The Meeting of Orestes and Hermione
Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucy-Trioson (French, 1767–1824)
c. 1800
- Medium
- pen and brown and black ink, point of brush and brown and gray wash, with black chalk and graphite, heightened with white gouache, on cream wove paper
- Classification
- Drawing
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 28.5 x 21.8 cm (11 1/4 x 8 9/16 in.)
- Culture
- France, early 19th Century
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Drawings
- Credit line
- Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
When the French painter Jacques-Louis David was approached to work on a new edition of Jean Racine’s plays, he passed the task to his pupil Girodet, who excelled at illustrating literature. This highly refined drawing depicts a scene from Racine’s Andromaque, a complicated story of unrequited love and political treachery. Cléone introduces the love-blind Orestes to Hermione, who exploits his affection to make him do her bidding. Girodet skillfully contrasts Orestes’s eagerness and Hermione’s calculating character. With folded arms, she turns away, as if a statue between the columns of a cool marble interior. Yet Hermione’s sly, backward glance alerts the viewer of her cunning manipulation, which eventually drives Orestes mad.
