Пленный король

Joseph Wright of Derby made this in the early 1770s, a painter obsessed with how a single strong light falls in the dark, usually candlelight or a forge. Here the light picks out a prisoner. The subject is Guy de Lusignan, a French knight who became King of Jerusalem by marriage and was captured by Saladin after his army was destroyed at the battle of Hattin in 1187. Wright shows him slumped and chained in shadow, the drama carried almost entirely by that narrow shaft of light on the defeated figure. This is a small oil study, worked up toward a larger picture that is now lost, so the sketch is what survives of the idea. Wright hoped to sell a version to a German prince in 1774. It belongs to Derby Museum and Art Gallery, in his home town.