The Young Martyr Analysis

The Young Martyr, a painting by French painter Paul Delaroche, is currently housed in the Musee de Louvre in Paris, France. It was finished in 1855 and was painted during the Romanticism era. Although it is not as famous as the Mona Lisa, it is still a beautifully done oil painting that continues to enchant museum visitors.
After the French Revolution in 1789, everything about society in Europe was changing. The French Revolution began to abolish privileged, high class society as people rose up against the authority and monarchy in France. As a result of this political upheaval almost all of Europe was shaken by social changes, revolutions, and wars (“French Revolution”). Artists and artwork began to reflect this new sense of change and nationalism with a movement called Neoclassicism. Neoclassicism is characterized by strong drawing, rationality, and better moral ideology. Artists began to no longer show their brush strokes and paint more about nationalism and patriotism in society. There was also more of a movement to develop strong nations and create national museums,

The young girl was supposedly thrown into the Tiber River when she did not deny her faith in front of the Romans. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a martyr as “a person who voluntarily suffers death as the penalty of witnessing to and refusing to renounce a religion” or someone “who sacrifices something of great value and especially life itself for the sake of principle”. Martyrs throughout history were idealized, they were invented lives, and were oftentimes considered a reward deserved in Heaven. It was also often thought that a child who dies as a martyr is a child of innocence and purity. Delaroche expresses this innocence, this purity by how simple the composition is, just as mourning is expressed by the darkness that has invaded the