Delacroix's Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople Restored | Hacker News Reader

Delacroix's Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople Restored

louvre.fr

67 pointsrawgabbit27 comments

Unfortunately, we are unlikely ever to see any of Delecroix’s paintings as they were intended to be seen. Fading pigments and other factors make this true for every painting, but doubly true for Delecroix as he used a lot of new pigments that were very unstable.

There is the story of Degas standing weeping with sadness in front of The death of sardenopolis at the way its colors had faded over time.

The actual picture without zoom disabled.[1] In case you wanted to look at it.

[1] https://api-www.louvre.fr/sites/default/files/styles/w1059_h...

and, not limited to a width w1059:

https://api-www.louvre.fr/sites/default/files/styles/w0_hNaN...

This image at 3688x2081 can be zoomed into

And the painting in full glory, at 15000 x 12415.

https://api-www.louvre.fr/sites/default/files/2026-05/prise-...

The original French title "La Prise de Constantinople par les croisés" is harsher, "The taking/capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders"

More historically accurate, though, no?

Exactly, "Entry of Crusaders in Constantinople" is very milquetoast and does not begin the describe the horrendous massacres committed then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entry_of_the_Crusaders_in_Cons...

(and https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prise_de_Constantinople_par_le... )

give a bit more context.

Stood out to me:

> 498 cm × 410 cm (196 in × 160 in)

The fourth crusade was wild.

- let's go and reclaim Jerusalem from those non-Christian infidels!

- Sure. We're gonna need a bigger boat. Let's ask the Venetians.

- Here are your ships, guys.

- Err, we have no money.

- Sigh. ok. Go and attack our rivals over there.

- The byzantines in Constantinople? They're Christian.

- You want something to do, or not?

- Fine. let's kill them all, boys.

Result: Constantinople is ravaged. Byzantine Empire fatally weakened. Ottomans take the city 200 years later.

They justified it by religion but they really wanted to rob and mug. And this happened many times across history and will continue to happen: people claiming they are fighting for an ideal but really just wanting to gain power and money.

Yes and no. Downplaying “honest” convictions and other motivations unrelated to greed is flawed. Plenty of people in history did what they did because they truly believed in it (of course there were usually several motivations)

For instance the first Crusade was organized as a military relief expedition by the Byzantine emperor and the pope to save the empire from Turkish invasion and liberate the recently conquered Anatolia. Jerusalem was mostly an aspirational and symbolic goal.

Most people who joined did it because of sense of duty and various degrees of religion fanaticism. There was little prospect of profit and while the expedition was enormously more successful than anyone could have anticipated the overwhelming majority of initial participants were dead by the time they reached Jerusalem. Even those that survived to the end didn’t necessarily profit that much.

If I remember Venice took out debt worth 200% of GDP to build the fleet. They were leveraged up to their eyeballs.

Sure, not everything is motivated by greed. I didn't mean that.

"- Err, we have no money. - Sigh. ok. Go and attack our rivals over there."

Strictly speaking, this is not what happened, and a gross oversimplification. The Byzantines were not exactly rivals of the Venetians. The whole thing was quite bizarre in fact, Roger Crowley has a pretty good story of the events leading up to this in "City of Fortune: How Venice Won and Lost a Naval Empire" if I'm not mistaken.

It's a nice vibe history you've got going on here but unfortunately it has little to do with reality. I recommend starting with the disastrous reign of Alexios III who had drained Constantinople's treasury years before the Crusaders arrived to understand the bigger picture. Ransacking their own capital in the name of internal strife has been a Byzantine specialty since the Nika riots of 532.

There's no good guys in this situation. The Byzantine Empire spent 1000 years doing the same kind of shit to other people. The little people, of course, suffered tremendously for it.

one should bear in mind, that Constantinople at that time was still Christian and most of the goods, that were ransacked, came to Venetia

and then mehmet came in.

And how did they get to Constantinople?

by ship

Not a drop of blood to be seen anywhere!

They should just trap Julian Baumgartner inside for a month, with nothing but water, food, and conservation-grade varnish and reversible pigments, and the whole place would look like new!

Please don’t

You might not be aware, but Baumgartner has a generally negative reputation in the conservator community. From what I understand as a non-expert, he's overly aggressive with his swabbing/varnishing and he's taken power tools directly to an artwork numerous times. The former isn't obvious to me either.

I've read that. I'm not part of the conservator community, I just really enjoy the videos.

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