As his city falls, the Assyrian king Sardanapalus reclines on a vast red bed and watches coolly as his guards slaughter his concubines and horses and smash his treasures. Delacroix painted the catastrophe with frenzied colour and composition, causing a storm at the Salon.
Key facts
- Artist
- Eugène Delacroix1798–1863 · French
- Date
- 1827
- Period
- Romanticism1790–1850
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 392 × 496 cm
- Location
- Musée du Louvre Paris, France
Actual size
Compared with an adult 170 cm tall
Palette
#392A1C#1F130A#593D27#715640#987960Background
The subject comes from Lord Byron's verse drama Sardanapalus of 1821. The legendary last king of Assyria, decadent and pleasure-loving, is besieged by enemies and resolves to destroy all his beloved possessions before burning himself, so that his enemies will have nothing.
In Byron's play the king simply mounts the pyre with his favourite; the massacre of the concubines is Delacroix's addition, making the scene far more violent.
At the Salon of 1827–28 critics attacked it as chaotic, unbalanced and immoral, and officials warned the painter that he would receive no state commissions if he continued this way. The Louvre acquired it only in 1921.
Technique & composition
There is no clear spatial structure; figures, animals and objects crowd the canvas as if spilling out of the frame. A diagonal from at upper left to the lower right runs through the chaos.
Delacroix let a blazing red dominate: slants across the picture like a river of blood. Gold jewellery, pale skin, dark-skinned slaves and gleaming objects clash, the passion of colour overwhelming the order of line.
The painting is seen as a manifesto of Romantic colour against Neoclassical line; at the same Salon, Ingres's classical work provided a pointed contrast.
Details
Symbolism
The indifferent king
Amid the chaos, the king rests his head on his hand and watches, detached, as if the violence had nothing to do with him. His aloofness is all the more chilling, an image of absolute power and nihilism in the Romantic imagination.
Orientalism and violence
The painting is saturated with European fantasies of the “Orient”: luxury, excess and cruelty. Critics today also note how it combines the female body with violence, reflecting the desires of male viewers of the time.
Stories
- Did you know?
At nearly four metres high and five wide, it is one of Delacroix's largest works; he later painted a small replica, now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
- Did you know?
Delacroix jokingly called the painting his “Massacre No. 2”, the first being The Massacre at Chios, which had caused a stir at the Salon of 1824.
- Did you know?
The golden elephant heads at the foot of the bed may have been inspired by Indian and Persian objects the artist had seen.
Legacy
Though savaged at the time, The Death of Sardanapalus became one of Romanticism's boldest manifestos. Its liberation of colour profoundly influenced the Impressionists, Van Gogh and the Fauves.
