Althaea Putting the Fatal Log on the Fire (1712): Art, History and Details

Althaea Putting the Fatal Log on the Fire (1712) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Bernard Picart (French, 1673–1733).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This drawing depicts a scene from the life of Meleager, a figure from Greek mythology who was prophesied to die when a log in the fireplace at the time of his birth completely burned. At that time, Meleager’s mother, Althaea, put out the log and stowed it away for safekeeping. Years later, in the scene depicted here, Althaea exacts revenge on Meleager for killing her brothers in a dispute. Two Furies, goddesses of vengeance, compel the anguished mother to punish her murderous son by burning the fatal log. Picart made this drawing while overseeing the reproduction of Le Brun’s suite of tapestries narrating tales of Meleager into prints. Picart himself made drawings from the tapestries, of which this sheet is an example. The drawings were then used as guides by printmakers Picart hired to re-create the images as engravings.

Object facts

• Title: Althaea Putting the Fatal Log on the Fire
• Date: 1712
• Creator attribution: Bernard Picart (French, 1673–1733)
• Culture: France
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: Red chalk on beige laid paper, incised for transfer
• Dimensions: Sheet: 29.4 x 27.5 cm (11 9/16 x 10 13/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - French
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2008.360

Collection credit

Bequest of Muriel Butkin

Further reading listed by the museum

• Foster, Carter E., Sylvain Bellenger, and Patrick Shaw Cable. French Master Drawings from the Collection of Muriel Butkin. [Cleveland, Ohio]: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2001.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.