“Les Fleurs du Mal” has somewhat obscured the fact that Baudelaire was an art critic. It was in this capacity that he judged and celebrated the work of Delacroix, even though he spoke of it as a poet. The work of the great Romantic painter is presented through the eyes of Baudelaire, whose own words serve as a commentary. Baudelaire and Delacroix are of the same spiritual family; it is the same world of the imagination that they both depict, a very Romantic world where Fatality is always present and which reflects eternal pain. Along with Baudelaire, Delacroix takes us on a journey through a world of violence and blood, where the claw of the wild beast responds to the sword and the dagger, where human faces imbued with an unfathomable sadness seem to close in on a mysterious secret.