Menu Close

PAG2-moreau-sphinx-jpg

This halftone reproduction of Moreau’s 1864 painting depicts the mythic confrontation between Oedipus and the Sphinx on a mountain landscape. Oedipus’s body is in three-quarter profile facing left, with his face turned in full profile. His hair falls down the back of his neck. He wears a leather strap from his right shoulder, across his chest and down below his left arm. A robe is connected to this strap; it hangs over his right shoulder and winds around his right leg. Beyond this fabric, he is a nude figure with his torso, left hip, leg and arm all visible. In his left hand he holds a spear, leaning on it like a walking stick with the tip down. He is barefoot. On his chest and facing him, the Sphinx meets Oedipus’s gaze. She has a human face and shoulders, a lion’s body and eagle’s wings that rise in the air. Her right paws are visible with the front paw holding on the leather strap across Oedipus’s chest and the back paw gripping the front of his left thigh. Her tail hands down in a curl near Oedipus’s knees. On her head, the Sphinx’s hair is tied back, and she wears a tiara. She wears a string of jewelry that resembles pearls around her midsection. In the foreground at their feet, amidst the rocky terrain, the hand and a foot of a dead body stick up, representing the men who the Sphinx had previously killed. Also in the foreground, a small, ornate column stands in the right corner of the image with a decorative vase on its pedestal. Behind them, a cloudy sky appears above a series of mountain tops, the tallest jutting above Oedipus head on the right, a shorter one appears on the left side behind the Sphinx.