The Abduction of Rebecca

As a rich source for exotic and dramatically violent themes, the novels of Sir Walter Scott were immensely popular with Romantic painters. Delacroix, despite his reservations about their literary merit, repeatedly found inspiration in these writings. This picture, painted in 1846 and exhibited in the Salon of that year, illustrates an episode from Scott’s Ivanhoe, in which the beautiful Rebecca is carried off by two Saracen slaves at the command of the Christian knight who has long coveted her. Intense drama is created as much by the contorted poses and compacted space as by the artist’s use of vivid color. Contemporary critics, including Baudelaire, praised the work’s spontaneity and power.