Head of a Horse, after the Parthenon
ca. 1825
Delacroix was totally starstruck by the Parthenon sculptures (the Elgin Marbles) when they showed up in London. Rather than doing a boring, stiff copy, he sketched this horse head with wild, scratchy energy that makes the ancient stone look like it's about to gallop off the page. If you look closely at the bottom, you'll see his signature and a note calling it a 'fragment of the Parthenon,' showing that even the rebels of the Romantic movement were secretly huge fans of classical art.
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