The Assyrian king Sardanapalus, his city about to fall, lies on his bed and watches his servants kill his concubines and horses so the enemy won’t have them. Delacroix based it on a play by Lord Byron.

At the Paris Salon of 1827 it caused a scandal: too violent, too chaotic, too red. Look at the bed, a great diagonal of crimson that sweeps through the whole picture.