The Bride of Abydos

The Bride of Abydos (La Fiancée d'Abydos), also called Selim and Zuleika, is an oil painting on canvas by Eugène Delacroix, painted around 1849 and held by the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon (inv. B 1839), which received it in 1913 as a gift from Joseph Gillet.

The subject comes from Lord Byron's poem The Bride of Abydos, published on 2 December 1813, a verse tale set in the Turkish East; Byron wrote it after swimming the Hellespont between Abydos and Sestos in imitation of Leander. Delacroix had already turned to Byron in 1827 for The Death of Sardanapalus. In the poem, the pasha Giaffir forbids his daughter Zuleika to marry Selim, whom she believes to be her brother. In a grotto by the sea Selim reveals that he is in fact her cousin, son of the brother Giaffir murdered, and that he has become a pirate to take revenge. At that moment shots ring out: Giaffir's men have found them. Selim lingers to kiss Zuleika once more and is killed on the shore, and she dies of grief.

Delacroix shows the instant of discovery inside the cave. Selim, in a red cap, embroidered waistcoat and white kilt, draws his weapons and braces himself against attackers we cannot see, while Zuleika, in a pale silk skirt and purple jacket, sinks against him in fear. A cloak and weapons hang on the rock behind them, and through the mouth of the cave at the lower left a patch of sea appears. In this version, unlike the others, Selim faces his invisible assailants head-on instead of turning back towards them.

Delacroix returned to the scene several times. A version dated 1843–1849, measuring 35.5 × 27.5 cm, is in the Louvre, and another is in the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth; both set the lovers on an open shore beside the sea, with Selim raising a sabre.