Last week I went to see an exhibition on Delacroix and the Rise of Modern Art at the National Gallery.
It’s an intriguingly curated show – there are clear opportunities to see the
influence of other painters on Delacroix as well as the influence of Delacroix
on others, but there are also organised explorations around research questions,
both conceptual (the development of orientalism) and historical (Delacroix’
reputation in the art world). Which made it a very enjoyable event, and
enjoyable precisely as a thought-provoking experience.
The thoughts I had were, naturally,
about the Death of Sardanapalus.
Sardanapalus, the legendary last king of Assyria and the topic of my research
for the past six years, was famous for his crossdressing, bisexuality, and
being deft with a spindle. Not that you see any of that in Delacroix’s
painting, which is more concerned with the interaction between decadence and
death.
Sardanapalus was also known for
losing his kingdom to Arbaces the Mede, and choosing to die on a pyre with all
his eunuchs, concubines, and treasures rather than be captured by the enemy.
There was considerable interest in antiquity in the exact amount of stuff which
Sardanapalus added to his pyre – Athenaeus of Naucratis, one of the main
sources on the Sardanapalus legend, lists the number of golden couches and
tables (150) as well as talents of gold and silver, and of course purple cloths.
Diodorus Siculus, on the other hand, spends only one sentence on it, and Lord
Byron’s play Sardanapalus, which
inspired Delacroix, depicts a somewhat different scenario. Within the later history
of the Sardanapalus legend this is not a scene that has received much
attention.
Which raises the question of why
Delacroix chose it instead of, say, the dramatic moment of Arbaces discovering
Sardanapalus in the midst of his concubines, spinning purple wool. There are,
I’m sure, good reasons related to contemporary trends in historical painting,
or the personal interests of the painter, but looking at it as a Sardanapalus
scholar, it occurs to me to wonder why people choose to engage with this
character. What is there in his narrative that makes people want to include him
in their art? In my work, I look at how Sardanapalus was used as a rhetorical
tool with argumentative power, but apart from his value in logical disputation,
does anybody like him? Sardanapalus is very rarely portrayed with anything
other than vituperation; he was an exemplar of a man deserving invective for
both Aristotle and Cicero, and their later influence has ensured that this
attitude was repeated until (at least) the nineteenth century. Byron’s play Sardanapalus was reviewed as correctly
representing an ‘effeminate’ character; the thought of not counting this
against him doesn’t seem to have occurred to anybody.
I find him interesting because he
embodies something that is supposed to be inherently incompatible: a man who
wears women’s clothing and enjoys the ‘delights of Aphrodite with men as well
as women’, but is also a successful military commander who defeats the rebels
in three battles. This apparent contradiction has resulted in a lot of debate,
in which various writers attempt to explain, or explain away, the impossibility
of these two characteristics being possessed by the same man. Which in turn
ends up revealing a lot about the tortuous logic used to prop up normative
concepts of gender. This has been the focus of my research for many years, and
I’ve enjoyed thinking about it, as you do when you spend a lot of time wrapping
your mind around the same question.
But I also find Sardanapalus
delightful in his own right. Every narrative which tells his story takes on an
editorial stance, usually disapproving, but at the centre of it all is a guy
who refuses to be ashamed of his gender practices or his sexual preferences.
This for me is the most interesting part about Byron’s play – Sardanapalus’s
defence of his philosophy of life, used to counter the accusations of
Salemenes, Arbaces, and Myrrha, who all feel that he should not be what he is. It
is worth remembering that is the play which Delacroix read, and then ignored;
the scene which he painted does not occur in Byron’s play, only in Diodorus.
Which is rather interesting in
itself.
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