La Mort de Sardanapale, esquisse

The finished Death of Sardanapalus, almost five metres wide, is also in the Louvre. This is Delacroix's oil study for it, from 1826 or 1827, and even this preparatory version is a metre across. The Assyrian king already lies on his vast bed at the top, watching while his women and his horse are killed around him. The tangle of bodies and gold slides down toward the viewer much as it does in the final picture. A great deal is only blocked in. Faces are a few strokes, jewels a flick of yellow. Delacroix kept the canvas for more than 20 years, then in 1849 gave it to his friend Baron Charles Rivet. It stayed with that family and came to the Louvre in 1925, left by Rivet's descendant Eugénie, Countess de Salvandy.