'Mort du Président Duranti'

Photograph of a painitng of Paul Delaroche, created in 1827 and now considered destroyed. Inspired by an episode from the French reprisals against the Huguenot community during the religious wars of the sixteenth-century, the work depicts the murder of Jean-Étienne Duranti (1534-1589), First President of the Parliament of Toulouse. The assailants burst into the convent of the Holly Inquisition, where Duranti and his family has taken refuge. Duranti is seated in a chair, facing the viewer. He rurns his head to gaze at the men approaching from behind. His left hand rests on his hat laid on a table in the foreground on the left. His right hand clutches the shoulder of his wife, who has collapsed on his lap. She holds their baby in her left hand and places her right arm around her husband’s neck. Their older son is on his knees beside them raising his arms and pleading for mercy.