The Dante barge

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The Dante bark (Dante et Virgile aux enfers) (Eugène Delacroix)
The
Dante barque (Dante et Virgile aux enfers)
Eugène Delacroix , 1822
Oil on canvas
189 × 241 cm
Louvre , Paris

The Dante Barque or Dante and Virgil in Hell , French La Barque de Dante or Dante et Virgile aux enfers , is a romantic painting by Eugène Delacroix from 1822. It belongs to the artist's early work and shows the poets Dante Alighieri and Virgil in a boat crossing the river Styx . The image refers to Dante's work The Divine Comedy ( Divina Commedia , eighth song). The painting belongs to the collection of the Louvre in Paris.

description

The picture has the dimensions 189 × 241 cm and is carried out using the technique of oil painting on canvas.

It shows the poets Dante Alighieri and Virgil standing in a boat, or a barge, as they are brought across the marshy river Styx by the ferryman Phlegias to reach the infernal city of Pluto, called Dite (or Dis ). The fiery contours of this city can be seen in the background on the left. Dante, with a red cap, a Camauro , raises his right hand in order to better look back into the backlight from the left outside of the picture, with the other he grasps Virgil's right hand. Virgil wears a kind of brown tunic . Both seem to be very impressed by the expression on their faces and the look back. Several naked human bodies float in the water, in contrast to the two poets. There are damned sinners and also a sinner, sometimes in an almost mannerist twist, who try to get on the boat. One of them has bitten himself on the stern, another, with cruel red eyes, is trying to grab the left leg of the rowing ferryman, who is shown from behind, on the port side. In his Divina Commedia , Dante writes that in the Damned he recognized some Florentines with whom he had an argument before his exile.

The composition of the picture is reminiscent of the famous painting The Raft of Medusa by Théodore Géricault , which Delacroix used as a model for his Dante barque . Delacroix himself was the model for the picture. Like Géricault with his drowning people, he also describes the path of humanity into the abyss in an agonizing way. The pyramid-like composition of the figures is, like the gloomy mood of the scenery, an indication of the romantic view of human catastrophe. In the figure representation, Delacroix also quotes Michelangelo's sculptural style of terribilitá . The portrayal of the ferryman leads back to antiquity and is an allusion to the torso of the Belvedere , an ancient sculpture by Apollonios of Athens . The red-eyed, grim damned man who tries to climb into the boat to the right of Virgil is based on a drawing by the sculptor John Flaxman , which was used to illustrate an edition of Dante's Divine Comedy in 1822 .

History and background

In 1821 Delacroix was still unknown and heavily in debt. He tried to make ends meet with the history painting, which was promising at the time , and considered working on a theme from the Greek struggle for freedom, which dominated the headlines at that time. He did not take up the subject again until 1824 with his picture The Massacre of Chios . For the upcoming exhibition in the Salon de Paris in 1822 he chose a literary theme, Dante's Divine Comedy . Delacroix had prepared several drawings and studies that illustrated the various "chants" from Dante's "Inferno". Since January 1822 he worked intensively on his picture and hoped to land a "lucky hit." With the proceeds of the picture he wanted to finance his planned trip to Italy, which was not to come.

The Dante bark was the first Delacroix painting to be in such a large format, it was new territory for him. Other artists who were inspired by the “Divine Comedy” always chose small formats. The academic format issue was part of the hierarchy of topics to be presented at the time and provided for small, modest formats for literary work, while historical topics had to be carried out over a large area due to their dignity. The artist came up with the visionary Dante because his inferno offered the welcome opportunity to stage a dramatic scene, which corresponded through and through to his romantic conception. Both Dante and Virgil's literary works were different from well-known French literature, and thus more interesting to the wealthy and educated public. Delacroix's work was eventually accepted by the jury and exhibited in the Paris Salon. Count Auguste de Forbin paid 2000 francs for the picture, although Delacroix demanded 2,400 francs, and gave it to the Musée du Luxembourg .

Detail with the red-eyed damned one that Delacroix painted after John Flaxman
Detail with colored water drops after Rubens' Nereids

He made a preliminary study for the painting measuring 24 × 32 cm. It was offered for sale in 1937 under the title Le damné du Styx and shows the body floating in the water in the left foreground.

The color in Delacroix's work

Color plays an important role in Delacroix's work. He attached great importance to the drops of water that are on the bodies. They consist of adjacent dabs of pure color. He found the model for this representation of water among the Nereids in the painting The Arrival of Maria de Medici in Marseille by Peter Paul Rubens . It is known that Delacroix studied the colors of the rainbow for this purpose. In the opinion of the art historian Lee Johnson, the Dante bark is at the beginning of his search for “rational decomposition and analysis of form through color.” This contrasts with Géricault, who, in the spirit of Caravaggio's style of chiaroscuro , uses light and shadow to shape form wanted to bring out. Delacroix begins to use color as an expression value with this image. The art critic Charles Blanc recognized that the color contrast between Virgil's white scarf and his brown cloak “  […] est un réveil terrible au milieu du sombre; elle brille comme un éclair qui sillonne la tempête [...]  »(German:" [...] resembles a terrible awakening in the midst of the gloom; it shines like lightning that crosses the storm [...] ") After Charles Baudelaire , Delacroix uses color to enable synthetic perception. A single color can only be perceived if it is in contrast to another. He writes: “The color is the harmony of two tones. The warm and cold hues, which contrast the whole theory of color, cannot be absolutely defined. They only exist in their relationship to one another. "

Review, reception and copies

The Dante bark was controversial. The opinions ranged from absolute admiration to complete rejection. The painter Antoine-Jean Gros described the picture as a "well-groomed Rubens" and invited Delacroix to do his apprenticeship. Christophe Guérin, on the other hand, criticized everything. Étienne-Jean Delécluze , a conservative representative of a classicist tradition in the spirit of Jacques-Louis David , considered the picture a “real mess.” Charles Paul Landon , painter and respected art historian, also followed suit and also criticized the irregular brushwork. Adolphe Thiers, on the other hand, was enthusiastic about the Dante barque . He wrote:

“The sight of this picture reminds me of I don't know which great masters; I find in it that wild, burning and yet natural force that effortlessly follows its own impulses. I don't think I'm mistaken: Delacroix received the gift of genius. "

In his novel Aesthetics of Resistance , Peter Weiss mentions the Dante barque as a forerunner of the picture The Freedom Leading the People of 1830 with the words:

"So far he had sent his extravagant fantasies into hell and carnage, [...] now he was trying to give shape to this July day, when he was raging."

Delacroix had a great influence on the following generations of artists. Impressionist and Classicist painters copied his works, especially the Dante barque :

  • Anselm Feuerbach: Dante and Virgil in Hell

  • Edouard Manet: La Barque de Dante

  • Adolf von Becker: Dante yes, Vergilius manalassa

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 1822: Salon de Paris
  • November 4 to December 4, 1907: Delacroix exhibition in the Paul Cassirer art salon in Berlin.
  • November 23, 1983 to February 27, 1984: Dante et Virgile aux Enfers in the Musée Rodin , Paris.
  • April 9 to July 5, 2004: Dante et Virgile aux enfers d'Eugène Delacroix in the Louvre in Paris.

literature

  • Julius Meier-Graefe : Eugène Delacroix…: In addition to the catalog of a Delacroix exhibition . Edmund Meier, Berlin 1907, p. 13 ff . ( Text archive - Internet Archive ).
  • Julius Meier-Graefe: Delacroix and his circle . In: History of the Development of Modern Art . R. Piper, Munich 1920, p. 125–132 , illustration on p. 132 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive , Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  • Michèle Demarne: La Barque de Dante . Rivade, Paris 1946, OCLC 459162981 (French).
  • Lee Johnson: The Formal Sources of Delacroix's Barque de Dante . In: The Burlington Magazine . tape 100 , no. 664 , 1958, pp. 228-234 , JSTOR : 872444 (English).
  • James Henry Rubin: Eugène Delacroix, the Dante barque - idealism and modernity (=  Fischer pocket books, feat . No. 3938 ). Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1987, ISBN 3-596-23938-9 .
  • Christophe Castandet: Dante et Virgile aux enfers d'Eugène Delacroix . In: Connaissance des arts . No. 616 , 2004, ISSN  0395-5893 , OCLC 887020338 , p. 104-107 (French).
  • William Cloonan: La Barque de Dante: Delacroix, Michelangelo and the anxiety of influence . In: Anne L. Birberick, Russell Ganim (eds.): Modern Perspectives on the Early Modern: Temps Recherché, Temps Retrouvé . tape 10 . Rookwood Press, Charlottesville 2005, ISBN 1-886365-54-7 , pp. 60–76 (English, books.google.de - reading sample).
  • Bruno Chenique: Géricault-Delacroix - La barque de Dante, ou, La naissance du romantisme révolutionnaire . L'échoppe, Paris 2015, ISBN 978-2-84068-270-7 (French).

Web links

Commons : The Dante Barge  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Alain Daguerre de Hureaux: Delacroix. The complete work. Belser Verlag, Stuttgart / Zurich 1994, ISBN 3-7630-2305-4 , p. 42 ff.
  2. ^ Letter to his friend Charles-Louis-Raymond Soulier, April 15, 1822.
  3. ^ Vincent Pomarède: Dante et Virgile aux enfers. Page of the Louvre with a description of the picture (French).
  4. ^ Franz Zelger: Dante and Virgil. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . June 18, 2004 (report on a comparative exhibition; nzz.ch ).
  5. ↑ Le damné du Styx . In: Tableaux anciens et modern, objets d'art et d'ameublement anciens, porcelaines et faïences anciennes, sièges et meubles . Paris 1937, p. 4 , Figure No. 5 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive , Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
  6. ↑ Lee Johnson: The Formal Sources of Delacroix's Barque de Dante. In: The Burlington Magazine. C, July 1958, p. 228 ff. (English).
  7. ^ Charles Blanc: Grammaire des arts du dessin: architecture, sculpture, peinture ... H. Laurens, Paris 1880, p. 567 (French, text archive - Internet Archive ).
  8. ^ Charles Baudelaire: Salon de 1846. Œuvre complètes, Volume II, p. 424.
  9. ↑ Achille Piron: Eugène Delacroix, sa vie et ses œuvres. Paris 1865, pp. 50-51 ( babel.hathitrust.org ).
  10. ↑ Étienne-Jean Delécluze: Revue du Salon de 1822. In: Le Moniteur universel. May 18, 1822.
  11. ^ Charles-Paul Landon: Annales du musée de l'école modern des beaux-arts. Salon de 1822, Paris, p. 87 ( books.google.de ).
  12. ^ Adolphe Thiers: Le Constitutionnel. May 11, 1822. (from: Charles Baudelaire: Complete Works / Letters. Volume I: Juvenilia, Art Critic. 1832–1846. Heimeran, Munich, 1977, p. 207).
  13. ↑ Peter Weiss: Aesthetics of Resistance, Volume I . Suhrkamp, ​​Farnkfurt am Main, 1983, ISBN 3-518-04495-8 , p. 347
  14. ↑ Adolf von Becker - Dante ja Vergilius manalassa, kopio Eugene Delacroixin mukaan. Kansallisgalleria, accessed February 24, 2020 (Finnish).
  15. ^ Previous day by Erik Jayme in the Feuerbachhaus, Speyer
  16. ↑ Dapres Delacroix: La Barque De Dante by Paul Cézanne artnet.com.
  17. ↑ Dante and Virgile aux Enfers . Musée Rodin, Paris 1984.
  18. ↑ Sébastien Allard: Dante et Virgile aux Enfers d'Eugène Delacroix (=  Dossiers du Département des peintures . No. 65 ). Réunion des musées nationaux, Paris 2004, ISBN 2-7118-4773-X (French).