Le Prométhée polonais

In late 1830 the Poles rose against Russian rule, and by the autumn of 1831 the revolt had been crushed and Warsaw taken. Vernet, who moved in the French circles that had cheered the uprising, painted his answer that same year. He reached for the old myth of Prometheus, the figure chained to a rock while an eagle tears at him day after day. Here the Prometheus is a dead Polish soldier in a white uniform, and the eagle settled on his chest is black and wears a Russian imperial order. Behind him a woman flees a mounted Cossack. The painting eventually reached the Polish Library in Paris, a gathering place for exiles who had fled the failed revolt, where it hangs now.