The
Combat of the Giaour and the Pasha, painted by Delacroix in 1835, is
inspired by passage from Byron’s Oriental tales published in 1814 under the
title The Giaour, a Fragment of a Turkish Tale.
The story is about the ill-fated love affair between a Venetian, the Giaour - a
term used by Muslims to refer to an adulterer - and a slave, Leila, who
belonged to the seraglio of Hassan, the military leader of a Turkish province.
Leila, who has failed to show the Pasha Hassan the loyalty she owes him, is
thrown into the sea. Her lover, the Giaour, avenges her by killing Hassan.
Through his independent and intrepid life as well as his literary works that
speak to the heart and the imagination, Byron embodied the Romantic hero par
excellence. His travels in the Islamicised countries of the Mediterranean
opened the doors of the Orient to Delacroix. The poet died in 1824, aged 36,
near Missolonghi, where he was fighting against Turkish domination on the side
of the Greeks.
Hassan’s death deliberately echoes the Greek struggle for independence,
supported by France,
England
and Russia
from 1820 to 1830. Whereas Byron’s poem describes two troops filled with the
same fury, Delacroix chose to isolate the two rivals to represent them in a
duel which is faithful to the story in its violence. Delacroix also drew
on his memories of travelling in Morocco.
The details of the costumes and harnesses he kept in his sketchbooks were used
in the combat scene to emphasise the richness of his red and gold palette. Delacroix
excelled at depicting a hand-to-hand fight of great visual intensity, where man
and animal are closely linked.
