OrpheusEurydice1.0270

Solomon Joseph Solomon, 1860-1927, "Orpheus" (with the dead Eurydice and a vision of her shade emerging from Hades), oil on canvas, 1888, now lost?

Blackburn's Academy Notes claims that Orpheus is shown 'at the moment of his temptation to look back which Kestner seees as evoking the seductive allure of Eurydice". Kestner discusses this painting in Mythology and Misogyny: the social discourse of nineteenth-century classical subject-painting (Wisconsin, 1989), 245 "as [a] pictorial ideogram, [forming] an integral part of a broad-based value system that reinforced patriarchal dominance by inculcating misogynistic and gynophobic attitudes among the broad public." Eurydice hereby, in Solomon's treatment, "realizes sexuality is her doom". Kestner counters: "Although [Blackburn's] interpretation is impossible given the iconography of the canvas (Eurydice) is still on earth, not in the Underworld), Blackburn's notice, nevertheless, evokes the seductive allure of Eurydice." Kestner's claim is that Solomon is generally preoccupied with misogynistic iconography that systematically weakened women subjects into victims or dependents.

The image at right is derived from the Franz Haufstaengel lithographic plate imaged at Tumblr, online.