La justicia de Trajano

The story here comes from Dante, who placed the Emperor Trajan in Purgatory as a model of justice. Trajan is setting off on campaign when a widow throws herself in his path, demanding justice for her murdered son, and the emperor halts the whole procession to hear her out. Delacroix showed this at the Paris Salon of 1840, and younger writers like Baudelaire singled it out for praise while much of the press stayed cold. There is a personal reason it hangs in Rouen. The State bought the picture and meant to send it to Bordeaux, but Delacroix asked that it go to Rouen instead, to honour the memory of Théodore Géricault, the painter he admired above all others, who had been born in that city.