Facing defeat, the Assyrian king Sardanapalus reclines on a vast red bed and watches, unmoved, as his servants kill his concubines and horses before the palace burns. Inspired by Byron's play, Delacroix painted the scene in hot reds and golds with loose, rushing brushwork. It was attacked at the Salon of 1827, one critic calling it "the fanaticism of ugliness".
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Golden elephant heads decorate the foot of the bed. At lower left, a man drives a knife into a richly harnessed horse.
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