Head of an old Greek woman, study for The Massacres of Scio

The war that pitted Greece against its Turkish oppressor between 1821 and 1830, the date of its independence, was followed with passion and emotion from France, where a philhellene wave marked the 1820s. Lord Byron's death in Missolonghi in 1824, where he had enlisted on the side of the Greeks, crystallized the commitment now inseparable from Romanticism. There are countless subjects recounting the courage of Markos Botzaris, the hero of Missolonghi, or Lord Byron, promoted by private exhibitions such as the one in 1826 at La galerie Lebrun in aid of the Greeks. As early as 1824, Delacroix was thinking of creating a painting about the massacres perpetrated on the island of Scio in 1822. In his diary, he describes the atrocities committed by the Turks and, in May 1823, notes that he is ready to paint a picture on the subject. Les Massacres de Scio was painted between the beginning of 1824 and the opening of the Salon in August. By April, the figures of his modern allegory had been completed, notably that of his old wife, the figure of a people of mothers who see their country and their children washing the earth with their blood. The artist's great invention is to privilege an unusual restraint for this theme. The old woman, whose daughter lies dead beside her, her child in her arms, offers an image of resignation far removed from the emphatic passions of classical painting. At the same time, Delacroix erects with her an image of Greek honor, in a rereading of the three ages of life marked in their maturity by hope. Indeed, the old woman is the only one to look to a better future, remembering an age of freedom that must be reclaimed. This tête d'étude was exhibited at the Salon of 1824, along with others for the same composition. The exercise of the tête d'expression, one of the prizes that mark out the academic curriculum, is renewed in the service of a modern subject, as Cogniet did the same year with his Tête d'étude d'une vieille.