Detail of Rebecca and the Wounded Ivanhoe by Delacroix in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, January 2020

Rebecca and the Wounded Ivanhoe
1823


Object Details

Artist: Eugène Delacroix (French, Charenton-Saint-Maurice 1798–1863 Paris)

Date: 1823

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 25 3/8 × 21 1/8 in. (64.5 × 53.7 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Bequest of Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, 2019

Accession Number: 2019.141.9



This was Delacroix’s first treatment of a subject drawn from Sir Walter Scott’s popular novels of medieval chivalry. The eponymous hero of Ivanhoe (1819), straining to leave his sickbed, listens to the terrified Rebecca as she describes a battle raging outside the window. Rather than show the battle itself, Delacroix sought to stimulate the viewer’s imagination by evoking violence through the gestures of the characters reacting to it. The fastidious execution of Rebecca’s extended hand stands in contrast to the jumble of strokes immediately surrounding it and to its left, which suggest the frenzy she witnesses.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/438110