Phaedre, Having Declared Her Passion, Attempts to Kill Herself with the Sword of Hippolytus
Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson
1796–1806
- Medium
- Pen and brush and black and brown wash and graphite, heightened with white gouache on cream laid paper
- Dimensions
- 34.5 × 24.2 cm (13 5/8 × 9 9/16 in.)
- Genre
- ink and wash
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago
Tags
drawings (visual works)paintgraphiteinkink and washgouachewashprints and drawingwatercolorpaper (fiber product)water-base paint
About
This drawing of a scene from the tragedy Phaedra was for a deluxe edition of the plays of the French dramatist Jean Racine (1639–1699) illustrated by Jacques-Louis David’s pupil Girodet. The moment depicted is Phaedra’s attempted suicide after her stepson, Hippolytus, rejects her amorous advances. About his drawings for the plays of Racine, Girodet wrote: “It is wrong that drawings are seen as mere drawings; they demand the same conception and almost as much study as a painting.”
