Apollo Vanquishing the Python

This is the central panel of the vaulted ceiling of the Galerie d’Apollon in the Louvre.

One of Delacroix’s lesser-known masterpieces, the subject-matter was dictated by its destination. Apollo Vanquishing the Python shows the painter working in a direct line from the great decorators of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, without losing any of his own ardor or lyricism.