The Massacre at Chios

In March of 1822, the small Greek island Chios was burned and pillaged by an estimated 40,000 Turkish troops sent to squash out Greek revolutionaries from the neighboring island of Samos. Although some of the Chians had joined the fight, the majority of the population were "innocent" in the sense that they had not joined the revolt and thus had done nothing to provoke the killings. Alongside burning the town, the troops were ordered to kill all infants under three and all males 12 years old and over. Approximately 20,000 Chians were killed or starved to death and an estimated 23,000 were exiled.

A large outrage followed the news arrival in Europe and in 1824 Eugene Delacroix painted "The Massacre at Chios." The piece was presented in the Salon of 1824 subjecting people that much more to the horrible atrocities that had taken place. Inspired by Théodore Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa, Delacroix sought to inform people of current events and make them want to do something about it.

I personally love this painting. The colors used are perfect for the content and composition. They represent the bleak hopelessness of a town being torn apart by war and couple perfectly with the anguished yet almost accepting faces of the pile of people at the base of the painting; especially those of the woman on the right and the man on the far left. Another parallel to this hopelessness is the background Delacroix chooses. Desolate piles of bricks, smouldering rubble, clustered masses of bodies and empty fields all come together and present a mood of general despair intended to make viewers aware and upset about the Chios Massacre.

In 2009 a copy of the painting was hung in the Byzantine museum on Chios but was later withdrawn in November of the same year. The withdraw was meant to act as a "good-faith initiative" for the improvement of Greek-Turkish relations, but was still met with protest by the Greek press. The original has been on display in the Louvre since November 1874.