Phaedra and Hippolytus
Pierre-Narcisse Guérin (1774-1833) · 1802
Phaedra sits beside her husband Theseus, her face drawn and her body slumped, while her nurse Oenone leans over her and whispers in her ear. Across from them stands Hippolytus, Theseus's son, bare shouldered and bare legged, a bow and quiver on his back and a hound at his side, his left arm stretched out towards the group in protest. He has just been accused by Phaedra of the passion she herself feels for him, and Theseus, in the centre, is about to curse his innocent son.
Guérin painted the picture in eighteen hundred and two, signing and dating it towards the lower right, and it was bought by the state at the Salon of that year; he showed it again at the Salon of eighteen fourteen. The subject comes from Racine's tragedy Phèdre, and everything about the picture belongs to the theatre: the frieze like arrangement of the figures, the gestures readable from the back of the hall, the heightened expressions. Look at the contrast between Hippolytus, upright and lit like a marble statue, and the huddled group of Phaedra and the nurse, sunk in the shadow of their guilt. It made Guérin's reputation at twenty eight.
Did You Know? Contemporaries recognised the actors of the Comédie-Française in the faces, so closely did Guérin model his picture on the stage.
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