Don Quixote in His Library

A master of Romanticism, Delacroix favored the literary works by Byron, Hugo and other writers of his time as well as the national literature of European countries, such as Dante and Shakespeare. His enormous enthusiasm responded to the world of literature where agony, rational nature, and madness are intermingling.
The subject of this painting is a scene from the novel Don Quixote by Cervantes, the Spanish writer of the 17th century. The main character of this story is a squire of a village in the La Mancha province. It is the story that says: “A man is so addicted to chivalric romances that he loses his sanity, proclaims himself as Don Quixote de la Mancha, assumes a peasant girl from a neighboring village as his lady love, decides to become a knight-errant to perform meritorious deeds, and set out on adventure.”
In this painting, the figure sitting at his desk on which he had a book open and indulging in dreamy thought is Don Quixote. Depicted behind him are a village priest, master Nicholas the barber and a housekeeper who are worried about him and burn his books, and the painting depicts that the three figures behind him are bewildered.
In the novel Don Quixote, in fact, there is no such a scene that is depicted in this painting. The scene in this painting is a sort of the summarized opening part of this novel which is the chapters 1-6: That is, Don Quixote, who is deeply influenced by chivalric romances, embarks on a journey but eventually is brought back home.
A lot of books and gears looking like knight’s arms and armor are scattered about on the floor. With his back to the figures behind him, Don Quixote seems not to care about them with his eyes wandering. The awkward movement of his left hand seems to be trying to separate his rational mind from his body. In a nearly square-shaped small picture, the mental state of Don Quixote who lost his mind is depicted exquisitely.