Heliodoro Expulso do Templo

In his last decade Delacroix, already in his 50s and often too ill to work, took on a commission that would occupy him on and off for more than ten years, the decoration of a side chapel in the Paris church of Saint-Sulpice. This wall shows a story from the Book of Maccabees. Heliodorus has come to plunder the temple treasury, and a rider on a white horse, with two angels flying at him, throws him to the ground. Delacroix painted it straight onto the plaster in oil and wax, working from a scaffold. He finished the chapel in 1861 and died two years later, and the paintings are still there in the dim light where he left them, a few steps inside the door.