Phaedre, Having Declared Her Passion, Attempts to Kill Herself with the Sword of Hippolytus
Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson (French, 1767-1824)
c. 1801
- Medium
- Pen and brush and black and brown wash and graphite, heightened with white gouache on cream laid paper
- Classification
- Drawing and Watercolor
- Dimensions
- 34.5 × 24.2 cm (13 5/8 × 9 9/16 in.)
- Culture
- France
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- Major Acquisitions Centennial Endowment
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Adult profiles and older: its museum's description or title mentions violence, death or gore. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
This drawing of a scene from the tragedy Phaedra was for a deluxe edition of the plays of the French dramatist Jean Racine (1639–1699) illustrated by Jacques-Louis David’s pupil Girodet. The moment depicted is Phaedra’s attempted suicide after her stepson, Hippolytus, rejects her amorous advances. About his drawings for the plays of Racine, Girodet wrote: “It is wrong that drawings are seen as mere drawings; they demand the same conception and almost as much study as a painting.”
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
