were products of his view that the artist’s powers of imagination
would in turn capture and inflame the viewer’s imagination. Litera-
ture of imaginative power served Delacroix (and many of his con-
temporaries) as a useful source of subject matter. Théophile Gautier
(1811–1872), the prominent Romantic critic and novelist, recalled:
In those days painting and poetry fraternized. The artists read the
poets, and the poets visited the artists. We found Shakespeare, Dante,
Goethe, Lord Byron and Walter Scott in the studio as well as in the
study. There were as many splashes of color as there were blots of ink
in the margins of those beautiful books which we endlessly perused.
Imagination, already excited, was further fired by reading those for-
eign works, so rich in color, so free and powerful in fantasy.^1DEATH OF SARDANAPALUSDelacroix’s Death of Sardana-
palus (FIG. 30-17) is grand Romantic pictorial drama. Although in-
spired by the 1821 narrative poem Sardanapalusby Lord Byron
(1788–1824), the painting does not illustrate that text (see “The Ro-
mantic Spirit in Art, Music, and Literature,” page 790). Instead,
Delacroix depicted the last hour of the Assyrian king (who had just re-
ceived news of his armies’ defeat and the enemies’ entry into his city)
in a much more tempestuous and crowded setting than Byron de-
scribed. Here, orgiastic destruction replaces the sacrificial suicide
found in the poem. In the painting, the king reclines on his funeral
pyre, soon to be set alight, and gloomily watches the destruction of all
of his most precious possessions—his women, slaves, horses, and trea-
sure. Sardanapalus’s favorite concubine throws herself on the bed, de-
termined to go up in flames with her master. The king presides like a
genius of evil over the tragic scene. Most conspicuous are the tortured
and dying bodies of the harem women. In the foreground, a muscular
slave plunges his knife into the neck of one woman. Delacroix filled
this awful spectacle of suffering and death with the most daringly dif-
ficult and tortuous poses, and chose the richest intensities of hue.
With its exotic and erotic overtones,Death of Sardanapalus tapped
into the Romantic fantasies of 19th-century viewers.LIBERTY LEADING THE PEOPLEAlthough Death of Sar-
danapalus is a seventh-century BCEdrama, Delacroix, like Géricault,
also turned to current events, particularly tragic or sensational ones,
for his subject matter. For example, he produced several images
based on the Greek war for independence (1821–1829). Certainly,
the French perception of the Greeks locked in a brutal struggle for
freedom from the cruel and exotic Ottoman Turks generated great
interest in Romantic circles. Closer to home, Delacroix captured the
passion and energy of the 1830 revolution in France in his painting
Liberty Leading the People (FIG. 30-18). Based on the Parisian up-
rising against Charles X (r. 1824–1830) at the end of July 1830, it de-
picts the allegorical personification of Liberty defiantly thrusting
forth the republic’s tricolor banner as she urges the masses to fight
on. The scarlet Phrygian cap (the symbol of a freed slave in antiq-
uity) she wears reinforces the urgency of this struggle. Arrayed
around Liberty are bold Parisian types—the street boy brandishing
his pistols, the menacing worker with a cutlass, and the intellectual
dandy in top hat with sawed-off musket. As in Géricault’s Raft of the
Medusa(FIG. 30-15), dead bodies lie all around. In the background,
the towers of Notre-Dame rise through the smoke and haze. The
painter’s inclusion of this recognizable Parisian landmark an-
nounces the specificity of locale and event, balancing contemporary
historical fact with poetic allegory.Romanticism 79130-18Eugène
Delacroix,Liberty
Leading the People,1830.
Oil on canvas, 8 6
10 8 . Louvre, Paris.
Balancing contempora-
neous historical fact with
poetic allegory, Delacroix
captured the passion
and energy of the 1830
revolution in this painting
of Liberty leading the
Parisian uprising against
Charles X.1 ft.30-18A
DELACROIX,
Massacre
at Chios,
1822–1824.