French Romantic artist Eugène Delacroix is best known to Americans for his painting, Liberty at the Barricades (1830). HIs innovative color theory and intensely felt subjects earned him the title “the hero of Romanticism.” However, the artist’s prolific and extraordinary contributions to the genre of religious art had been overlooked for more than a century. New Canaan Library welcomes Joyce C. Polistena, Ph.D., professor of art history and author of The Religious Paintings of Eugène Delacroix: The Initiator of the Style of Modern Religious Art, for an insightful look at Delacroix’s religious art: the broad body of work, and the artist’s personal perceptions and conflicted views on religion. The live webinar will take place on Tuesday, June 7 at 7 PM EST; please register at newcanaanlibrary.org for Zoom sign in.

Joyce C. Polistena, Ph.D. is an art historian and a professor of art history at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn. She has written extensively on topics in 19th-century Romanticism with a focus on the artist Eugène Delacroix. Polistena’s book, The Religious Paintings of Eugène Delacroix: The Initiator of the Style of Modern Religious Art, prompted a new engagement with his religious subjects. Barthélémy Jobert, pre-eminent Delacroix scholar and President of Université Paris-Sorbonne, explained the importance of Delacroix’s religious subjects in the Foreword to her book: “…we need a fresh approach and renewed questions on one of the most important and complex oeuvres of the entire nineteenth century and of the whole Occidental history of art…Joyce Polistena has masterfully taken up the gauntlet…”