Yareah Magazine

Eugene Delacroix’s oil on canvas titled The Death of Sardanapalus is approximately 12’1” by 16’3”, was finished in 1827, and is currently displayed in Paris at the Louvre.  In this article, I will show the methods used in the Delacroix’s image, influences that inspired the image, and the power structure the image is promoting.

The Death of Sardanapalus- Eugène Delacroix Oil on canvas Louvre Museum- Paris

In talking about a work of art, method is always a helpful way to some insight into a work.  Vignette from the root meaning vine, originally the word refers to a border of a decorated book, but in the case of Delacroix, vignette is a method of creating an image that makes a detail rendered objects in the center that becomes less define on the edges.  Cultural historians Charles Rose and Henri Zerner write that the vignette style was adopted by painters because of the utilization metaphors of infinity and fragmentation ₁.  In this painting the vignette style helps to focus everything around the foot of the bed and then fades into black on the edge of the painting.  The fade in the painting suggest the image moves beyond the edge of the canvas.  This is a suggestion that implies that this ‘Oriental’ image is bleeding into the space of the viewer.  The painting is in a vortex like composition.   The vortex is in direct contrast to the European painting style of balance and order.  The style suggests the idea of a chaotic world in contrast to an ordered world of Europe.

Influences also help to understand the thoughts of the artist.  Delacroix had read Lord Byron’s tragedy of Sardanapalus, and although the painting is not a direct quotation of Byron’s work, the subject matter was on Delacroix mind.  Also, as of the result of Napoleon’s victory in Egypt, Napoleon brought many antiquates to Europe.  Delacroix had read accounts and seen objects from the ‘Orient.’  Delacroix, up to this point, had not visited the ‘Orient’, so this painting is more of a collage of his knowledge of Eastern culture.  Some of the things Delacroix lumps together are a table with an Egyptian winged sun, the cupbearer wears an Indian turban, a Moor wears and Egyptian style hood, and the elephants decorations on the bed are from Indian _2.  Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen point out that the painting gives a vague sense of the ‘Orient,’ and everything in the painting is anything non-European.

There are key issues of power that Delacroix deals with in this painting.  In Art through the Age, Delacroix’s painting is described as a pictorial grand opera on a colossal scale.  The scale of the orgiastic destruction ₃ of the Funeral pyre had never been scene by the Salon public.  Scale can be a method of showing power for a weak argument.  For example, Russian ballets or the American Superbowl have been produced in large scale to show the invented tradition of national pride.  Sardanapalus was to be depicted as an unrestricted hedonistic superman.  The funeral pyre seems to indicate Sardanapalus could take his possessions with him in death.  His possessions included slaves, animals, rich objects and women.  Sardanapalus is the subject of the painting and all other things in the paintings are shown as things including the women.  This painting may reflect some of Delacroix frustrations with women.  To paraphrase Delacroix, he said a woman is a pretty passion and the ruin of man.  His own failed relationships and the European norm of women inequality help influence this work, but the work also is a comparative study of Europe verses the ’Orient.’  The painting does imply the statement that women are not equal, but at least we (Europeans) don’t take our possession (women) and destroy them after our (men’s) deaths.  At the same time the image does fantasies the question, but what if we (men) could possess women like Sardanapalus?   

Methods, influences, and power help to repaint Delacroix’s The Death of Sardanapalus with insight of Delacroix’s thoughts and the culture he was helping promote.  Delacroix intended to shock his audience with this image, and if new viewers are not careful Delacroix could manages to re-shock a contemporary audience because of our (everyone) knowledge of his motivations.  We should not pity Delacroix for his perspective of the European/Orient dichotomy he held, but we should learn from him and not make the same mistakes.

(1) Richard G Tansey and Fred S. Kleiner, “Gardner’s Art through the Ages, 10^th Edition,” 945-946

(2) Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen, “What Great Paintings Say, Volume 1,” 380-385

(3) Linda Nochlin, “The Imaginary Orient,” in The Politics of Vision: Essays on Nineteenth-Century Art and Society (New York:  Thames and Hudson, 1989), 33-59

Read more:

http://musee.louvre.fr/bases/editions/en/titles/monographs/painting/eugene-delacroixla-liberte-guidant-le-peuple.html

http://www.louvre.fr/llv/commun/home.jsp?bmLocale=en

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