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Your galleryThe Meeting of Orestes and Hermione
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Compare Orestes leaning eagerly forward with Hermione’s folded arms, then find the small table behind her whose leg takes the form of a siren.
When Jacques-Louis David was asked to illustrate a new edition of Racine’s plays, he handed the work to his pupil Girodet, who drew this scene from Andromaque. Cléone brings the lovesick Orestes to Hermione, who means to use his devotion to get her way. Hermione stands with folded arms like a statue between the columns, but a sly glance back betrays the scheming that in the end drives Orestes mad.
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 · Sheet: 28.5 x 21.8 cm · Cleveland Museum of Art · Neoclassicism
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Details and source
- Museum title
- The Meeting of Orestes and Hermione
- Artist
- Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucy-Trioson (French, 1767–1824)
- Date
- 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
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 28.5 x 21.8 cm (11 1/4 x 8 9/16 in.)
- Credit line
- Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Cleveland Museum of Art
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.