Die Schlacht von Poitiers

Delacroix took this commission in 1829 from the Duchess of Berry, part of the ruling Bourbon family, and painted a French disaster. It shows the battle near Poitiers in 1356, where King John the Second was surrounded and captured by the English. You can pick him out near the center in blue, still swinging his axe as his army breaks around him. Then history caught up with the picture. In July 1830 a revolution drove Charles the Tenth off the throne and forced the Duchess into exile before she had paid for the work, and Delacroix had to go to court to recover his own painting. The Louvre did not acquire it until 1930, a full century after he began it.