#massacre

Art the community tagged “massacre” — see what people make of it.

Erisava Staff Jul 27

Death of Sardanapalus by Eugène Delacroix, 1827

Content Warning

Nudity · Violence

Death of Sardanapalus

Department of Paintings of the Louvre · wikidata.org

Public domain

The story behind it came from a Byron play about an Assyrian king who, with defeat coming, has everything he owns destroyed in front of him rather than let anyone else have it. Apparently the critics went for it hard when it was first shown, and it did him no favours with the officials who handed out state commissions.