Death of Sardanapalus

Death of Sardanapalus is a large canvas by Eugène Delacroix, dated 1827 and now held in the Louvre. It shows the final moment of a legendary king of Nineveh who, facing a siege he cannot win, resolves to die alongside his women and horses, setting fire to his palace and the city so that nothing falls into enemy hands. The ruler lies motionless on a great bed, calm amid the surrounding turmoil of bodies, animals and objects, which swirl around him in a crowded arrangement. Compositionally, Delacroix builds the scene around a diagonal of light running from the king down to a man killing a woman in the lower right corner, passing a dead young woman and a dying man. It was reportedly his first diagonal composition. The technique reflects the Romantic spirit of the work: forms are not defined by sharp outlines but emerge from juxtaposed brushstrokes that only take shape when viewed from a distance. Colour takes precedence over drawing, with a warm palette of browns and reds from which whites and yellows stand out. The subject is linked to Lord Byron's play on the same story, published in England in 1821 and translated into French in 1822, although Delacroix probably took the mass sacrifice from another ancient author, Diodorus Siculus. When shown at the 1827 Salon, it was received even more harshly than his earlier Massacre at Chios, due to its unconventional perspective, loose brushwork and distorted anatomy. Even so, it is regarded as a statement of Romanticism's triumph over the classicism represented by Ingres. It was largely ignored for almost a century until the Louvre acquired it in 1921, and it was restored in 2023 to remove darkened varnish.

Painter

Eugène Delacroix

Date

1827

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

392 × 496 cm

Museum

Louvre Museum, Paris

Movement

Romanticism

Genre

history painting

Depicts

nudity, cushion, slave, Sardanapalus, eunuch, half reclining, bed, woman

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