The Death of Seneca

From 1838 to 1847, Delacroix worked with assistants, including Andrieu, on decorations for the library of the Chambre des Deputés in Paris. They consisted of four painted pendentives for each of five cupolas; this sketch is related to a pendentive in the cupola of Philosophy. The stoic philosopher Seneca is based on an ancient sculpture of a fisherman that came to the Louvre from Rome during the Napoleonic era and was wrongly called Seneca Killing Himself in His Bath. One of Delacroix’s idols, Peter Paul Rubens, had painted Seneca after the statue in 1615. In this important official commission, Delacroix grounded his image in the humanist tradition, but elsewhere he explored popular new themes, including Orientalism, the novels of Sir Walter Scott, and the Greek War of Independence.