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Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson

Phaedre, Having Declared Her Passion, Attempts to Kill Herself with the Sword of Hippolytus

c. 1801
Pen and brush and black and brown wash and graphite, heightened with white gouache on cream laid paper
34.5 × 24.2 cm (13.6 × 9.5 in)

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FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO’S CATALOG

This drawing of a scene from the tragedy Phaedra was for a deluxe edition of the plays of the French dramatist Jean Racine (1639–1699) illustrated by Jacques-Louis David’s pupil Girodet. The moment depicted is Phaedra’s attempted suicide after her stepson, Hippolytus, rejects her amorous advances. About his drawings for the plays of Racine, Girodet wrote: “It is wrong that drawings are seen as mere drawings; they demand the same conception and almost as much study as a painting.”

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