Medea im Begriff, ihre Kinder zu töten

Delacroix first painted this scene for the Salon of 1838, a large canvas that now hangs in Lille. Near the end of his life, in 1862, he came back to it and made this smaller version. The subject is the grimmest moment in the Greek story of Medea. Abandoned by Jason for another marriage, she takes revenge by killing the two sons she bore him, and Delacroix catches her in the instant before the act, the children gripped against her body, a dagger half hidden in her hand. He pushed the group into a shadowed cave so the light falls hard on the mother's face and the frightened boys. What unsettled viewers in 1838 was that he refused to make her a simple monster. Her expression is caught between tenderness and fury. This late repetition, tighter and darker, entered the Louvre, where it hangs today.