Revival History

 A military attack on the inhabitants of Chios by Ottoman forces commenced on 11 April 1822 and was prosecuted for several months into the summer of the same year. The campaign resulted in the deaths of twenty thousand citizens, and the forced deportation into slavery of almost all the surviving seventy thousand inhabitants.  Delacroix's painting shows some of the horror of the wartime destruction visited on the island in his "Massacre at Chios," in which a frieze-like display of suffering characters, military might, ornate and colorful costumes, terror, disease and death is shown in front of a scene of widespread desolation.  Unusual for a painting of civil ruin during this period, "The Massacre at Chios" has no heroic figure to counterbalance the crushed victims, and there is little to suggest hope among the ruin and despair. Delacroix had been greatly impressed by his fellow Parisien Théodore Géricault's "The Raft of the Medusa," a painting for...

A military attack on the inhabitants of Chios by Ottoman forces commenced on 11 April 1822 and was prosecuted for several months into the summer of the same year. The campaign resulted in the deaths of twenty thousand citizens, and the forced deportation into slavery of almost all the surviving seventy thousand inhabitants.  Delacroix's painting shows some of the horror of the wartime destruction visited on the island in his "Massacre at Chios," in which a frieze-like display of suffering characters, military might, ornate and colorful costumes, terror, disease and death is shown in front of a scene of widespread desolation.  Unusual for a painting of civil ruin during this period, "The Massacre at Chios" has no heroic figure to counterbalance the crushed victims, and there is little to suggest hope among the ruin and despair. Delacroix had been greatly impressed by his fellow Parisien Théodore Géricault's "The Raft of the Medusa," a painting for ...

A military attack on the inhabitants of Chios by Ottoman forces commenced on 11 April 1822 and was prosecuted for several months into the summer of the same year. The campaign resulted in the deaths of twenty thousand citizens, and the forced deportation into slavery of almost all the surviving seventy thousand inhabitants.  Delacroix's painting shows some of the horror of the wartime destruction visited on the island in his "Massacre at Chios," in which a frieze-like display of suffering characters, military might, ornate and colorful costumes, terror, disease and death is shown in front of a scene of widespread desolation.  Unusual for a painting of civil ruin during this period, "The Massacre at Chios" has no heroic figure to counterbalance the crushed victims, and there is little to suggest hope among the ruin and despair. Delacroix had been greatly impressed by his fellow Parisien Théodore Géricault's "The Raft of the Medusa," a painting for w...