The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople after Delacroix by Degas in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, December 2023

Title: The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople, after Delacroix

Artist: Edgar Degas (French, Paris 1834–1917 Paris)

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

Date: ca. 1860

Geography: Country of Origin France

Culture: French

Medium: Oil on cardboard

Dimensions: 13 3/4 × 14 15/16 in. (35 × 38 cm)
Frame: 23 1/16 × 24 1/4 × 4 5/8 in. (58.5 × 61.6 × 11.8 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Kunsthaus Zürich, Donated by René Wehrli, 2005 (2006.19)


After returning to Paris from Italy in the spring of 1859, Degas began an enthusiastic campaign of copying works by Eugène Delacroix, the esteemed Romantic painter of the preceding generation. In addition to sketching from pictures on view in exhibitions and from public murals in Paris, Degas ventured to Versailles to study the monumental Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople (1840), which depicts an episode of religious warfare from the thirteenth century. At the time, Degas was struggling to conceive his own grand history paintings; although he ultimately turned away from such subject matter, his study of Delacroix would have a lasting effect on his approach to color.


Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/844793