Bacco e una tigre

In the autumn of 1834 Delacroix was staying at Valmont, a former abbey in Normandy that belonged to his family, and there he tried something he almost never did — he painted straight onto the wall in fresco, pigment worked into wet plaster. This is one of only three frescoes he made in his whole life. The god of wine, Bacchus, leans down to offer a full cup to a tiger. He was teaching himself the technique on purpose. He had just been handed his first great public commission, rooms to decorate at the Palais Bourbon in Paris, and wall-painting was a craft he needed to learn fast. The little scene stayed on the abbey wall until 1991, when it was cut away and moved to his old Paris studio.