Death Of Sardanapalus

''The Death of Sardanapalus'' (''La Mort de Sardanapale'') is an 1827 oil painting on canvas by the French artist Eugène Delacroix, now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris. A smaller replica he made in 1844 is in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It is a work of Romanticism based on the tale of Sardanapalus, a king of Assyria, from Greek historian Diodorus Siculus's library. It uses rich, vivid and warm colours and broad brushstrokes, was inspired by Lord Byron's play '' Sardanapalus'' (1821) and inspired a Hector Berlioz cantata, ''Sardanapale'' (1830), and an unfinished Franz Liszt opera, '' Sardanapalo'' (1845–1852).

Visual analysis

The main focus of ''Death of Sardanapalus'' is a large bed draped in rich red fabric. On it lies a man with a disinterested eye overseeing a scene of chaos. He is dressed in flowing white fabrics and sumptuous gold around his neck and head. A woman lies dead at his feet, prone across the lower half of the large bed. She is one of six in the scene, all in various shades of undress, and all in assorted throes of death by the hands of the half dozen men in the scene.

Several people are being stabbed with knives and one man is dying from a self-inflicted wound from a sword, and a man in the left foreground is attempting to kill an intricately adorned horse. A young man by the king's right elbow is standing behind a side table which has an elaborate golden decanter and a cup. There are golden elephant heads at the base of the bed, as well as various valuable trinkets scattered amongst the carnage. In the background, several architectural elements are visible but difficult to discern.

Delacroix used a painterly brushstroke in this painting, which allows for a strong sense of movement in the work. This scene is chaotic and violent, as showcased by the movement, weapons, and the colors used. The redness of the bed stands out against the somewhat obscured, dark background. The whiteness of Sardanapalus's robe, the creamy lines of the dying women's limbs, and the shimmers of gold objects throughout the scene pull the viewer's eye quickly around the painting.

There is asymmetry in the work, but the composition remains balanced. One woman reclined by an elephant head on the end of the bed is the only figure to engage with the viewer. Everyone else in the painting is focused on the task at hand: death.

Reception

''Death of Sardanapalus'' was controversial and polarizing at its exhibition at the Paris Salon of 1828. Delacroix's main figural subject was Sardanapalus, a king willing to destroy all of his possessions, including people and luxurious goods, in a funerary pyre of gore and excess. He was not a classical hero, like the Horatii in Jacques-Louis David’s eponymous painting. An antithesis of neoclassical traditions, which favored subdued colors, rigid space and an overall moral subject matter, it uses foreshortening to tilt the death scene directly into the space of the audience, a far cry from the subdued order of traditional academic paintings. Dorothy Bussy quotes one critic of the work as calling the painting "the fanaticism of ugliness" when it appeared in the Salon in 1828.

Art historian Linda Nochlin has argued that this painting scandalized the Salon because it was understood by contemporaries as a destructive sexual fantasy of Delacroix's own—a collapse of the distinction between the "Other" of Orientalism (i.e., Sardanapalus) and western man.

The composer Franz Liszt was inspired by Delacroix's painting (and Byron's play) to compose an Italian opera—'' Sardanapalo''—on the topic, telling Princess Cristina Belgiojoso that, in view of the king's self-immolation, ''his'' finale will aim to 'set the entire audience alight'. He completed Act 1 only in 1852 and abandoned the project thereafter. The completed first act received its premiere in 2018.

See also

* The Destroyed Room – a photograph inspired by the painting

Notes

References

* Bussy, Dorothy. ''Eugène Delacroix''. London: Duckworth and Co., 1912.
* Trippett, David,
An Uncrossable Rubicon: Liszt's ''Sardanapalo'' Revisited
, ''Journal of the Royal Music Association'' 143 (2018), 361–432.

External links

''The Death of Sardanapalus'' – Analysis and Critical Reception

''Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863): Paintings, Drawings, and Prints from North American Collections''
a full text exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which discusses ''The Death of Sardanapalus''

{{DEFAULTSORT:Death Of Sardanapalus, The
Ancient Mesopotamia in popular culture
1827 paintings
Paintings about death
Paintings by Eugène Delacroix
Paintings in the Louvre by French artists
Horses in art
Sardanapalus
Oil on canvas paintings
Paintings based on works by Lord Byron
Works based on British plays