The Shipwreck of Don Juan

Eugène Delacroix painted The Shipwreck of Don Juan in 1840, depicting a scene from Canto II of Lord Byron's satirical epic poem Don Juan, in which the survivors of a shipwreck draw lots to determine who will be cannibalized. The subject combined Delacroix's lifelong devotion to Byron's poetry with his fascination for extreme human situations — survival, desperation, and moral collapse. The painting relates to the broader Romantic tradition of shipwreck imagery, most famously Géricault's Raft of the Medusa (1819), which Delacroix had watched being painted in Géricault's studio.

Delacroix compresses the desperate figures into a dangerously overloaded boat, using a low viewpoint that emphasizes the surrounding expanse of ocean and sky. The somber, blue-green palette evokes the cold indifference of the sea, while the huddled, emaciated figures are modeled with an anatomical precision that contrasts with the loose, atmospheric treatment of water and sky.