Cristo na Cruz

Delacroix showed this Calvary at the Paris Salon of 1835, and the critics could not decide what to do with it. They were struck by its colour and dark drama and at the same time appalled by its drawing, and one reviewer objected to the bare breast of the Magdalene at the foot of the cross. The State bought it anyway and handed it to the Morbihan region in Brittany, where it went to a church in Vannes. There the parish priest was so troubled by that same bare breast that he had his sacristan paint it over in black, then banished the whole picture to the bell tower. It was rescued and restored decades later, and since 1865 it has hung in the town's museum, the Cohue.