Griechenland auf den Ruinen von Mesolongi

A woman in a blue robe kneels on broken stone, arms open in despair, while a dead hand reaches out from the rubble beneath her. Delacroix painted Greece itself, grieving over a town that chose to blow itself up rather than surrender.

The story behind the painting

The town of Missolonghi on the Gulf of Patras had been besieged by Ottoman forces trying to retake it after the Greek insurrection of 1821. The Greeks held out for almost a year, but disease and famine led to a Turkish victory. Three days after the Turks entered on the night of 22 April 1826, the last defenders fired the mines in the town, and the explosion killed both Greeks and Turks. Delacroix painted his response that same year, probably between mid June and mid August of 1826, though the exact date is unknown. The canvas was first shown at the Galerie Lebrun in 1826.

What to look for

The central figure wears a disordered blue robe with gold details, a colour Delacroix often used for Greece, over a white underdress, with a scarf-like headdress. She half kneels on the rubble of the explosion, arms spread wide, her face tear-stained. Look down: the hand of a corpse emerges from under the stones at her feet. In the background, a dark-skinned man in a yellow turban, standing for the enemy, plants a flag in the ground. The palette is gloomy, deepening the sense of defeat. The canvas is tall, about 213 by 142 cm, so the woman rises above the viewer like a monument.

Meaning and intent

The woman is an allegory of Greece, read as Hellenic beauty and motherhood, and her pose can be seen as Greece pleading with Europe for help in exhaustion. The painting also borrows from Christian imagery, joining ideas of the city and the mother. The soldier behind her, a Turk or an Egyptian since Egypt sent troops late in the siege, was meant to contrast with her, the two figures read as Islam and Christianity. The historian Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby has interpreted them as standing for slavery and freedom. Visitors were meant to be shocked by the horror of war and moved to a sense of humane and civic duty.

Legacy

Delacroix's Romantic treatment was largely unappreciated by audiences of the time, who preferred works with clear narrative. Still, the canvas travelled: after the Galerie Lebrun it was shown at Hobday's Gallery in London in 1828 and at the Musée Colbert in Paris in 1829. It continues the theme of his earlier Massacres at Chios, and the two can be read as a sequence, with Missolonghi as the conclusion. Later works such as Last Words of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius return to his interest in the end of civilisations. Today the painting is kept at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux.