Die babylonische Gefangenschaft

Between 1838 and 1847 Delacroix gave nearly a decade to a commission most visitors to Paris never see: the ceiling of the library inside the Palais Bourbon, where the Chamber of Deputies met. The 42-metre span was divided into domes and the curved triangles between them, and each carried a theme from the story of civilization. This one belongs to the section on theology and takes up Psalm 137, the lament of the Israelites carried off to Babylon, who hung their harps in the willows and could not bring themselves to sing. Delacroix played down the religion and leaned into the mood, a heavy nostalgia of figures lost in their own thoughts, the far city seen through the warm haze he associated with the East. It still sits overhead in a working parliamentary library, read beneath by legislators rather than pilgrims.