Henri-Léopold Lévy

Salon de Nancy, 1876.

Unseen until now, this painting was only known from an engraving by Flameng which appeared in the Recueil d'estampes gravées à l'eau-forte published by the Durand-Ruel gallery in 1873 (pl. CCLI), now at the Musée d'Orsay.

Inspired by Lord Byron’s eponymous poem, translated into French in 1822, the painting depicts Mazeppa: a young page at the court of the King of Poland, John II Casimir Vasa, in the mid-seventeenth century, who was condemned to be tied naked to a horse’s back for having had an adulterous relationship with a countess.

The artist has remained faithful to the text, showing the pallid Mazeppa in the centre, stretched over a white horse, in a landscape of steppes. A crowd of figures dressed in Slavic costume has gathered around him.

The composition transmits all the dramatic tension of the episode: painted with a rapid brushstroke, it is lit by a strong, dramatic light, accentuating the contrasts and highlighting the figures’ movements.

The subject, whose source is a popular Ukrainian legend, seems to have particularly fascinated Levy, who painted another version, now in the museum in Dunkirk.