The Duel After the Masquerade

Gérôme showed this at the Paris Salon of 1857, and its strangeness is the whole point. On a grey winter morning in the Bois de Boulogne, snow on the ground and the trees bare, a duel has just ended badly. The man dying in the arms of his friends is dressed as a Pierrot, the sad clown of the pantomime, his white costume slipping as he sinks down. His killer walks away at the right. Around him are other men still in their fancy dress, a doge of Venice trying to stem the blood, a figure in a Domino cloak clutching his head. They had come from a masked ball and quarrelled, and the party's costumes are now the clothes of a real death. Gérôme liked the picture enough to paint several versions; the one that started it belonged to the duc d'Aumale.