玛尔菲莎

Delacroix loved a story with fire in it, and he took this one from Orlando Furioso, the sprawling Italian Renaissance epic by Ludovico Ariosto. The rider in armour is Marphise, a warrior woman of the poem. She has just knocked the knight Pinabello from his horse because his proud companion mocked the old woman travelling with Marphise. As punishment she makes the haughty lady strip off her fine clothes and hand them over. Delacroix painted it in 1852, deep into a career built on subjects like this, drawn from poetry and history rather than the world outside his studio. He gives the fallen knight and the humiliated woman to the background and keeps the armoured heroine calm at the centre, in command of the whole scene.