The Oath of the Seven Chiefs against Thebes (c. 1800): Art, History and Details

The Oath of the Seven Chiefs against Thebes (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:

Girodet found inspiration for this drawing in Aeschylus’s Greek tragedy Seven against Thebes. Dramatized with powerful physicality, seven warrior leaders from Argos raise weapons to the war deities Ares and Enyo at the far left as they immerse their hands in the blood of a sacrificed bull, and swear an oath to defeat Thebes. Girodet’s strong black outlines and idealized male nudes are characteristic of Neoclassicism’s calculated restraint. Yet the flash of lightning and the warrior’s impassioned expressions intensify the emotional and psychological content of the scene, anticipating the growth of romanticism in European art during the early 1800s.

Object facts

• Title: The Oath of the Seven Chiefs against Thebes
• Date: c. 1800
• Creator attribution: Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucy-Trioson (French, 1767–1824)
• Culture: France, late 18th, early 19th century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: Black chalks and white chalk with stumping and erasing on light brown wove paper
• Dimensions: Overall: 41.8 x 62 cm (16 7/16 x 24 7/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - French
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2000.71

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, “Recent Acquisitions Press Release,” October 6, 2000, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.
• Foster, Carter E. ""Magnificent Seven." Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 41, no. 2 (February 2001): 4-5.
• Bellenger, Sylvain, ed. Girodet, 1767-1824. [Paris, France]: Gallimard, 2006.

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.