Helen1.0063_Moreau.htm

An abstract painting depicts a regal figure amidst ruins, with a large building and debris in the foreground.

Bettany Hughes (2005), Helen of Troy: goddess, princess, whore (Knopf), 217–218. “… one of the most haunting images ever created of the Spartan queen. In many depictions, Moreau has given Helen a solid body but a blank where her face should be. And the epitome of this ghoulish, faceless Helen can be found on a canvas painted in 1880: "Helen at the Scaean Gate". Here Helen’s body is as ghostly as her face. She is white and insubstantial, an eidolon, more akins to the wisps of smoke rising from Troy than to a real woman. Crawling over this vision there are gobbettes of gore; swirls and strands of paint — crimson, black, blue and brown. It is a sickening, livid, dribbling representation of the death and suffering that Helen has brought to Troy. This mess, that surrounds and clings to Helen, also seems to burn. Here is the horror that the Spartan Queen has become.”