Art Institute of Chicago

Combat Between the Giaour and the Pasha

Eugène Delacroix

Date

1827

Medium

Lithograph in black on ivory wove paper

Culture

France

Department

Prints and Drawings

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

Like the poem on which it is based, Lord Byron’s The Giaour (1813), this print exhibits Europeans’ contemporary fascination with the Middle East, a trend known as Orientalism that often depended on stereotypes of violence and sexuality. In the poem, a Venetian giaour (a Turkish term for a non-Muslim) falls in love with Leila, a member of a Turkish harem controlled by the pasha (master), Hassan. When Hassan discovers this affair, he kills Leila. In the scene depicted here, the giaour fights the pasha to avenge his lover.

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