Interior of a Dominican Convent in Madrid

Gallery 399, European Art 1500-1850, third floor

Main Building

Interior of a Dominican Convent in Madrid

1831

Ferdinand-Victor-Eugène Delacroix (French, 1798–1863)

The subject of this painting is from a popular nineteenth-century English novel, Charles Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer, translated into French in 1821. A young man forced into a convent as a child undergoes harrowing trials in order to escape his punitive and corrupt surroundings. Here he is shown being dragged before the bishop of Madrid. The artist depicts a cavernous, vaulted room that is actually based on the interior of the Palace of Justice in Rouen, France. Delacroix's use of this decidedly un-Spanish, secular setting may have been an intentional reference to the oppressive link between civic and religious power, a theme prominent in the novel.

Gallery 399, European Art 1500-1850, third floor

Object Details

Title:

Interior of a Dominican Convent in Madrid

Date:

1831

Artist:

Ferdinand-Victor-Eugène Delacroix (French, 1798–1863)

Medium:

Oil on canvas

Dimensions:

51 1/4 × 63 3/4 inches (130.2 × 161.9 cm) Framed: 66 inches × 6 feet 6 5/8 inches × 6 3/8 inches (167.6 × 199.7 × 16.2 cm)

Classification:

Paintings

Credit Line:

Purchased with the W. P. Wilstach Fund, 1894

Accession Number:

W1894-1-2

Geography:

Made in France, Europe

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Gallery 399, European Art 1500-1850, third floor

Main Building

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