0885PhaedraHippolytus

0885PhaedraHippolytus_Cabanel

National Gallery
Ovid Met. 3.138-252

Alexandre Cabanel, "Phaedra" (disconsolate on the couch), 1889. Musée Fabre, Montpellier.

A classical painting of a woman reclining on a bed with a sheer drape, looking contemplatively, with another woman seated nearby.

Phaedra is a daughter of those troubled parents, Minos and Pasiphae; and she married Theseus after he had abandoned Ariadne, her own sister, on Naxos.

Hippolytus, on the other hand, is determined to preserve his unusual reverence for Artemis, swearing off Aphrodite in an attitude of wrath-provoking narrowness.

It's an unfortunate match.

OGCMA slides are designed by Roger T. Macfarlane for use in Classical Civilization 241 courses at Brigham Young University and other contexts.
This resource contains information assembled for The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, and it is used with express permission from Oxford University Press.
Address concerns or inquiries to macfarlane@byu.edu.