Rebecca and Brian de Bois-Guilbert

Léon Cogniet's Rebecca and Brian de Bois-Guilbert (1828) illustrates a scene from Walter Scott's Ivanhoe — the abduction of the Jewish heroine Rebecca by the Knight Templar Brian de Bois-Guilbert, one of the novel's most charged encounters between religious fanaticism, chivalric violence, and racial prejudice. Scott's novels were immensely popular in France, and Romantic painters found in them an inexhaustible source of dramatic moments combining historical setting with psychological complexity. Cogniet was drawn to Scott repeatedly, and this canvas, now at the Wallace Collection in London, is among his most accomplished literary illustrations.

Cogniet focuses on the moment of Rebecca's capture, the knight's armour and horse dominating the composition while her white and gold garments provide the picture's colour accent. The landscape — a turbulent sky, a distant medieval castle — establishes the chivalric world of the novel. The handling is dramatic and energetic, with the horse and knight filling most of the picture plane.