0911aPolyxena

0911aPolyxena_Quinsac

ogcma@byu

ClCv241

Mastery

MythMatters

Apollodorus Libr. E5.3-5, 23
Euripides Hecuba 3 and passim
Ovid Met. 13.447-505

Paul François Quinsac, 1858-1932, "The Death of Polyxena," 1882.

Much of Quinsac's art is eroticized, with nude, partially nude, or veiled nude female figures in most (if not all) his other painted subjects. This image is problematic for the violent presentation of the denuded corpse, her throat cut open as a human sacrificial victim at the altar's base. One of the males must be Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles who was tasked with performing the sacrifice of the maiden to the demanding shade of his father.

OGCMA slides are designed by Roger T. Macfarlane for use in Classical Civilization 241 courses at Brigham Young University.
The present resource contains information assembled for The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1400 – 1990’s, edited by J. Davidson Reid (Oxford 1994), and it is used with express permission from Oxford University Press.
Address concerns or inquiries to macfarlane@byu.edu.