Charles VI and Odette de Champdivers

In the 1820s the young Delacroix painted a run of small pictures on episodes from the medieval past, the kind of intimate history scene then in fashion. This one is barely a foot tall. It shows Charles VI, the French king remembered as Charles the Mad, who ruled from 1380 and suffered long spells of derangement in which he no longer recognised his own family. Beside him is Odette de Champdivers, his companion through those years, whom the court nicknamed the little queen. Delacroix catches a moment of crisis, the king twisting in distress and reaching for his sword while she holds his hand and quietly steadies him. He was still in his twenties when he made it, a few years after the large Massacre at Chios that had first made his name.