Cromwell nel castello di Windsor

In the 1820s Delacroix was gripped by England, its history, its writers, and the theatre he had crossed the Channel to see. This small picture from 1828 shows Oliver Cromwell, who led the armies that overthrew and beheaded King Charles I, standing before a portrait of that same dead king. Cromwell had used Windsor Castle as his headquarters during the civil wars, and Delacroix sets him there, alone, studying the face of the man he destroyed. There is no battle and no crowd here, only the quiet of the castle room and the painted eyes of the king he had sent to the scaffold.