Combat of the Giaour and the Pasha

Combat of the Giaour and the Pasha

Eugène Delacroix

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Oriental subjects of early-nineteenth-century authors provided a source of inspiration for Romantic painters. Lord Byron's Giaour was a favorite of both Gericault and Delacroix. Byron claimed that the tale of a tragic love triangle, involving the Giaour (infidel), the Pasha Hassan, and the Pasha's beautiful concubine, was based on the story of a young Venetian overheard in a Levantine coffee house. Soon after the publication of the French translation in 1823, Delacroix read the poem and noted in his journal the "exchange of two stares, that of the dying man and that of the murderer." This vigorously rendered lithograph captures the confrontation between the Pasha, whose angry stare glazes over as he succumbs, and the Christian, who confronts his own deed with horror.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Combat of the Giaour and the PashaCombat of the Giaour and the PashaCombat of the Giaour and the PashaCombat of the Giaour and the PashaCombat of the Giaour and the Pasha

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.