Page 319 - Beholding Liberty!

HALL OF THE TROPHIES
II.8.B.3
Jean-Pierre-Marie Jazet (1788-1871)
after Antoine-Charles-Horace Vernet (1789-1863)
The Giaour defeating Hassan, after 1827
aquatit, 64 × 54 cm
signed and dated: H. Vernet 1827 (on the image, bottom right)
signed: Peint par H. Vernet. (bottom left) Gravé par Jazet. (bottom right)
inscribed: Le Giaour Vainquer d’Hassan. / Cet Ennemi est là qui le contemple; son front est aussi sombre que celui qui est couvert des ombres du trépas ... / (Lord Byron, le Giaour) / A Paris chez JAZET, Rue de Lancry, N.0 et chez AUMONT, M.d d’Estampes, Rue J.J. Roussaeu, N.0 10 _ Deposé à la Direction (low centre)
Hellenic Parliament Art Collection, inv. n. 387
II.8.B.4
Mathieu-Antoine Roux (1799-1872) The Defeat, 1837
oil on canvas, 72 × 57 cm
Michael and Demetra Varkarakis Collection
II.8.B.5
School of Eugène Delacroix
The Giaour duelling against Hassan
oil on canvas, 26 x 29 cm
Michael and Demetra Varkarakis Collection
THE ORIENTALIST LOVE STORY of the Giaour and Leila inspired printmakers, illustra- tors and major painters of the first half of the nineteenth century, such as Eugène Delacroix, Théodore Géricault, Antoine Charles Horace Ver- net, Ary Scheffer, and Alexandre-Marie Collin.
After the outbreak of the Greek Revolution and the emerging philhellenic sentiment, the interest shifted from the erotic element to the Giaour-Has- san confrontation. Byron’s work, accordingly, was charged with new symbolic content, portraying the Giaour as an iconic figure of Christianity and the West, a symbol of the struggle against Is- lam and the Ottoman East, a struggle embodied, after 1821, by the Greek War of Independence. Consequently, the Byronic Giaour emerged, in a variety of different adaptations, as an allegorical representation of the Greek Revolution. The duel between the Giaour and Hassan, and the next ep- isode, after Giaour has killed his rival, became es- pecially popular with artists.
Francois de Villain’s lithograph [cat. no II-I.8.B.2] is based on a watercolour painting produced
around 1822-23 by a major exponent of French Romanticism, Théodore Géricault. The Giaour, on horseback, his fist raised, gallops away from the site of revenge to the monastery where he will confine himself to expunge his crime. In the large- scale aquatint by Jean Pierre Marie Jazet [cat. no III.8.B.3] after a painting by Antoine Charles Hor- ace Vernet, of 1827, the Giaour is shown victori- ous after having defeated Hassan; his foot rests triumphantly on the body of his slain opponent and he is restraining his horse, rearing in a simi- larly triumphant pose.
To the right, the third male figure in the group, holding a sword by the handle, is the defeated party’s follower, whom the Giaour has ordered to behead his dead master. This brutal detail infuses the scene – serene at first glance – with a latent violence, the pathos which was so desirable in Ro- mantic art.
This work by H. Vernet is also known by the alter- native title The Defeat as is its 1837 reproduction by Mathieu Antoine Roux [cat. no III.8.B.4]. Here, the Orientalistic, folkloric quality, popular with the
SCENES AND FIGURES OF FREEDOM The phenomenon of Philhellenism 319