Delacroix and Sculpture

Editor of a new, more complete edition of Delacroix's Journals, Hannoosh studies the Romantic artist's comments on sculpture from two recently discovered notebooks, showing an evolution in his view that sculpture and painting should remain within the limits set by their media and that painting, not sculpture, is the art most appropriate to modernity. Hannoosh shows that Delacroix, in the process of viewing and writing about medieval and Renaissance sculpture, conceives of both an authentic modern sculpture and a sculptural treatment of color in painting. He even imagines a style of colorist painting that would be imbued with the force, grandeur, and immediacy of ancient sculpture.