The Young Martyr

Delaroche made his name on big theatrical scenes from history, but this, one of his last paintings before he died in 1856, is nearly silent. He painted it as a widower, still mourning his wife Louise. A young Christian woman floats on the dark Tiber, her hands bound, drowned during the persecutions under the Roman emperor Diocletian around the year 300. The only bright thing in the whole picture is the thin gold halo above her head, so crisp it looks almost unreal against the gloom. In the top corner two small figures, probably her parents, stand in the shadows and recoil at the sight of her. An earlier version of the same scene hangs in the Hermitage in St Petersburg.