The Death of Sardanapalus

What it is

This is an oil painting on canvas by the French Romantic artist Eugène Delacroix, completed in 1827 and now in the Louvre, Paris. A smaller replica from 1844 is in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It depicts the death of Sardanapalus, a legendary Assyrian king from the account of the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, and was inspired by Lord Byron's play of the same name.

The painting shows a king reclining on a red draped bed while men kill women and animals around him in a scene of violent chaos, surrounded by gold and luxury objects.

Why it matters

Before Assyrian cuneiform texts were deciphered, Europeans knew Ashurbanipal mainly through this garbled Greek legend of 'Sardanapalus.' Delacroix's painting shows how the real historical king had been transformed into a dramatic, exoticised myth of excess and self-destruction, revealing more about 19th-century Romantic imagination than about the actual Assyrian ruler.

Look closer

• What does this painting show about how Europeans imagined the Near East at the time?
• How does this legendary image compare with what inscriptions and reliefs tell us about the real Ashurbanipal?
• Why might a dramatic, invented death scene have been more appealing to painters than historical fact?