Painting Detail
Christian Martyr Drowned in the Tiber During the Reign of DiocletianArtist: Hippolyte Delaroche
Medium: Painting, Oil on canvas, 73.5x60 cm
Date: 1853
Genre: Christianity, Religious
Source: Kamennoostrovsky Palace, Leningrad, 1924
The idea for this painting came to Delaroche during a time of severe illness. It deals with the terrible persecution suffered by Christians during the first century AD. The effective contrast of the crimson sunset and the cold, cold, greenish-blue tones of the water, with its reflections of that mystical light which illuminates the face of the martyr thrown into the Tiber with her hands tied, gives the painting a very Romantic feel. A contemporary of Delaroche, the writer Theophile Gautier, poetically described this image as that of "the Christian Ophelia" and was particularly admiring of the face "of virginal purity and divine beauty".