The Restoration of Delacroix's Capture of Constantinople

The last restored large-format painting by Eugène Delacroix has finally returned to the Pompei red walls of the Salle Mollien at the Musée du Louvre. Since 2019, the Louvre has been restoring the king of the Romantic movement's paintings. 

Last week, the fifth and final from the master of color was revealed. The Capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders, April 12, 1204. Before the restoration, the painting was very dark. The architectural background of the city and the Bosphorus has almost disappeared under multiple layers of varnish.  

Last restored in 1948, the most recent restoration included strengthening the canvas and its edges, as well as a full cleaning of the pictorial layer. 

In this episode, we go into the history of the commission, the actual event of 1204, and what the painting means. 

For more, visit ClaudineHemingway.com

Transcript

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Bonjour, bonjour, and welcome again to Paris in Blue, Blanc, Rouge. I am Claudine Hemingway, and thank you so much for joining us today. I'm bringing this to you from Sweltering Paris. It is quite hot. We've got at least four more days of this in the very high 80s. And for if just while I record this, I've turned my fans off. So we'll see if I hopefully don't pass out from the heat before we finish. But it has been quite hot and it is not normally this hot at the end of May. But hopefully, this is not a sign of things to come this summer. But when Paris heats up like this and it started on Sunday, I think was the first day, it takes a long time for it to go away. So it just kind of gets held inside the buildings and the stone, and it is not fun. I was in the Louvre this weekend, and I just can't imagine what that place is going to feel like by Thursday between the thousands of people each day and the heat inside, just being trapped inside that stone. It's going to be miserable. So hopefully, if you are here in Paris, you are staying someplace that has some AC and enjoying some lovely cold beverages. But next week looks to be much better and a little bit more normal. So just keeping the eyes on the prize. We got to get through it. But this week I wanted to bring a story to you about something that's, of course, inside the Louvre. And it is one of the paintings that was done by one of my very favorite artists. And it had just finished restoration. It just came out and was shown to the public a week ago, last Wednesday, the 20th. And I, of course, had to know everything that I possibly could about this painting. And it is one of his paintings that most people probably don't know about. So that always is even more fun for me to share it with people. So we will jump right in here. So over the last seven years, the Louvre has undertaken the massive restoration of five of Ugen Delacroix's large paintings, many of which hang side by side in the Sal Mollien. On May 20th, the last of the restored large format paintings was unveiled, revealing a masterpiece hidden beneath layers of varnish. The capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders might be unknown to most people, and quite frankly, it is usually ignored in the Molienne as people gather in front of Liberty leading the people. Hopefully, with its refreshing facelift, it will garner a bit more attention. In the spring of 2018, the Louvre held a retrospective exhibit dedicated to the romantic master, and at that point they realized many of the paintings were in desperate need of restoration. Most paintings need a bit of love every 80 to 100 years, but as you can imagine for the Louvre, that isn't a very easy schedule to keep or to fund for that matter. The vast majority of the 20th century was consumed by world wars in the first half. The eighties and nineties were dominated by the Grand Louvre project that gave us the pyramid and the Richelieu wing, which took all the focus away from restorations, although that might have been a good thing. Restoration is an art form in itself. Over time, the focus of restoration has changed many times. We could look back at the quote unquote restoration of the Mona Lisa in the early 1600s. Artist Jean Deouet and his son Claude was in charge of the royal collection of Louis XIV and decided to cover the painting with a thick layer of varnish. This was done without cleaning the Renaissance masterpiece, painted on wood that had spent two decades of her life in a bathroom. This has left the world's most famous painting in a precarious position. She desperately needs cleaning, and the varnish continues to darken to this day. Restorations today involve multiple x-rays, testing the substance they will use, and even an inspection of the multiple sheets of canvas that lay below the pictorial layer that we see. Their role is to return the painting to the artist's intent, removing the varnish that dulls the colors and repairing any spots damaged by time. By abiding to the ultimate rule for whatever they do, they must be able to reverse in the future anything if needed. In the process, restorers have found paintings that have been altered with elements added that were never the artist's intent and at times added hundreds of years later. They can be removed without a trace, and there's some incredible examples I'll share in an episode soon. I would love to spend a day with these talented individuals, although they may be tired of my questions after about 20 minutes. Eugene Delacroix was the king of the romantic movement. His use of color was inspired by Rubens, and he would later inspire the Impressionists and Picasso. He was a perfect subject for this large project that began in 2019. These projects come at a very high cost, the restorations of just one painting costing up to a million euros. The Sal Moulien is just a few steps from the Mona Lisa, and it was created under Napoleon III. Between 1852 and 1870, he doubled the size of the Palais de Louvre for his government, while the Grand Gallery served as a museum. The room originally held the French masters of the 17th and 18th century as attested by the names inscribed on the walls above. Today, the same room painted in Pompeii Red hold the paintings at Delacroix and the Romantic period placed here in 1995. One by one, five of the Delacroix paintings have been restored, starting with a scene from the massacre of Seo, painted in 1824, depicting the destruction by the Ottoman Empire of the people of the Greek island of Seo in 1822. In 2021, a painting that also inspired Picasso to copy many times, the women from Algiers in their apartment was painted in 1834. The colors in the women's clothes came to life after the restoration. Delacroix liked to push the envelope with his paintings and the themes he chose. The death of Sardinopoulos, painted in 1827 for the 1828 salon, drew a crowd, but most were shocked by the theme of the mythical Assyrian king surrounded by all his favorite things just before his death. You can't restore the tableaus of Delacroix without touching his most famous, Liberty Leading the People. In 2023, it was completed in time for the 2024 Olympics. More on that in July. Last week on May 20th, the fifth and final from the Master of Color was revealed. The capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders April 12th, 1204. Before the restoration, the painting was very dark. The architectural background of the city and the Bosphorus Strait had almost disappeared under multiple layers of varnish. The restoration was sponsored and paid by Madame Isabelle Ile Carbani. She was also the one who supported the cleaning of the Death of Sardinopoulos and is helping with the Rubens Medici project. Constantinople was last restored in 1948 by Paul Meraday and Edgar Ayet. The newest restoration includes strengthening the canvas and its edges and the full cleaning of the pictorial layer. It was led by the amazing restorer Benedict Tremolire and Laurence Mignon, who cleaned, reintegrated, and added a new clear layer of varnish to once again bring out its color for glory. The support backing canvas and the frame were restored by Jean Pascal, Viola, and Lou Carter. The project lasted 11 months from May 2025 to April 2026. I have been fortunate enough to attend a few lectures given by Benedict de Laurence, two fascinating and talented ladies. A special space was created just steps away under the Salon Denon after the gift shop was removed in 2025. It was completed with a window that was added so we could watch the restoration process. But guess what? That never happened, and the window was never opened. It would have been amazing to watch. Louis Philippe rose to power after the Three Glorious Days Revolution of July 1830, another event that Dalacroix captured. Louis Philippe set himself apart from his predecessors by calling him the King of the French, a real man of the people. After a few Napoleons and Bourbons, they did their best to alter the pages of history. It would be Louis Philippe who would do all he could to return it. We already talked about his goal of reuniting the banks of the Seine with Napoleon Bonaparte in 1840 in episode 17. A king of the French didn't stop there. At the Chateau de Versailles, Louis Philippe created a museum dedicated to the glories of France, filling its walls and works with the greatest French artists as well as the many battles and scenes from French history. On April 30th, 1838, Eugene Delacroix was commissioned for 10,000 francs by Alphonse de Caillot, director of the Beaux-Arts and later director of the Musee de Louvre. It would be his third and last creation for Versailles. From the mid-1830s to his death in 1863, Delacroix focused more on public and government commissioned pieces. At the time, Paris had the Musee de Louvre and the Musee de Luxembourg. When it came to large centers dedicated to art, there were very few. He believed that to be remembered, he should dedicate his time and energy to these large-scale installations that could be seen for generations to come and tried to encourage his fellow artists to do the same. Little did he know what the museum and gallery landscape would look like today. At the time of his commission in 1838, he was working in the Chamber of Deputies in the Palais Bourbon of the National Assembly. Before Constantinople was finished, he also took on the major projects for the library of the Chamber of Peers in the Senate of the Palais de Luxembourg, multiple salon paintings and the Église Saint Denis de Saint-Sacrament. In February of 1840, Delacroix sent a letter to his friend and head of the Beaux-Arts, Cayot, asking for a meeting. It is thought that this was when he presented the sketch held at the Chateau de Chantilly. Sadly, it's not on display when I was thus there. There are more characters in this version that didn't make it into the final piece and a slightly more chaotic looking scene. I'll put a picture on my website. With this commission, Caillot told him that Louis-Philippe wanted the painting to be less in the style of Delacroix. After hearing that, he made his figures more prominent, dwarfing the surrounding architectural elements. The view reimagined by Delacroix over 630 years after the Crusade is likely near the Blacharnet Palace with the Golden Horn in the Bosphorus Strait below. The fourth siege of Constantinople was first spearheaded by Pope Innocent III, who was elected in 1198, although the Byzantine capital was not in the plans. The Pope wanted to return Jerusalem to Christianity and out of the hands of the Muslims. It was led by Baldwin I of Flanders and Boniface of Montferrat, who decided to fight for the cross and return to Christianity. Without a massive army of their own, the Pope asked the Venetian doge Enrico Dondola to assist, launching the crusade in 1202 with the help of the Venetian ships and the army of Baldwin and Boniface. They were supposed to go to Egypt, but things didn't go as planned. The Byzantine throne had been anything less than solid for quite some time. Family fights between brothers and sons led Alexios IV, son of Emperor Isaac II, to offer the crusaders 200 silver marks, supplies, and even the island of Crete if they helped to rescue his father from prison and return him to the throne. The ships made a hard turn and headed to the Byzantine capital, which was also one of the most powerful and richest, held many of the most priceless relics and treasures. When war reached the Pope, he was enraged and later excommunicated all of the soldiers involved. On July 19, 1203, Isaac II regained his throne once more, although not in the finest of form. He had been imprisoned by his brother Alexios III and had his eyes gouged out. However, Isaac's son Alexios IV hadn't followed through on his promises to the Venetians as they took matters into their own hands. From April 8th to the 13th of 1204, the Byzantine Campbell of Constantinople in the head of the Eastern Roman Empire would be attacked and changed forever. Soldiers used the masts of their ships to reach the top of the walls, while those below, armed with pickaxes, bore through the and crawled in to terrorize the citizens. The first days were a mess of looting, attacking, raping, and killing. On the 12th, the same day captured by Delacroix, they began a far more organized looting. In the aftermath of the siege, the country would be split into four parts and Constantinople would fall under the new Latin Empire, naming Baldwin of Flanders the first Latin Emperor on May 9, 1204. Delacroix was no stranger to controversy or shocking subjects. He was commissioned to paint this subject specifically to be held in the Hall of Crusades in Louis Philippe's museum. At some point in the 1830s, Delacroix was walking down the Champs lysees and was struck by a scene he saw on the scaffolding on the north side of the street. The sun covered one of the workers while the others were cast in the shadows. It was something he would beautifully incorporate into this painting, putting the attention on the victims and not the attackers. The center of the tableau is dominated by the soldiers on horseback dressed in armor and helmets. Baldwin, the Count of Flanders, led the French soldiers in an attack through the city streets, sits high in his source and looks down at the man begging for clemency. Behind Baldwin on the left, the head of the Venetian doge, Enrico Dondola, who controlled the siege through the port, can barely be spotted between the staffs of the banners. Boniface, as well as Louis I de Bois, also represented on horseback. Louis I wasn't actually there that day as he had been ill, but he was involved in the lead up and the aftermath. Below, the older man reaches up to Baldwin, imploring him to stop the attacks. His hand shows his age, while the young lady who has her face turned into his chest has hands that are young and smooth. Painting hands and feet is quite difficult. Jericho had such a hard time with a foot on one of the men of the raft of the Medusa that he finally gave up and covered it with a sock. Da Vinci, Angra, and Delacroix excelled at capturing hands and features them prominently in many of their pieces. Quite possibly, the greatest part of this painting is the group of the two women in the lower right edge. It's possibly a mother and a daughter. The younger woman in a pink and gray dress that has fallen to reveal her entire back leans forward with her blonde hair hanging over the other woman who lies in her arms. Grieving the loss of the woman, she appears clearly upset, even without us being able to see her face. The woman in her arms wearing a blue and gray dress and a blue veil covering her head, with her skin tinged the slightest shade of blue, telling us that she has died. Above the women, the horse of Baldwin appears to come to a running stop as it pulls its head away from them, giving us a bit of compassion that probably wasn't there in the actual moments of the siege of 1204. Delacroix sketched many of the individual elements of the painting, but by far the most stunning and complete is that of the two women. I'll have a picture of it on my website. The horse of Baldwin steps over a banner, helmet, quiver, and other weapons of war. During the restoration process using X-rays, it was found that Delacroix had actually painted the body of a soldier. At some point he changed his mind and covered the soldier with the banners. It would have changed the idea of the horse halting to avoid the soldiers instead of the woman. In the far left of the painting, a priest under the porch of his church is grabbed by the throat by a soldier who attempts to stop the man's quick action to charge towards Baldwin and his men. Below, his daughter was left to die after soldiers had taken advantage of her. The mix of all these walks of life was something Delacroix excelled at. With the use of shadows, he placed the important elements, the people in the glow of the light, and the attackers and soldiers in the dark. The architectural elements are now thought to be designed by his friend Louis Boulanger. Below, the smoke begins to form as the soldiers destroy the city in their wake. The painting was finished and first displayed in 1841 Salon in the Salon Carret of the Muse de Louvre. Opening on March 15, 1841, it was received to mixed reaction. Listed as number 509, the official description was Baldwin, Count of Flanders, commanded the French who had launched the assault from the landward side and the old Dodge Dondolo at the head of the Venetians and on the ships and attacked the port. The principal leaders traveled through the various districts of the city and the grieving families came along their route to plead for their mercy. Louis P. reviewed the piece in the Review de Dumonde in 1841. Delacroix conceives everything. He sees everything and he renders everything with the eyes of the painter and for the eyes of a painter. Everything in the conception and execution of his work to the effect of the painting itself, abstracting from the objects represented. He is less concerned with representing a fact or expressing an idea than with painting a canvas. The subject is less an end in itself than a pretext for him, and this is what so greatly confounds the public, who understand and judge a painting only from a literary point of view, want above all to find in what they seek in a novel or a poem a dramatic or historic meeting. In 1855, it was exhibited again at the Universal Exposition to a more favorable response. Charles Baudelaire was a big fan of Delacroix and had to speak out after seeing the masterpiece. But the painting of the Crusaders is so profoundly penetrating, quite apart from the subject matter, by its stormy and somber harmony. What a sky and what a sea. Everything is tumultuous and tranquil, like the aftermath of a great event. The city spread out behind the crusaders who have just crossed it stretches out with a prestigious realism, and always those shimmering, undulating flags, their luminous folds, unfurling and snapping to the transparent atmosphere. It was transferred to the Louvre at the start of may eighteen eighty five for the exquisite quality and hung in the Salle des Etats. It remained until September of 1939 when it was rolled up and evacuated to the Chateau de Lauvigny. It safely returned to the Louvre on may thirty first, nineteen forty-six, almost exactly 80 years ago. The painting was copied by Henri Charles Dusser in 1883 and still in place at Fertsaille to this day. In 1852, Delacroix returned to the same theme, this time pulling away from the scene a bit and increasing the architectural perspective. The characters are smaller, dwarfed by the majestic scenery. Given the constraints placed on him in 1840, he later wrote that the smaller version was more to his liking. In the second floor of the Soli Wing in South 950, the collection of Etienne Moreau Neveton. One of my favorite collectors was the third generation of his family to amass many of the greatest paintings of Correau Delacroix and the Impressionist. This version was purchased by his grandfather Adolph Moreau for 3,350 francs on february nineteenth, eighteen fifty-three. It would be passed down to Etienne and donated to the Louvre in 1906, a donation that would change the acceptance of Impressionism. More on that another day. The painting was also copied by Fantan Latour in September of 1854 and Degas in 1860. E. Albertine painted a scene of the Delacroix exhibit organized after his death in 1864 and held at the Gallery Martinet at 26 Boulevard des Italiens. Oh to have been able to see that painting there. It's held in the Carnival but in the reserves and rarely sees the light of day. To tie France, Constantinople, Venice, and even CO together, we could look no further than the top of the Arc de Triomphe de Carousal, just outside the doors of the Louvre. In 1797, while Napoleon looted his way through Venice, he took the four horses of Saint Mark's and brought them to Paris. This would be the perfect thing to crown his arch made for his troops and his victories. Once out of power in 1815, the Venetians asked numerous times to return the horses. France ignored their calls. In the dark of night, the Venetians arrived, climbed up, took them down themselves, and made their way back to Venice, although they never belonged to Venice in the first place. They were tied to the Hellenistic period and most likely created in either Rhodes or Cel. They were installed above the Hippodrome of Constantinople, where they remained until the Venetian doge d'Andolo stole them in 1204. The horses were copied and the new copper and lead beauties returned to the top of the Arc de Triomphe to Carousel. Venice should give them back. Now, if the entire time you've been listening to this, you have heard the song Istanbul is not Constantinople. Since last week, when I saw this, and any time I look at this painting, that song has played through my head. And for the last week, since I have been thinking about this and researching, I have probably sung that song in my head 4,000 times. So hopefully you did too. And also I'm sorry. But I looked up that song and it was written in 1953, and it was written by Jimmy Kennedy for the Canadian group, The Four Lads, and it has been copied by everybody under the sun from Trey. What's his name? From Fish Something. I've actually met him before. I can't even remember what his name is. Bette Midler, all of these people have sung that song. So song that song. Sang that song. But it is, it is a kind of a fun song, but it you should look it up and listen to it. But I'm sure, I mean, who doesn't know that? But it's also, I think that's actually one of the funnest city names to ever say. So I think they should just turn it back. I think Istanbul should become Constantinople one again, once again. So be sure if you're not in Paris and you can't run over to the Louvre and see this painting, make sure to go to my website, Claudia. Hemingway.com, and I'll have tons of uh pictures of the painting, the before, the after, including the x-ray, and also some of the sketches that Delacroid did for it. And I'm excited to share that with you and excited to share another episode coming next week that will involve something that's kind of going on in Paris right now as we speak. So I hopefully it's a little bit cooler wherever you are than it is here in Paris right now. And I am going to jump off so I could turn my fans back on. Hope you guys all have a wonderful day and thanks for joining me. And if you're coming to Paris, make sure you book a tour with me or uh let me assist you in planning your trip to Paris. You can find everything at ClaudineHemingway.com. Merci.