The Death of Elizabeth I, Queen of England, in 1603

In the Salon booklet Delaroche gave his source in one line, a page reference to David Hume's History of England. Hume describes the old queen in the spring of 1603 sinking into a melancholy nothing could lift. He repeats the story that the ring she had once given her executed favourite, the Earl of Essex, had been kept from her, and says that she refused food, threw herself on the floor, and for ten days and nights lay on the carpet, leaning on cushions her maids brought, while her physicians failed to get her into bed.

So Delaroche puts Elizabeth on the floor, low in a canvas more than four metres tall, slumped against her cushions among weeping ladies and courtiers. It was the first of the scenes from English history that made his name. The civil list of Charles X bought it from him in May 1828 for 6,000 francs, and it hung in the Luxembourg museum until 1874.