Medea

Delacroix unveiled this at the Paris Salon of 1838, and it startled people. Here was a subject from ancient Greek tragedy handled with raw, present feeling. Medea, betrayed by her husband Jason, has dragged her two small sons into a dark rocky cleft and raised a dagger, and she glances back over her shoulder to check whether anyone is coming. One boy twists in her grip, the other buries himself in her skirts. Delacroix set the group in shadow on purpose, the mother's face half in darkness, to hold the horror at the moment just before the act rather than show the killing. It was the kind of high emotion the young Romantics wanted and the classical camp distrusted. The French state bought the painting, and it went to the museum at Lille, where Delacroix's Medea still stands more than two metres tall.