Delacroix and His Assistant Lassalle-Bordes: Problems in the Design and Execution of the Luxembourg Dome Mural

* Research for this article and related studies was made possible by a Fulbright grant and the Sigmund Martin Heller Travelling Fellowship from the University of California, Berkeley (1960–61), and by a travel grant from Mills College (Summer, 1963). I should also like to record my deep appreciation for the courtesy and help extended to me in France, especially to M. Jean Adhémar, Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliothèque Nationale; to Mme. Bouchot-Saupique and M. Maurice Sérullaz, Cabinet des Dessins; Musée du Louvre; to M. André Roussy, Bibliothèque du Sénat, Palais du Luxembourg; Mlle. Jeanne Thomas, Cité Universitaire, Paris; M. L. Valensi, Conservateur du Musée d'Aquitaine, Bordeaux; to M. Polge, Conservateur du Musée d'Auch; and to those whose help is acknowledged throughout the footnotes.

Abstract

During the night of May 5, 1868, the canvas of Delacroix's mural in the dome of the Palais du Luxembourg library tore loose from the masonry to which it had been fixed twenty-four years before, and crashed to the floor.¹ The task of supervising restoration and reinstallation was entrusted to Pierre Andrieu who, after 1847, had been Delacroix's chief assistant on the mural projects in the Louvre, the Hôtel de Ville, and Saint-Sulpice.²