Summary Execution under the Moorish Kings of Granada

This painting reflects the artist’s fascination with Granada’s Alhambra Palace, as well as his morbid predilection (here using a historical pretext, taken to an extreme) for severed heads. The crimson blood splashed on the steps, the decapitated body, and the severed head itself impressed an enthusiastic Th�ophile Gautier with their realism, which he imagined to have been studied at first hand in Morocco.