Battle of Nancy (1477)

Delacroix's Battle of Nancy of 1831, depicting the 1477 battle in which the last Valois Duke of Burgundy Charles the Bold was defeated and killed by the forces of Lorraine, was commissioned for the throne room at Versailles. The subject represented French-speaking Europe's absorption of the Burgundian state — a process that shaped the political geography of Western Europe — treated by Delacroix with characteristic energy and compositional turbulence. The commission placed him in the tradition of French state historical painting while allowing him to apply his Rubensian battle style to a specifically French national subject.

The chaotic battle scene is rendered with Delacroix's characteristic dynamic brushwork and a palette of icy blues and earth tones suggesting a winter battlefield. The violent, entangled composition conveys the brutal confusion of medieval combat.