Clytemnestra Hesitates Before Killing the Sleeping Agamemnon
Pierre-Narcisse Guérin (1774-1833) · 1817
In the darkness of a palace bedroom, Agamemnon sleeps bare-chested on a bed at the right, his armour hung above him. At the left, behind a translucent orange curtain, Clytemnestra stands in profile with a dagger in her hand, frozen at the threshold. Behind her, Aegisthus, her lover, in a red cloak, leans in and pushes her forward by the shoulder, whispering. A lamp throws a low glow across the curtain and the sleeping king. Guérin chose the moment of hesitation, not the murder: everything hangs on whether she will take the next step.
The picture is signed and dated 1815 and was shown at the Salon of 1817. The administration of Louis the Eighteenth bought it in 1819 for twelve thousand francs, and it first hung in the Luxembourg palace, the museum for living artists, before coming to the Louvre. The subject comes from the Greek tragedies of Aeschylus by way of the theatre of Guérin's own time; the stage-like lighting and the curtain made it a famous example of theatrical Neoclassicism, studied by the young Delacroix, who trained in Guérin's studio.
Did You Know? The canvas is signed and dated 1815, two years before it was shown at the Salon of 1817.
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