapons of the executioners. The monarch's monumental bed, placed high on the left, dominates this scene of devastation. Delacroix orchestrates a whirlwind of pearlescent flesh and scarlet draperies, enhanced by touches of gold and deep green. The intense and contrasted light sculpts the anatomies in a warm palette dominated by blood-red and flaming ochres. This chromatic virtuosity and this free, almost violent brushwork convey the devastating energy of the subject.
Delacroix's technique reveals all its modernity here: the vigorous brushstrokes, the thick impasto and the contours dissolved in colour announce Impressionist research. Presented at the 1828 Salon, the work provokes a resounding scandal through its brutal eroticism and its composition deemed confused by the defenders of neoclassicism. Too radical for its time, it finds a buyer only in 1846 before joining the Louvre's collections where it remains on display.
A leader of pictorial Romanticism, this painting embodies the break with Davidian academicism and celebrates the triumph of colour, emotion and Oriental imagination, durably influencing the evolution of modern European painting.
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Image license: faithful photographic reproduction of a two-dimensional public domain work of art.
