Orestes being purified by Apollo
- Red-figured bell-krater
- Made in Puglia, Italy, c. 380-360 BCE.
really neat insight from @donnedulac:
#VERY interesting piece artistically speaking
#Oreste’s pose is quite complex for the tradition and is making some good use of foreshortening for the limbs
#and we’re reminded of the idea that faces are only shown from the front if they’re outside the realm of the human (dead/mostrous)
#by the hanging skull
#with his crime orestes has broken the boundaries of acceptable human behaviour
#and similarly his depiction itches to break the bonds of what’s acceptable for man
#but hes still our hero - he cannot be fully monstrous. In fact he’s being purified of his crime right this instant
#so the forward-facing monster is displaced into the skull.
#which I think is also an echo of the fact that for Orestes to be purified an animal must be killed
#although the ritual doesn’t work precisely like that I would call this analogous to the scapegoats of old
#thus the sin is not only being visually displaced onto this dead animal but also metaphysically. the symbol works both ways
#what I mean to say is… this is a very good vase
Orestes being purified by Apollo
- Red-figured bell-krater
- Made in Puglia, Italy, c. 380-360 BCE.
“Finally Orestes, embittered and disappointed with kin and kinship, philoi and philia, turns to his friend and co-murderer of Clytemnestra, Pylades, who himself has been rejected by kin, his father. The two friends now seek to reconstitute (with Electra) a new family, based not on blood but the spilling of blood. In a kind of manic elation, they throw off guilt and remorse and escape the sentence of death by acting out their own conflicts instead of continuing to suffer with them.”
— Mind and Madness in Ancient Greece, Bennett Simon
Clytemnestra loved her firstborn so much there was no space of love for her remaining children after her death. No space for Electra, no space for Chrysothemis, no space for Orestes.
Electra building contempt and depression living in a house where her father was killed.
Chrysothemis clutching hard to keep the fragile glass of what remains of her family from breaking,
Orestes who was spared, Orestes who his mother wanted dead, Orestes who shoulders the burden of avenging the father he never knew— by killing the mother he never knew.
Jean Francois Ferdinand Lematte, 1850-1929
Oreste et les Furies, 1876, oil on canvas, 75x54 cm
Private Collection (Artnet)
Orestes and the Erinyes, 1891, Gustave Moreau
Medium: oil,canvas
https://www.wikiart.org/en/gustave-moreau/orestes-and-the-erinyes-1891
Lucienne Heuvelmans, 1881-1944
Électre veillant sur le sommeil d'Oreste, 1911, bas-relief en plâtre, 140x165x30 cm
École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (Paris)
Orestes and the Furies. 19th.century. Johann Nepomuk Ender. Austrian 1793-1854. pen and india ink, brown wash, heightened with white. http://hadrian6.tumblr.com