A legendary king of Assyria
Sardanapalus was a legendary king of Assyria. Delacroix based the scene on Lord Byron's 1821 play Sardanapalus.
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The Death of Sardanapalus
Eugène Delacroix · 1827
painting
Nudity · Violence · DeathRead the context
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The legendary Assyrian king Sardanapalus orders the killing of those who served his pleasure, including his wives and animals. Delacroix developed the subject from Byron’s play and exhibited the painting at the Salon of 1828. The violence is commanded by the reclining figure who watches it.
Details
Locate the king before following the killings around his bed. His detachment gives the crowded scene its governing relationship: he issues the order while others carry it out. The canvas is nearly four metres high and five wide.
In its time
1827
Books from this period
Where it hangs
Musée du Louvre
Room 700
In context
Nothing was to survive him
Sardanapalus orders his eunuchs and officers to kill his wives, his pages and even his favourite horses and dogs, so that nothing that had served his pleasure would survive him. He gives the order from where he lies on his bed and watches as his officers carry out the killing.
Painted for the Salon
Delacroix finished the painting in 1827 and showed it at the Paris Salon, which opened in February 1828.
A Romantic subject
The picture belongs to Romanticism, the movement that prized feeling and imagination over the calm restraint of earlier French painting. Delacroix took the subject from Byron's play about the legendary Assyrian king.
In the Louvre
The canvas is huge, almost four metres high and nearly five wide. It hangs today in the Louvre's Department of Paintings in Paris.
The story
1821. Lord Byron writes his play Sardanapalus, the source for the scene.
1827. Delacroix paints The Death of Sardanapalus, in which the king orders his wives, pages, horses and dogs killed so that nothing outlives him.
1828. The painting is shown at the Paris Salon, which opens in February.
Today it hangs in the Louvre's Department of Paintings, among the museum's Romantic paintings.
Romanticism
Delacroix painted this scene from Byron's play about a legendary Assyrian king. Romanticism, the movement this picture belongs to, prized that kind of feeling and imagination in painting.