The death of Sardanapal
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| The death of Sardanapal |
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| Eugène Delacroix , 1827/28 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 395 × 495 cm |
| Louvre |
The Death of Sardanapal is a painting by the French painter Eugène Delacroix . The 3.95 × 4.95 meter painting hangs today in the Louvre in Paris .
background
Delacroix had painted the picture for the exhibition in the Paris Salon in 1827/28 . He deliberately wanted to provoke with this picture, but he had gone too far. The public outrage was so great that Delacroix, the darling of the Parisian salon, claims to have found no buyers for his works for years. Only with the painting Freedom leads the people did he slowly win back the favor of his audience. Delacroix's predilection for oriental motifs is also reflected in this work: The story is based on the Greek legend about the (non-historical) Assyrian king Sardanapal , who defended his city against an overpowering enemy. But when the river Euphrates overflowed its banks and destroyed the city wall, Sardanapal had a huge funeral pyre built in his palace, brought his riches into a vacated room, locked himself up there with his servants and concubines and left everything to the flames.
The legend probably goes back to the conflict between the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal and his brother Šamaš-šuma-ukin , the king of Babylon .
The paintings
Delacroix captures the last moment in the life of King Sardanapal in the painting: resting on a wide bed, valuables and trinkets piled up around him, Sardanapal watches with equanimity as all life is extinguished in the room. Servants murder his naked concubines, a cupbearer stands by his side, he is holding a tray with a carafe containing poison. The first flames are already licking in the background. His Arabian horse, decorated like a woman with pearls and braids, is stabbed in the chest by a servant.
“The Death of Sardanapal” is the most radical expression of Delacroix's romantic aspirations. The aesthetics of the dramatic events seem more important than the actual horror, the radiant colors, the exotic and the rhythmic postures come to the fore. The intensive creative process is expressed through the painting style and at the same time leads to a certain distance through its intentional artificiality. Delacroix takes on the role of a link between the aestheticism of classicism and romanticism as well as modernity . The school of the Romantics, renamed at this salon, but very heterogeneous in itself, formed a general opposition to the dogmatic “classical”. What they all had in common was the search for freedom, the idol of genius and dandy, as well as the portrayal of the special, the individual, the temperament or, in general, the fleeting moment. The "Sardanapal", for his part, was exuberant, ecstatic and obscene and was supposed to combine fairytale-like, sensuality and tyranny.
The image met with a rejection and incomprehension among contemporary audiences, which seems to continue to this day and even occupied Delacroix himself for a long time. However , King Sardanapal, who was very negatively affected by the ancient, Hellenistic and contemporary French, restorative-bourgeois view, could easily be transformed into a downright heroic figure of Romanticism. With his “Sardanapal” at the end of 1827, Delacroix created a deliberately provocative painting that was supposed to show many characteristics of French romanticism: the rampant superman as heroes, the combination of eroticism and death, the Orient as decor, great movement instead of calm, balanced composition, dominance the color across the line. The romantic idea of the sublime also shines through. In its entirety, his portrayal was almost typical of the later direction of so-called black romanticism .
This “Asian coup d'état” (Delacroix) was voyeuristic . Women are owned by a man who decides their life and their ruin. They are his erotic toys, objects of his curiosity - and those of the audience. The public at the time could not gain anything from the melange of eroticism and death. It was not until 1846 that Delacroix found a buyer from England for this picture. In 1921 it was bought by France for the Louvre and now hangs there not far from the painting Freedom leads the people . Shortly before the sale to England, Delacroix made a small-format replica of his painting
literature
- Becker, Ingeborg. French painting from Watteau to Renoir. Masterpieces from d. Gemäldegalerie u. National Gallery d. State Museums Preuss. Kulturbesitz Berlin a. a. Collections ; Exhibition in the Herzog-Anton-Ulrich-Museum Braunschweig from December 1, 1983 to January 22, 1984. Braunschweig 1983.
- Daguerre de Hureaux, Alain. Delacroix. the complete works. Stuttgart 1994.
- Besson, Georg. Modern art in France. selected Fonts. Dresden 1985.
- Damisch, Hubert. French painting. Freiburg 1983.
- Dill, Ueli. Ancient myths. Media, transformations and constructions. Berlin 2009.
- Friedlaender, Walter. Main currents of French painting from David to Delacroix. Cologne 1977.
- Rose-Marie Hagen, Rainer Hagen: picture surveys. Masterpieces in detail . Taschen, Cologne 1994, ISBN 3-8228-6384-X .
- Hoffmann-Curtius, Kathrin. Orientalization of violence. Delacroix '"Death of Sardanapal". In: Projections - Racism and Sexism in Visual Culture. Edited by Annegret Friedrich. Marburg 1997.
- Jobert, Barthélemy. Delacroix. Princeton 1998.
- Lassaigne, Jacques. Eugène Delacroix. Stuttgart 1950.
- Schmidt-Linsenhoff, Viktoria. Aesthetics of Difference / 1. postcolonial perspectives from the 16th to the 21st century ; 15 case studies. Marburg 2010.
- Rautmann, Peter. Eugène Delacroix. Munich 1997.
- Rubin, James Henry. Eugène Delacroix, the Dante bark. Idealism and modernity. Frankfurt am Main 1987.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Christine Tauber: Goethe would have wished it that way . In: FAZ of March 29, 2011.