Eugene Delacroix, “The Baroque of Dante”, 1822, Oil on Canvas, Louvre, Paris
The “Baroque of Dante”, also known as “Dante and Virgil in Hell”, is the first major painting by French artist Eugene Delacroix, signaling a shift in the character of narrative painting from Neo-Classicism towards the Romantic Movement. It was completed for the opening of the Salon in 1822 and currently hangs for viewing in the Musee du Louvre in Paris.
The arrangement of figures is for the most part compliant with the tenets of the cool, reflective Neo-Classicism that had dominated French painting for nearly four decades. There is a group of central upright figures, and a rational arrangement of subsidiary figures, all in horizontal planes, and observing studied poses.
Although the composition is conventional, the painting in some important respects broke unmistakably free of the French Neo-Classical tradition. The painting explores the psychological states of the individuals it depicts, and uses compact, dramatic contrasts to highlight their different responses to their respective predicaments. There is neither comfort nor a place of refuge in the painting’s world of rage, insanity and despair.
The drops of water running down the bodies of the damned are painted in a manner seldom seen up to and including the early nineteenth century. Four different, unmixed pigments, in discretely applied quantities comprise the image of one drop and its shadow. White is used for highlighting, strokes of yellow and green respectively denote the length of the drop, and the shadow is red.