Le Combat du Giaour et du Pacha

Inspired by Byron’s eastern tale, the picture shows the decisive combat between the Giaour, mounted on a black horse, and the pasha Hassan on his white one: the Giaour, rising from the saddle, tears with a savage smile at the cloth covering the pasha’s chest to strike the fatal blow, while the two rearing horses collide beneath them. Eugène Delacroix painted the scene in 1835, at the height of his first fame after the July Revolution, and the small canvas carries the full turbulence of his Romantic manner — the stormy sky, the lances crossing, the fall of light on the struggling group. The painting is held in the Petit Palais, musée des Beaux-arts de la Ville de Paris.