Delacroix's Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi

I roamed around LACMA yesterday and was taken by a painting on loan from the Musse des Beaux-Arts, in Bordeaux, France.  The painting is by Eugene Delacroix, France, 1798-1863 and it is entitle "Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi," 1826.  Delacroix was interested in the Greek war of freedom from the Ottoman Empire.  Lord Byron had written about the plight of the Greeks and in fact lost his life in 1824 while supporting the Greeks against the Turks.  Delacroix was moved by Byron's writings and was motivated to depict a tragedy that occurred in Missolonghi, Greece and to motivate France to fight with the Greeks.

The information mounted near the painting states that in March of 1825, during an Ottoman siege on the Greek city of Missolonghi that lasted a year, a small group of fighters attempted to leave the city and forge for food for the starving and ill citizens of the city.  This attempt failed and the Turkish soldiers followed the Greeks back into the city.  The desperate survivors retreated into their armory and blew it up, killing themselves and the Turkish army.

Delacroix created this painting that was shown at an exhibition in Paris in order to generate support to intervene to protect the massacre of thousands of Greek citizens.  Two years after the painting was finished, the French joined British and Russian forces and permanently ended four hundred years of Ottoman rule over the Greeks.  The description refers to this as a "propaganda painting."

The painting description states that at the center of the painting an emotional, larger-than-life allegory of Greece leans on bended knee, pleading for help.  Her red-slippered foot points to the blood-stained ruins of the exploded city, bodies beneath the rubble.  In the upper right, a turbaned warrior proudly bears his standard as a pronouncement of victory.  The description goes on to say that even with her suppliant stance and position of defeat, the figure remains dignified.  She wears the colors of the Greek flag.  Her costume also makes a pointed reference to the Virgin who is typically depicted in blue and white, as Greece is a Christian country in contrast to the Muslim victor in the background.

"Henri IV Conferring the Regency upon Marie de' Medici," before 1836 by Delacroix.
This painting from the LACMA collection was hung near the "Ruins" painting.  It shows the influence of Peter Paul Rubens, a Flanders painter, 1577-1640.