The Meeting of Orestes and Hermione (c. 1800): Art, History and Details

The Meeting of Orestes and Hermione (c. 1800) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucy-Trioson (French, 1767–1824).

The work and its context

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

When the French painter Jacques-Louis David was approached to work on a new edition of Jean Racine’s plays, he passed the task to his pupil Girodet, who excelled at illustrating literature. This highly refined drawing depicts a scene from Racine’s Andromaque, a complicated story of unrequited love and political treachery. Cléone introduces the love-blind Orestes to Hermione, who exploits his affection to make him do her bidding. Girodet skillfully contrasts Orestes’s eagerness and Hermione’s calculating character. With folded arms, she turns away, as if a statue between the columns of a cool marble interior. Yet Hermione’s sly, backward glance alerts the viewer of her cunning manipulation, which eventually drives Orestes mad.

Object facts

• Title: The Meeting of Orestes and Hermione
• Date: c. 1800
• Creator attribution: Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucy-Trioson (French, 1767–1824)
• Culture: France, early 19th Century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: pen and brown and black ink, point of brush and brown and gray wash, with black chalk and graphite, heightened with white gouache, on cream wove paper
• Dimensions: Sheet: 28.5 x 21.8 cm (11 1/4 x 8 9/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - French
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1989.101

A detail from the museum

The leg of the table behind Hermione has the form of a siren, a dangerous mythological creature that destroys anyone who hears its song.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Explication des ouvrages de peinture et dessins, sculpture, architecture et gravure, des artistes vivans [sic]. Paris: Imprimerie des sciences et arts, 1800.
• Annales du musée et de l’école moderne des beaux-arts, première collection, tome complémentaire. Paris: C. P. Landon, 1809.
• Catalogue des livres rares, précieux, et très-bien conditionnés, du cabinet de M. Firmin Didot. Paris: De Bure, 1810.

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.