Copy after Delacroix's "Bark of Dante" - Édouard Manet (ca. 1859)

Édouard Manet

Oil on canvas

Metropolitan Museum of Art

This small but luminous oil on canvas is Manet's second and more freely interpreted copy after Eugène Delacroix's celebrated Romantic masterpiece of 1822, which depicts Dante and Virgil being ferried across the River Styx by Phlegyas, their bark beset by the writhing, tormented souls of the damned. Where Manet's first copy (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon, ca. 1854–58) adheres more closely to Delacroix's composition, this Metropolitan Museum version—thought to date from around 1859—functions as a free color study, prioritizing the orchestration of complementary hues and expressive brushwork over literal transcription. Manet, then a student in Thomas Couture's studio, engaged deeply with the Old Masters and with Delacroix in particular as part of his academic formation, copying works in museums as a fundamental exercise in technique. The painting reveals the young artist's absorbing interest in Delacroix's bold colorism and dynamic paint handling, qualities that would come to distinguish Manet's own mature style and mark his pivotal role in the transition from Realism toward Impressionism.