"She lov'd me for the dangers I had pass'd": plate 3 from Othello (Act 1, Scene 3)

In 1844 Eugène Piot commissioned the young Chassériau to prepare fifteen illustrations to Shakespeare's Othello. Inspired by a series of ground-breaking Hamlet lithographs that Delacroix had created one year earlier, the younger artist opted for the more linear technique of etching. His expressive conception of form had been learned in Ingres's studio then developed under Delacroix. In the series, key exchanges offer a compressed summary of much of the play, with a final cluster devoted to the tragic conclusion. Here, Othello explains to the suspicious Duke of Venice and other dignitaries how he won Desdemona's hand in marriage.

Credit: Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1932...