The Execution of the Doge Marino Faliero

Lord Byron had died only two years earlier, in 1824, in Greece, and to young Romantics like Delacroix he was a hero. This picture comes straight out of Byron's 1821 play about Marino Faliero, a 14th-century Doge of Venice who plotted to seize absolute power, was caught, and was beheaded in 1355 on the great staircase of his own palace. Delacroix paints the seconds after the blade falls. The executioner stands high on the steps, sword still raised, while the doge's small, red-robed body lies crumpled far below, almost swallowed by the crowd. When it was shown in Paris, critics were appalled that Delacroix had pushed the dead man, the supposed subject, down to the bottom edge and shrunk him nearly to nothing, against every rule of orderly history painting.