Delacroix, Sardanapalus, and liking things

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.

Europe 1600-1815; or, artefacts which make me feel feelings about history

The Victoria and Albert Museum has a new permanent exhibition about European cultural artefacts from 1600 to 1815. I went to see it today, and it was – how shall I put this – fantastic. While my devotion to the British Museum remains sincere and unalterable, there were displays here which made me glow with happiness, and I definitely intend to go again. (And again. Visitors to London, this is where I will be dragging you next.)

It is a large exhibition, with variation in both cultural origin and societal usage. We start with Napoleon in Egypt, move through the French Revolution to home decorations and local fashions throughout Europe (I particularly liked the Norwegian wooden tankards), a brief interlude in a Venetian masquerade (where they have a wii-like game in which you can dance with a harlequin – I would have tried, but there was a group of very enthusiastic old ladies before me. NEXT TIME.), to neo-classicism, literary salons, and Louis XIV, finishing with some lovely Berninis.

There were several pieces I loved. Cutlery with slogans from the French Revolution was a delight, and I made a special point of checking if the gift shop had any modern replicas for sale (they did not). Which is a shame, because  I would have bought them and gleefully used them. But I also appreciated the curation here; it is one thing to know that political events influenced the production of goods, and quite another to have those goods presented in their original context. Not only was there information about when and where they were made, but it was also clear that there were competing production lines for different political affiliations, pro-king and pro-revolution, and that this was a way to demonstrate your views. As well as to manufacture and sell a brand. One thing I would have liked to see was more information about who owned these particular objects. I appreciate that space is limited and that provenance is not always available, but it would have been interesting to know who bought a mug with Louis XVI hugging his family goodbye.

© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Another favourite was an eighteenth-century French tray for salon board games, in which players travel from meeting to friendship and love (or acquaintance, or apathy, or contempt). Last year I attended an evening of French salon games at the Warburg Institute, and this game was one of the options offered (We were also invited to make our own. I don’t remember what I put in mine but I remember enjoying it immensely, which is slightly ominous in retrospect). The whole evening was highly entertaining; we played a memory game involving tragic sighs, attached beauty spots to interesting places, and told romantic stories competitively (I won). The lady who had organised the event mentioned that she was interested in arranging something similar as an evening at the V&A – perhaps she knew they had an original board – but I’ve not heard of any such things happening. It would, I think, be a draw. Certainly I would draw all my friends in.

The last part of the exhibition which I will particularly mention (I have saved some for next time, because there were so many delightful things) is the inclusion of three small rooms: a mirrored room from Lombardy, the cabinet of a Parisian noblewoman from 1778, and an interior with wood panelling and classical motifs. These were gorgeous, and inspired the aforementioned glow, because they showed not only the objects and the decorations, but also how they may have looked in their original context and, moreover, how they would have been used. The mirrored room has a harp; I knew that ladies in the eighteenth century played music, but this showed me where they might have performed, what kind of an instrument they might have used, what they could have looked at while they played. Or, I knew that ladies had closets in which they retired to read and write (Samuel Richardson’s novels are full of ladies with private closets, and are ostensibly mostly written in them), but I hadn’t realised what one such room might look like: a fireplace, a few chairs for receiving visitors, decorated walls so that she would have something pleasant to look at as she read. In both cases, we get a sense of what it would have been like to occupy that space. And that, as an imaginative endeavour, was both fascinating and highly enjoyable.