The Battle of Taillebourg Won by Saint Louis

On 21 July 1242, at the bridge over the Charente at Taillebourg in western France, King Louis IX, later Saint Louis, fought his way across against the English king Henry III and his allies among the rebel lords of Poitou. Almost six centuries later Delacroix was asked to paint the battle for the new Gallery of Battles at Versailles, and this is his oil sketch for it, about 53 by 67 centimetres. Here the fight is one surge of horses and men pushing toward the stone arch of the bridge, with a rider on a white horse in the middle of the crush. The finished canvas, shown at the Salon of 1837, is still at Versailles. The sketch came to the Louvre in 1924 as a gift from the collector Baron Joseph Vitta, and hangs in Room 942.