Die beiden Foscari

By 1855 Delacroix was 57 and, for the first time, more honoured than fought over. Paris was holding its first Exposition Universelle, a huge world's fair, and the organisers gave him a room of more than 30 of his own paintings. This small canvas was among the newer work he showed there. Its subject came from Byron, whose tragedy of 1821 told of Francesco Foscari, the aged Doge of Venice, forced to watch his son Jacopo condemned and exiled by the republic's own council. Delacroix had read Byron since his youth and kept returning to him. Here he catches the moment of collapse, with the father rigid on his ducal throne and the son breaking down before him while the councillors look on. The deep reds and the shadowed hall carry the feeling more than any single gesture.